University of Wyoming. Dept. of Botany.

The Botany Department was created in 1887. Its most prominent collection of specimens, the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, was started in 1893. The Botany Department offered bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees, and encouraged students to study topics such as botany, mycology, zoology, agriculture, molecular biology, wildlife management, and general biology. Students majoring in botany or biology also had the option to minor in Enviroment and Natural Resources.

Aven Nelson came to Wyoming in 1887 to teach at the newly created University of Wyoming. An internationally respected botanist, Nelson helped start the Rocky Mountain Herbarium at the University of Wyoming and was highly active in Wyoming's State Board of Horticulture. Nelson continued his duties teaching at the university and as curator of the Rocky Mountain Herbarium until 1939. Three years later, at the age of eighty-two, he was named Curator Emeritus for the Rocky Mountain Herbarium. Nelson passed away in 1952.

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