George F. Ledingham Herbarium

The late Dr. G. F. Ledingham (1911-2006) established the Herbarium in 1945. He devoted a good portion of his lifetime to expanding the collections of the Herbarium, both while he was a full-time faculty member and during twenty plus years of retirement. The Herbarium has almost 50,000 vascular plant specimens, 10,000 bryophyte specimens, and 10,000 specimens of lichens.  An abridged history of the herabarium, as written by Dr. Ledingham for the 20th anniversary of the University of Regina follows:

Introduction

The herbarium here was founded in 1945 and has had world wide recognition since 1952.  The collection of plants is recognized in Herbaria of the World by the code letter USAS.  The herbarium has more than 60,000 plant specimens and serves this part of the globe, a part seldom visited by botanists.

A brief overview

The herbarium became a public reality in 1945 when Ledingham became Assistant Professor of Biology in Regina.  The first plants in his collection were species of Carex (sedges) which had been collected 1933-37 while he was summer assistant in the Biology Department in the University of Saskatchewan.  At that time, he was working on his Master’s degree under the supervision of W.P. Thompson.  However, he also went on field trips with W. P. Fraser (1867-1943), who in his retirement years was building the University herbarium.  The exciting part of those field trips was the finding of additional species of Carex.  Starting with 6 species in 1933, they were able finally to list 98 species (Ledingham & Fraser [1943] American Midland Naturalist, Vol 29, pp 42-50).

The work happening in the George F. Ledingham Herbarium is made possible by the generous support of Career Launcher, the Saskatchewan Fish and Wildlife Development Fund, the Faculty of Science, Humanities Research Institute, and private donors. 

If you would like to contribute to our project, please visit our fundraising page.