The DAV lichen collection was founded in 1968 by Shirley Tucker based on her own collections and exchange material she had acquired. Shirley intended this to form the basis for a California reference collection that currently stands at 850 specimens. Recent lichen floras added are from University of California Reserve units: Stebbins Cold Canyon and Quail Ridge Reserves. Other collections of note: 115 New Zealand lichens that are tardigrade hosts, collected by D.S. Horning and colleagues of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, 156 western North America (W.A. Weber, Exsiccatae), and 55 Jack Major collections from Alaska and British Columbia. The collection was rehoused and stabilized in 2020, and the label data was entered into Symbiota in 2021.