The development of a "Friends of the Herbarium" is in its infancy, but we plan to continue to encourage volunteer help from individuals within the community, as well as from students. We also hope to identify any collections from the region that may be in danger of being orphaned and offer the ASU Herbarium as a repository.
The needs of the herbarium are relatively great. There are a limited number of references for use in plant identifications, and we need about $2000 to remedy the situation. There is a need for more cabinets, with a realistic need of about one cabinet every year (about $1000 per cabinet). We have received significant help from graduate research assistantships, averaging about one-half an assistantship per semester. We hope this can continue. The supplies needed to mount plants total about $300 per year at present. We believe it is reasonable to double the size of the collections over the next twenty years, and we would need about 40% more floor space than we currently have to accomplish this goal.