John Tucker, who played a leading role in developing UC Davis' herbarium and arboretum, is helping to ensure the future health of both facilities with a $500,000 gift.
The donation from the botany professor emeritus will be divided equally between the campus's two vast collections -- one consisting of mounted and labeled dried plants residing in Robbins Hall and the other living plants that grow along the Arboretum Waterway.
The money will enable the herbarium and arboretum staffs, among other things, to maintain world-class collections of oak trees that have been the subject of Tucker's intellectual passion for most of his life.
The arboretum's share will establish the John M. Tucker Oak Collection Endowed Fund to maintain its oak trees, particularly those in the Peter J. Shields Oak Grove. The grove contains more than 80 kinds of oaks, many grown from acorns collected for Tucker's research from throughout the United States and northern Mexico.
The portion for the herbarium is the first major gift toward construction of a $2 million facility to house its more than 200,000 dried plants. Many of those specimens, including an extensive oak collection, were acquired during the 39 years Tucker directed the herbarium.
The herbarium will be located in the future Sciences Laboratory Building, opening in mid-2004 east of the Life Sciences Addition.
The herbarium's $2 million costs are part of an $8.5 million fund-raising campaign by the Division of Biological Sciences. The College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, which jointly administers the herbarium with the biological sciences division, is also raising private funds for the facility.
Tucker, who turned 85 on Sunday, said he has been interested in these facilities his entire career.
"Both of them, at least in the early years, have had tough-going financially. Things have changed in recent years very much for the better. I just wanted to help things along."
Tucker joined the UC Davis faculty and began overseeing the Botany Herbarium in 1947 while completing research for his doctorate from UC Berkeley.
When he started at the herbarium, the specimens numbered fewer than 10,000. During his tenure, he started an exchange program and vastly expanded collections of weeds and California flora, as well as oaks. By the time he retired in 1986, the facility was renamed in his honor.
Hundreds of people a year visit the herbarium to use its library, look at its specimens and identify their own plant specimens.
The majority of those visitors are UC Davis students, faculty members and staff employees; others include visiting university researchers, government biologists, private consultants and members of the public.
The herbarium staff also identifies plants as a public service, most often identifying weeds for farm advisers throughout the state or poisonous plants for veterinarians trying to determine what sickened or killed an animal.
Ellen Dean, the herbarium's director and curator, said Tucker's gift is a demonstration of his "vision for and a true belief in the importance of the herbarium."