The Missoula Research Center Herbarium (MRC) was built from two small herbaria held in the U. S. Forest Service Region One office. Peter F. Stickney, emeritus curator of the MRC, oversaw its official creation when he worked for the U. S. Forest Service Research wing here in Missoula. In 2009, 14 years after Stickney’s retirement, the collection was moved and is now housed here at MONTU. Today the MRC contains over 15,000 collections of vascular plants, lichens, and bryophytes. These collections were made in specific Forest Service plots over time from 1957 to the early 2000s. Stickney is one of the main contributors to the MRC, having over 4,000 collections within. Other notable collectors include Stephen F. Arno, Virginia Vincent, Karen L. Gray, and Leonard Lake. Additional botanists such as bryologist Elva Lawton and lichenologist Roger Rosentreter, verified many of the bryophytes and lichens in the MRC collection. The MRC is housed in its own space and kept separate from the main MONTU collection. Many of the vascular plant specimens collected in Montana within the MRC are databased, most having high quality images attached, in the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria. As of May 2023, Stickney only has a few specimens left to integrate into the MRC.  

The MRC Herbarium is especially unique as Stickney collected vouchers from the same plots for over 50 years, where he was studying fire succession. Within species, specimens are filed by the date they were collected, often several specimens coming from the same plots in the same forests within the same year to see the different stages of growth over time. This is done in order to see the process of a plant go from seedling, to vegetative, to flowering, to fruit. The MRC is truly an untapped resource waiting to be used for research, many of the specimens being the first voucher collection for species in several National Parks and Forests in Montana and Idaho.  

If you are interested in volunteering to work specifically with the MRC Herbarium please reach out to the MONTU Curator, Giovanna Bishop via email: giovanna.bishop@umontana.edu