Dept. of Sustainable Bioproducts
Mississippi State University
David A. Kribs
Wood Collection
Forest Products Lab, Bldg. 5, 2F
201 Locksley Way
Starkville, MS 39759
Free viewings by appointment only:
Monday through Friday -- 9:00am to 4:00pm
Saturday & Sunday -- Closed
Origin: 1925
Penn State University
In the Beginning
The David A. Kribs Xylarium (PACw) was founded in 1925 at the Pennsylvania State University. The earliest specimens were duplicates of material from peer institutions, in particular the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago (Fw; later merged into the MADw collection at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin), Yale’s Record Collection (Yw; later renamed SJRw, also at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory), and Harvard’s xylarium (Aw).
Main Entrance of Old Main at Penn State University, George Chriss
Adapted: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
Dr. David A. Kribs
1930s - 1960s
Contribution of Its Namesake
In 1931, Dr. David A. Kribs started working at Penn State as a botany instructor. He became an assistant professor in 1937, around which time he began collecting material for his book Commercial Foreign Woods on the American Market, first published in 1950. It was during this period that most of the tropical American and African species were acquired. In 1957, when Kribs was the curator, the collection held approximately 10,000 specimens of 2,000 genera.
Pittsburg Press, November 29, 1953
Dr. Elisabeth Wheeler
NC State University
1970s - 2020
Relocating to North Carolina
By 1978, the collection already belonged to the School of Forest Resources at North Carolina State University. There it was renamed in honor of its main contributor: the David A. Kribs Wood Collection (PACw). Over the past 50 years, the collection has been used for wood anatomy research leading to the publication of many scholarly articles. The most notable work is InsideWood, an online, interactive, multi-entry wood identification key for worldwide hardwoods and softwoods (over 7900 species) developed by Dr. Elisabeth Wheeler and used daily by researchers and practitioners across the world. InsideWood also includes a database of more than 58,000 macro- and microscopic images.
North Carolina State University. Student Media
Mississippi State University
2020 - present
A New Home, A New Era
In 2020, the Department of Sustainable Bioproducts in the College of Forest Resources at Mississippi State University acquired the Kribs collection. A hand inventory of the collection is currently in progress and is, at present, approximately 75% complete. The xylarium has already contributed to forensic research involving computer vision wood identification technology to combat illegal logging. It currently includes species from North, Central, and South America, the Philippines, and the west coast of Africa, featuring important families and genera listed in CITES Appendices I, II, and III.
