Saint Edward's University Herbarium (SEU)

The Saint Edward’s University Herbarium collection, which was established in the late 1950s, is a fruit of the work of Brother Daniel Lynch, CSC, and his dedicated students. Br. Daniel (1921–1997) was beloved throughout Central Texas, and many university benefactors contributed to funds that supported his scholarship and his service to marginalized communities. He used some of those funds to buy herbarium cabinets and supplies as he built the collection. He relied heavily on the herbarium as he worked with the illustrator, Nancy McGowan, to complete Native and Naturalized Woody Plants of Austin and the Hill Country. This reference was originally published in 1981 and is still widely used by botanists around the state. In addition to his high level of scholarship, Br. Daniel was a stellar teacher at St. Edward’s for more than 40 years. His students not only learned from the herbarium collection, but they also helped him to build it. Today, the collection is used primarily to support teaching in the natural sciences, but also serves as a repository for voucher specimens documenting the plant diversity of the associated Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve and Creative Research Center.