A Treasury of Watercolors

In 2018 a collection of over 320 watercolor paintings was discovered by botanist Mark Whitten at the University of Florida Herbarium. He was rummaging through a drawer for tracing paper when he discovered this treasure.

Likely untouched in the 20 years since the herbarium’s move into Dickinson Hall, the collection was largely forgotten, but the same cool, dark conditions intended to preserve the herbarium’ s more than 400,000 specimens also preserved the paintings.

Artist Minna Fernald donated the paintings of Florida wildflowers to the university in 1942, providing a rich record of the state’s past ecological life. “If you go out looking for these plants nowadays, you can find them but they’re only in little isolated preserves,” said Whitten, a biological scientist at the herbarium. “My impression is what Minna Fernald saw was a much more wild and interesting Florida than what it is now.” The university has been working to digitize this collection and the portion that has been completed may be viewed at https://ufdc.ufl.edu/ watercolors/all/brief.

You can read the article concerning this find in its entirety at https://tinyurl.com/4bt5h42y.

Dr. Whitten passed away suddenly on April 11, 2019.