Specimens, Specimens | Herbarium World. Neesenbeckia punctoria specimen, Natural History Museum, London A herbarium, by definition, is a collection of preserved plant material. The Index Herbariorum provides the best information on how many herbaria there are in the world, over 3300, holding approximately 390,000,000 specimens. But rather than look at the large picture, sometimes it’s good to examine individual specimens, to appreciate what a single specimen can reveal not only about the living world, but also about the people who collected and cared for it. To keep track of intriguing specimens and lots of other stuff I come across on the web, I use a bookmarking site called Pearltrees, a visually interesting way to save URLs. It also makes for an easy way to review what I have, since each item has a brief introduction and related image. I recently went through what I’ve saved in the specimen department, and in this series of posts I’ll describe some items I find particularly interesting.
References Dupree, A. Specimens, Specimens: Art | Herbarium World. Sketch of Aechmaea by Carl Lindman, Natural History Museum, Stockholm It’s no secret to those who read this blog that I’m interested in the relationship between botany and art, so it won’t be surprising that I’m particularly pleased to find cases where specimens and drawings end up together on the same sheet or at least in the same folder. This is less true today than in the past, but even in the early history of herbaria, most collections were mainly if not exclusively made up of dried plants. After all, the point was to save plant material for reference and future study, especially for when living representatives weren’t available. But dried plants lose some of their form and a lot of their color, so a number of early modern botanists either drew themselves or collected drawings and prints.
There were two ways to organize these different kinds of evidence; most botanists saved two separate collections: one of images, the other of specimens. References Benkert, D. (2016). Rose, E. Specimens, Specimens: History | Herbarium World. Phemeranthus teretifolius collected by William Darlington, University and Jespon Herbarium In this series of posts (1,2) focusing on particular specimens and collections of specimens, it’s impossible to neglect the past. At least for me, some of the most fascinating specimens are those with long histories, in terms of age, the many hands they’ve passed through, and the vagaries they’ve suffered. One of my favorite herbarium acronyms is GOD taken from the location of the collection created at the Charterhouse School in Godalming, England. Founded in 1611, it is an elite high school that in the 19th century created a museum for its natural history and other collections. The herbarium contains over 8,000 specimens, including many bound volumes with both specimens and illustrations.
When the museum was closed, the herbarium eventually found a home in 2011 at the University and Jepson Herbaria at the University of California, Berkeley. When I visited the Jepson, Doran showed me Rev. Specimens, Specimens: Uses | Herbarium World. Box from John Percival’s wheat collection, University of Reading Herbarium Another way specimens are used in taxonomy is becoming more common as DNA sequencing technology improves. Herbarium specimens are being mined for information on the origin and spread of cultivated species. A specimen of sweet potato, Ipomoea batata, collected by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander in the Society Islands in 1769 was used in a study on how the plant spread through the Pacific Islands from its origin in South America.
Obviously this wasn’t the only specimen tested, but it provided key information. As smaller samples are required for testing and the techniques become increasingly sensitive, such work will become more common. Sometimes specimens are useful in telling stories to entice interest in a plant collection. There are unusual collections of plants that can give insights into social history. References.