In the 1890s, Oregon State Normal School academic study and teaching tools included botany. Described in the 1898 college catalog, botany classes systematically studied seeds including dry physical attributes, planting, germination, and the effects of light on growth with students making careful documentation of each phase and effect. Students created plant collections of 50 local floras, identifying each in intricate detail and pressed the specimen for preservation. The product from the study project, called a herbarium, gave each class member a representative collection of plants with which to commence teaching. The herbarium was an essential tool for teaching botany in the public classroom for studying and verifying plants in Oregon.
Description of project taken from the 1897-1898 Oregon State Normal School Sixteenth Annual Catalogue: “The student makes a collection of fifty plants, mounting them and writing out a careful description of each on specially prepared paper. They are then bound in appropriate covers. This gives the members of the class a representative collection of plants with which to commence his teaching.”
From the guide to the Oregon State Normal School Herbarium Collection, 1896, 1898, (Western Oregon University Archives)
