In January of 1903, there again was a Frank Tweedy in the Laramie news. "Prof. Nelson [University of Wyoming] has received a rare collection of plants from Mr. Frank Tweedy ... a botanist of considerable distinction" reported the Republican. Were USGS surveyor Frank Tweedy and distinguished botanist Frank Tweedy one and the same? And how did 700 plants survive a trip to Laramie in January?!
Dead, flat, & dry
Actually, survival was not an issue, for these plants were already dead. But they still were of great value. All were collected in 1900 in the wilds of the northern Bighorn Mountains. There they were carefully arranged in paper folders so that parts needed for identification were visible, and placed in a plant press with absorbent felt sheets until dry (several days to several weeks, depending on weather).
After the field season, they made their way east, ending up at the New York Botanical Garden where the great botanist, Per Axel Rydberg, either identified them, or, if they were new to science, named them himself. Then in 1903, "upward of 700" traveled west to Laramie, each accompanied by a label with the plant's name, collection location, date, and collector—Frank Tweedy.
At the university there was more processing, for dried plants are fragile, and won't last long if left loose in paper folders. They were mounted on 11" x 18" sheets of durable paper, preserving them for centuries to come, and properly filed in the university herbarium.
If you don't know what a herbarium is, you're not alone. Few people do. Many think it's some kind of greenhouse, but actually it's the opposite—a collection of pressed dried plants. The first, called a "hortus siccus" (dry garden), was created in the 1520s by Italian botany professor Luca Ghini. He wanted a way to teach plant identification in the winter, so he pressed and dried plants, and glued them to paper sheets. Fed up with their ancient textbooks, Ghini's students loved him for it.
Today, students still use herbarium specimens to learn to identify plants. But they took on a much bigger role during the golden era of global exploration (16th–19th centuries)—documentation of the world's flora. Herbaria proliferated and flourished. Now there are at least 3300, holding nearly 400 million pressed dried plants!
New herbarium grows fast
By 1892, the University of Wyoming had been operating for five years with a botany professor (Aven Nelson) but no herbarium! This was unacceptable for the state's only university. Fortunately, Experimental Station Supervisor Burt C. Buffum had collected Wyoming plants for several years, accumulating on the order of 500. Several hundred were set aside for an exhibit at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. As for the rest, University President Albinus Johnson directed Nelson to use them to start a herbarium.
Nelson knew little about plant identification and herbarium management, but that didn't slow him down. In 1899, he launched an ambitious project. For 14 weeks, he traveled Yellowstone Park by horse-drawn wagon, with his wife, two daughters, and two students. They collected zealously, returning to Laramie with 30,000 specimens! Most were duplicates, to be sold or traded to fund and expand the UW herbarium.