BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – At the University of Vermont, 95-year-old Hilda White has volunteered at the Pringle Herbarium for 28 years, mounting plants from around the world and preserving them for future generations.
“Well, we have lots of green,” Hilda said. “Some of the plants are beautiful.”
The herbarium functions as a library for plants. White mounts specimens that will be preserved for research.
“I can’t draw, but this is my artistic outlet,” Hilda said. “If I mount the plants, the plants will be around for hundreds of years, barring any accidents or anything.”
In 2017, the plant collection almost went up in flames when it was housed at Torrey Hall. White was coming into work when the fire broke out.
“You can’t imagine what that was like,” she said.
Wes Testo, now the director of the collection, was in South America doing plant research when he learned about the fire.
“All I could see from an email in Colombia, the roof on fire, my whole Ph.D. was going up in flames about with the whole collection here,” Testo said.
Thankfully, much of the collection was saved.
“So the damage we got from the fire, from the collection, was only water damage,” Hilda said.
Hilda, staff and other volunteers restored and remounted the damaged plants. The collection is now in the Jeffords Building. This spring,l all of the artifacts will be in one location for easy access.
“This will have 400,000 plant specimens in this one room,” Testo said. “Hilda mounted a huge amount of the specimens you see here.”
For her 95th birthday, Hilda received a big surprise. A Christmas fern that Testo discovered in Colombia in 2023 will be named after her.
“I was walking through the forest there, and I saw this just, spectacular fern, I knew immediately it was something I hadn’t seen before,” Testo said.
The never-before-documented plant discovered by Testo will forever be called Polystichum hildae, after Hilda.
“Absolutely blown away. You can imagine, I cried all afternoon,” she said. “Nobody else gets a birthday present like that.”
“Her contributions are absolutely essential to the research we do here,” Testo said.
Hilda has prepared 50,000 specimens and plans to continue her work.
“I’ll be here as long as I can,” she said.
