The Daura Gallery at Lynchburg College will host a Botanicos exhibition May 29 through August 12 featuring specimens from the College’s Ramsey-Freer Herbarium. A reception will be held June 8 at 5 p.m. in the Gallery in conjunction with a Botanicos Conference June 8-9 at the College celebrating biodiversity and the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the herbarium. The exhibition and reception are free and open to public.
The exhibition celebrates "nature’s art" with specimens that reveal an unusual and beautiful art from created from numerous variations of morphological shapes, forms, patterns, symmetries, and structural designs in flowers, inflorescences, fruits, seeds, leaves, and roots. The mounted plants on display are representative of the more than 60,000 specimens in the herbarium and include the Tulip Poplar, Virginia’s state tree, and the Flowering Dogwood, Virginia’s state flower.
Located in the College’s Claytor Nature Study Center in Bedford County, the Ramsey-Freer Herbarium ranks fourth in size in the state of Virginia and houses the largest collection of any private college in the state with more than 1,500 different kinds of plants primarily from the south central piedmont of Virginia and the central Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains. Dr. Gwynn Ramsey, Lynchburg College professor emeritus of biology, serves as curator.
The Daura Gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m. or by appointment through August 26. The Gallery will be closed on weekends during the summer.