The Vascular Plant Division of the University of Manitoba Herbarium (WIN) is located in Room 426 Buller Building and is open to visitors Tuesday 9:00AM-12:00PM and Wednesday & Thursday from 9:00AM-4:30PM. Please contact the Curator or Assistant Curator to arrange a visit.

Bruce Ford, Curator
University of Manitoba Herbarium (WIN)
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3T 2N2

Tel:      (204) 474-6994
Fax:     (204) 474-7650
Email:  bford@cc.umanitoba.ca

Elizabeth Punter, Assistant Curator
University of Manitoba Herbarium (WIN)
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3T 2N2

Tel:      (204) 474-9208
Fax:     (204) 474-7650
Email:  punterec@cc.umanitoba.ca

About the Herbarium
Founded in 1907, the Herbarium of the Department of Biological Sciences (WIN) houses the most extensive and broadly representative collection of plants and lichens of Manitoba, approximately 75,000 vascular plants and 15,000 non-vascular plants, lichens, and fungi. There is also a reference seed collection. Many of the specimens represent vouchers for various floristic, environmental, and ecological studies carried out by present and former members of the Department and the broader scientific community. The collections have played an important role in the development of such publications as Budd’s Flora of the Canadian Prairie Provinces and Scoggan’s Flora of Manitoba and Flora of Canada. They also provide an important reference source for floristic and vegetation studies within the province. Most recently the collections have been used as source of genetic material for a number of molecular phylogenetic studies, especially those on the systematics of Carex and Cladonia, for documenting the distribution and ecology of Manitoba’s rare and endangered plants species, and for providing distributional and taxonomic information for the Flora of North America Project.

The Vascular Plant Division of WIN supports an active exchange and loan program. We invite loan requests from other recognized botanical institutions.

Collection History
The vascular plant collections in WIN date from the mid 19th century to the present with most originating from the province of Manitoba. Much of our knowledge of the vascular flora of the province and publications relating to it has relied upon these specimens.

Significant collections made in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries by resident Manitobans include those of A. H. R. Buller, Canon W. M. Burman, V. W. Jackson, C. W. Lowe, M. G. Dudley, H. Marshall, E. J. MacMillan, H. Macdonald, Rev. G. DeRuyck, A. Simpson and D. B. Sparling. Checklists of Manitoba plants, reflecting mainly the southern half of the province, were prepared by Burman (1909), Jackson et al. (1922), and Lowe (1943).

In 1948, H. J. Scoggan, from the National Museum of Canada, commenced a five-year botanical investigation of Manitoba by road, rail, canoe and plane. W. K. W. Baldwin (1953) accompanied Scoggan and carried out botanical exploration in the Reindeer-Nueltin lakes area of northwestern Manitoba in 1951. Together, these studies led to the publication of the Flora of Manitoba (Scoggan, 1957). The specimens upon which this flora is based are housed in the Canadian Museum of Nature (CAN) with many duplicates at WIN.

Botanical surveys conducted by B. Boivin between 1949 and 1960 formed the basis for his Flora of the Prairie Provinces (Boivin, 1967-81) with many of his collections from southern Manitoba found in WIN. D. Löve and A. Löve, faculty members in the Department of Botany (now part of the Department of Biological Sciences), University of Manitoba from 1951 to 1955, collected primarily in southern Manitoba. While some of their specimens are housed in WIN, as well as the University of Montreal (MT) and University of Colorado (COLO), many of their collections, including vouchers for chromosome counts, appear to have been lost. D. Löve and J-P Bernard (1959) compiled a flora of the Otterburne area (40 km S. of Winnipeg on the east side of the Red River) based on their fieldwork between 1950 and 1958. T. Mosquin collected in the Brokenhead area (northeast of Winnipeg) in the mid 1950s. J. C. Ritchie, a faculty member in the Department of Botany from 1955 to 1961, conducted investigations into the flora and vegetation of northern Manitoba. Some of his collections are in WIN but the majority are at the Royal Ontario Museum (TRT).

Since the 1960s, collections in WIN have been contributed by W. Krivda (The Pas), G. M. Keleher (southern Manitoba and Churchill), H. H. Marshall (Pembina Hills) J. M. Walker Shay (Delta Marsh), D. Punter (throughout Manitoba, especially York Factory), and J. L. Parker (Gilbert Plains and Duck Mountain).  W. J. Cody collected extensively in Riding Mountain National Park in 1979 and 1983. The specimens collected during those summers are housed in WIN and the Department of Agriculture in Ottawa (DAO) form the basis for his book on the plants of Riding Mountain National Park (Cody 1988). The herbarium of the Dominion Rust Laboratory, M. Dudley (University of Manitoba, Department of Plant Science), and G. Jones were incorporated into WIN between 2000 and 2003. Other recent collections include those of B. A. Ford (southern Manitoba and Carex) and C. E. Punter (Birds Hill Provincial Park, the east side of Lake Winnipeg, northern Manitoba, and vouchers for rare plant surveys associated with environmental assessments). Specimens collected by M. Piercey-Normore, B. A. Ford, C. E. Punter and D. Punter between 2002-2010 as part of a botanical inventory of Wapusk National Park will be housed in WIN.

