The Duke Herbarium is the second-largest private university herbarium in the U.S. and is home to more than 825,000 plant specimens, including some specimens almost 200 years old. Universities ...

Duke’s collection of more than 800,000 specimens of fungi, plants and algae makes the herbarium one of the largest in the country. The move to close it has drawn criticism from faculty and ...

Dr. Matthew G. Johnson is a Duke alum (Trinity '06, Graduate School '13) and an associate professor and the Herbarium Director at Texas Tech University. Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox.

Now the collection’s future is uncertain. Earlier this year, Duke announced plans to shut down the world-renowned herbarium, citing the high cost of maintaining the roughly 850,000-specimen ...