Dr. Wofford

Meet Eugene Wofford, Botanist

Eugene (“Gene”) Wofford loves plants. He grew up in the Clarksville area. In college, he studied biology. His senior year, he got the chance to spend two summers collecting plants in the area known as “Land Between the Lakes”. Why? Just to find out what plants were there!

“We would spend Monday through Thursday collecting plants. Then, on Fridays, we would try to identify what we had collected. The more plants I learned to recognize by name, the more I wanted to know even more plants by name!”

Gene continued his study of plants after graduating from college and went on to become Dr. Wofford. (Some people who use the title “doctor” are medical doctors. Others are veterinarians. Dr. Wofford is a doctor of botany, the study of plants.)

Dr. Wofford examining one of the dogwood specimens in the herbarium collection Now, thirty years later, Dr. Wofford is in charge of the collection of pressed plant specimens at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. This collection is one of the best 10 in the country and houses over 300,000 specimens of flowering plants.

This photo shows Dr. Wofford looking at a pressed specimen of Flowering Dogwood. In the same folder are several other specimens of the same species, but collected at different times and in different places. Notice that this folder is just one among the many folders stored in one cabinet.

In this picture you can see just a few of the many cabinets in his “museum”, also called a “herbarium”. (They crank the handles to move the cabinets apart so that the doors can be opened. When the cabinets are not being used, they crank the handles to slide the cabinets together. This saves space.)

Here is a closer view of the pressed Flowering Dogwood.

Because dogwoods flower before their leaves are fully developed, the leaves on this specimen are a lot smaller than the leaves you would observe later in the year on the same tree.

Here is a closer view of the tag mounted on the sheet with the pressed specimen. This tag is absolutely critical because it tells the “Who What When Where and Why” – who collected it, what species it is, when it was collected, exactly where, and why.

One way the information on this specimen could be used would be to go back to the same location at a later date and see if the tree is still there. The information could also be used to study what types of habitats Flowering Dogwoods live in and when they bloom.

Another way Dr. Wofford uses the information is to create distribution maps. A distribution map shows where a certain species is “distributed”, meaning where it is found.

Here is the map that Dr. Wofford’s staff has created for the Flowering Dogwood, based on which counties the Flowering Dogwood specimens in the herbarium are from:

Hey, what’s going on here? This map indicates that there are no records of Flowering Dogwoods in Jefferson County, where I live! I know we have Flowering Dogwoods!!

Dr. Wofford explained to me that they just don’t have a specimen of Flowering Dogwood collected in Jefferson County in their collection.

He also told me that anyone can press a specimen and send it to him. In this picture, Dr. Wofford is unpacking a specimen that was sent to him. (Notice that they included a typed label.) His staff will mount each new specimen on a sheet, just like the other specimens in the collection.

If the specimen is the first from a certain county, the map for that species will also be revised. Hmmm, that gives me an idea. I think I’ll press a specimen from a Flowering Dogwood and send it in. Thanks, Dr. Wofford for explaining to me how to make sure Jefferson County is on the map!!!

Last modified on October 24, 2005