Flora of Kansas, Anton Olson, green milkweed, 1886, Terry Evans

Terry Evans’s photographs of Anton Olson’s herbarium, which is bound in a single album, are one facet of her Prairie Specimens project, in which she photographed plant and animal specimens housed in the Chicago Field Museum, the National Museum of Natural History, and elsewhere. Reflecting on this project Evans noted: I’ve been exploring the vast collections in the storage areas of Chicago’s Field Museum, one of the world’s largest natural history museums. I am equally moved by the beauty of both the virgin prairie and the carefully collected and preserved specimens. Olson created his herbarium while studying at State Agricultural College of Kansas, later Kansas State University, in the 1880s. Botany classes were mandatory for all students, and the courses’ requirements included the preparation of plant specimens gathered from nature.