Around 2006, the non-vascular plants, lichens, and fungi were split off from the vascular plant collection and now form the Cryptogamic Division of WIN. Please contact Michele Piercey-Normore, Curator of Cryptogams, for more information on this collection.

In 2010 we began databasing the vascular plant collection in collaboration with the Canadian University Biodiversity Consortium (see Herbarium Projects).

Associated Publications

Baldwin, W. K. W. 1953. Botanical investigations in the Reindeer-Nueltin lakes area, Manitoba. National Museum of Canada, Bull. 128:110-142.

Boivin, B. 1967-1981. Flora of the Prairie Provinces. Provancheria 2, 3, 4, 5, 12.

Burman, W. A. 1909. The flora of Manitoba. In British Association for the Advancement of Sciences. A handbook to Winnipeg and the province of Manitoba, pp. 156-182.

Cody, W. J. 1988. Plants of Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba. Agriculture Canada, Research Branch, Publication 1818/E.

Holland, G., K. Ottenbreit, D. Punter, E. Punter, A. Shanks and R. Staniforth. 1996. Wild Plants of Birds Hill Provincial Park, Manitoba, Canada. Manitoba Naturalists Society, Winnipeg, Manitoba. ECO Series 4.

Jackson, V. W., J. F. Higham, H. Groh, and C.W. Lowe. 1922. Checklist of the Manitoba flora. Nat. Hist. Soc. of Manitoba.

Löve, D. and J-P. Bernard. 1959. Flora and vegetation of the Otterburne area, Manitoba, Canada. Sven. Bot. Tidsk. 53:335-461.

Lowe, C. A. 1943. List of flowering plants, ferns, club mosses, mosses and liverworts of Manitoba. Nat. Hist. Soc. of Manitoba.

Punter, E. 1994. Inventory and annotated checklist of the vascular plants of the Manitoba Model Forest. Project 93-2-06, Manitoba Model Forest.

Scoggan, H. J. 1957. Flora of Manitoba. Bulletin No. 140, Biological Series No. 47. National Museum of Canada, Ottawa. [PDF]

Shay, J. M. 1999. Annotated vascular plant species list for the Delta Marsh, Manitoba and surrounding area. University of Manitoba Field Station (Delta Marsh) Occasional Publication No. 2, Winnipeg, Canada. 52 pp.

Herbarium Projects

The Arctic Flora of Canada and Alaska
The Arctic Flora of Canada and Alaska aims to produce a flora for all vascular plants in the Arctic ecozone in Canada and northern Alaska. The Arctic Flora will eventually serve as the reference tool for anybody who requires accurate and up-to-date information on Arctic plant species, needs or wants to identify Arctic plants in the field or herbarium, or wants to know a little bit more about the amazing plant biodiversity in the land of little sticks -- North America's most climate-threatened ecosystem. The project is being led by researchers at the Canadian Museum of Nature, and the research team includes scientists from Canada, Alaska and Norway.  

Canadian University Biodiversity Consortium
The University of Manitoba is a participant in the Canadian University Biodiversity Consortium; an initiative funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to database biodiversity collections from over a dozen institutions. As a result of this funding we have begun databasing specimen information and images from all Manitoban vascular plant specimens in WIN. Our goal is to provide on-line access to this database over the next couple of years.

Flora of North America
The Flora of North America is a 30-volume book (published by Oxford University Press) and electronic database (housed at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO) covering some 20,000 species of plants, about 7% of the world’s total. When completed, the Flora will be the definitive treatment of the plant diversity of North America north of Mexico. It will summarize our current knowledge of species, their relationships, characteristics, and distributions and serve as a standard identification resource. The University of Manitoba Herbarium serves as a review centre for all manuscripts covering species from western Canada and routinely loans specimens to authors of various species treatments.

Flora of Wapusk National Park, Manitoba
Since 2002, we have been conducting an inventory of the diversity of vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, lichens and fungi associated with the coastal ecosystems (tidal flats, salt marshes, coastal fens and beach ridges), in Wapusk National Park. Our inventory will document the floristic characteristics of the coastal ecosystems as a basis for conservation planning in the face of changing climate conditions, animal populations and human visitation. It will also provide baseline data on the distribution and status of species, some of which are rare or at risk. To date over 1000 vascular plant specimens from this region have been added to our collection.

Rare Plant Surveys
Rare plant surveys provide critical information on the distribution and abundance of species considered to be threatened or endangered in the province. The herbarium houses vouchers from a number of these surveys including those undertaken by environmental consultants, the Assistant Curator Elizabeth Punter, and staff at the Manitoba Conservation Data Centre and the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve.

Manitoba Model Forest Inventory
Established in 1992, the Manitoba Model Forest covers an area of 1,047,069 hectares on the east side of Lake Winnipeg. The goal of the Manitoba Model Forest Inventory is to integrate various social, environmental, cultural and economic interests into sustainable forest practices. To provide baseline information on plant diversity in the Manitoba Model Forest, an inventory of vascular plants was undertaken by Assistant Curator Elizabeth Punter in 1993. Over 700 vascular plant species were recorded in the survey including 50 provincially rare species.