Our 200th Anniversary
The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus is the custodian of one of the oldest institutions in the country, The National Herbarium of Trinidad and Tobago, which will be celebrating its 200th Anniversary in 2018. This institution originated in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Port of Spain when it was established by the British Crown and has flourished into an internationally respected research centre. Read more.
Plant a Tree Initiative
To celebrate our 200th anniversary, the Herbarium is initiating the planting of 200 hundred native species of trees on a degraded hillside close to Hillview College in Tunapuna in collaboration with The U.W.I Biological Society. A ceremonial planting of two trees on the St. Augustine campus by the President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and the Principal of the Campus will take place on World Biodiversity Day on the 22nd May 2018.
Campus Trees
The St. Augustine campus is home to an arboretum (living museum of trees) inherited from the former Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (ICTA). Over the years many of the trees were removed to erect new buildings or succumbed to pests and diseases and have not been replaced. Read more.
Databases
In 2016 the Dept. of Geography initiated a project entitled ‘the edible campus’ which set out to map the trees using GPS coordinates to identify the location of the ‘edible trees’ on the campus. This data have been shared with the herbarium to develop a virtual campus arboretum. It is important to label the trees on the campus with QR codes which will be linked to our database of the trees on the campus which we are developing on our new website.
