The herbarium has recorded plant life in the region since 1925. The centennial year was 2025, but scheduling conflicts pushed the party back. It is an archive of dried, pressed plants with over 31,000 recorded specimens, according to its website. It is also the official repository for Guadalupe Mountains National Park, with over 3,000 specimens from the park, according to director Dr. Matt Johnson.
Johnson said the herbarium started at Texas Tech in the 1920s and spent its first 40 years or so in the sciences building. It moved to biological sciences when that building went up in the 1960s. After the new greenhouses opened in the 1990s, the herbarium took over the roof.
Visitors got one free raffle ticket at the door for gift certificates, and a donation of $100 or more earned a chance at a herbarium specimen canvas print. Grad students taught guests to mount pressed plants at an "arts and crafts" table while Johnson talked about the herbarium's work. At noon, the West Texas Association for Botany, a student organization, gave awards to Johnson and former interim Director Dr. Dylan Schwilk.
The herbarium shows which species grow in an area and how things change over time. Johnson called it "a really good record of the plants of West Texas, Eastern New Mexico, the Guadalupe Mountains and so forth."
A collection that began in one campus building now lives on a roof.