The flowers of Delmarva

This post has been updated to include new information about Artstor’s public collections, formerly made available on Shared Shelf Commons.

Franklin C. Daiber, Peony. UD Library: Franklin C. Daiber Botanical Collection

The Delmarva Peninsula gets its name from the three states it’s a part of: DELaware, MARyland, and VirginiA. You could say Delmarva is technically an island, since you have to cross one of five bridges (one of them being the 20-mile long Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel) to get across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, but since the canal is man-made it’s still considered a peninsula.

Delmarva is a popular tourist destination, in no small part thanks to its natural beauty. The University of Delaware’s Franklin C. Daiber Botanical Collection in Artstor’s public collections offers a selection of nearly 500 photographs representing more than 400 varieties of botanical specimens found in the region. The late Dr. Daiber, author of numerous papers and two books on the animals and conservation of Atlantic tidal marshes, took all of the photographs in the collection.

Artstor’s public collections are openly available and fully searchable to anyone–with or without an Artstor subscription. They are shared by institutions that subscribe to JSTOR Forum, Artstor’s web-based service for cataloging and managing digital collections.