Dinosaur National Monument Herbarium (NPS-DINO)

Dinosaur National Monument manages a herbarium of over 2400 specimens that represents the remarkable diversity at the convergence of five ecological regions: the Colorado Plateau, the Great Basin, the Central and Southern Rockies, and the Wyoming Basin. Paleontologist Earl Douglass and O. A. Peterson of the Carnegie Museum made the earliest collections from the future Dinosaur National Monument prior to 1915. George Osterhout visited the quarry in 1925, and collected the type specimen of Uinta Basin cryptanth (Cryptantha [Oreocarya] breviflora), the first of more than one-half dozen holotypes from Dinosaur National Monument. More exhaustive collections occurred between 1931 and 1989 with additions to the collection continuing today. Goodrich and Neese (1986) published the Uinta Basin Flora in 1986, summarizing much of the floristic knowledge of the Dinosaur National Monument vicinity. An update, Uinta Flora (Goodrich and Huber), was published in 2014. Species of notable interest in the collection include the holotype of Ownbey’s thistle (Cirsium ownbeyi), Dinosaur wild buckwheat (Eriogonum lonchophyllum var. saurinum), orchard snakeweed (Gutierrezia pomariensis), rock hymenoxys (Hymenoxys lapidicola), Blue Mountain penstemon (Penstemon scariosus var. cyanomontanus), and Graham’s columbine (Aquilegia grahamii). Only one plant species from the Monument is listed as threatened or endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act: Ute ladies’-tresses (Spiranthes diluvialis), most of which occurs within the active floodplain of the Green River through Lodore Canyon. At least 75 species are either former candidates for listing, identified as sensitive by U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management, or tracked as species of concern by state natural heritage programs.