Henry William Ravenel (1814-1887) was a world renowned Botanist and Mycologist. As a member of an international network of correspondents, Ravenel exchanged herbarium specimens and botanical knowledge with some of the most well known scientists during his time. While recognized as a premier southern scientist by his colleagues (especially for his studies on North American fungi), he was equally conversant with a more popular audience and published numerous articles relating to agriculture and home gardening. He was an indefatigable field biologist and his observations on plant growth, behavior, and habitat preference exceeded the limits of Systematic Botany and approached the fields of Economic Botany, Public Health, and Ecology.

During the span of his life-long efforts, Ravenel amassed a collection of 10 to 12 thousand plant specimens, the sum total of which was nearly purchased by the University of South Carolina (then South Carolina College) in the mid 1880's. While this deal was never struck and portions of his collections were sold posthumously in lots to the British Museum (a subset now at Kew Gardens) and Converse College (a small portion of this went to the Biltmore Estate), the vast majority of his vascular plant collections are now held in the A. C. Moore Herbarium in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina. Officially referred to as "The Henry William Ravenel Collection of Converse College", this collection boasts upwards of 6,000 specimens of vascular plants and includes some very rare and, now, locally extinct species as well as many type specimens. Featured speakers will touch on these topics and much more...