A Rare Open House at Kew Herbarium

Category(-ies): Herbaria

Kew Herbarium and Library, founded by George Bentham and W. A. Broomfield in 1853, houses one of the world's largest collections of materials related to botany with over seven million dried plant specimens, 350,000 of which are "type specimens", the original specimens used to describe new species. The herbarium has the largest collection of historical dried plant specimens in the world, with contributers including Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker and David Livingstone.

Normally open only to researchers by appointment, this weekend the herbarium will offer a rare chance to view the collections. As part of the Open House London weekend, the Kew Herbarium, Library and Archives will be open to the public from 10 am to 4 pm on September 17 and 18, 2005 . Admission is free.

Links:

• Glimpse King Tut's Olive Branch at Kew from Local London


• Herbarium Open Day a Kew press release


• Herbarium collections from the Kew Website

Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 2:40 PM | Comments (0)

Economic Botany at the Field Museum

Category(-ies): Botanical Resources , Herbaria , Plants, Food and Medicine

The Field Museum in Chicago has had an interest in the study of how people use plants, since it's founding. Its economic botany collection is one of the most comprehensive in the world. The collection includes over 12,000 specimens of raw materials and finished products of plant origin, such as: gums, resins, food crops, spices, medicinal plants, fibers, woods and many other useful plant products.

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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 1:56 PM

Plant Hunters in Australia

Category(-ies): Herbaria , Plant Explorers

Since the first collections by naturalists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on captain Cook's voyage, Australia has been a fascinating destination for botanists. A new book, Herbarium by Robyn Stacey & Ashley Hay (Cambridge University Press) chronicles the history of the National Herbarium of New South Wales and the plant hunters who collected the specimens housed there.

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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:14 PM

Seed Lists of the Nineteenth Century

Category(-ies): Botanical Resources , Herbaria

It is customary for botanical gardens to prepare seed lists for exchange. Lists from the 19th century often included descriptions and notes. Printed in limited quantities, remaining seed lists are rare and no library has a complete set. The National Herbarium of the Netherlands has created a database of the lists and associated descriptions.

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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:15 PM

Plants of Washington Image Collection

Category(-ies): Botanical Resources , Herbaria

The WTU Herbarium at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum has created a website that features an image database of the plants of Washington state. WTU’s Plants of Washington Image Collection contains over 5700 photos of plants found in the state, organized by family, genus, scientific name, and common name.

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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 1:22 PM

The People Behind the FNA

Category(-ies): Botanical Resources , Herbaria , Plant Explorers

Botanists from around the world are working on a massive project to record the vegetative history of North America (north of Mexico) and Greenland. They are examining two centuries of floristic literature and herbarium specimens, and supplementing the results with modern-day field work. The conclusion will be thirty volumes of descriptive and biological information on the over twenty thousand native and naturalized plants of the continental region.

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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:44 PM

The Barcode of Life

Category(-ies): Herbaria , Plant Discoveries

Dr. Paul D. N. Hebert, a population geneticist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, has come up with an idea that may help scientist identify species: match a section of DNA with a DNA database of known species. The Consortium for the Barcode of Life was formed to develop a DNA barcoding database that will link to identified specimens in the collections of natural history museums and herbariums. Field researchers could scan a sample of a specimen and compare it to the database via phone or internet.

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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 1:07 PM

The Importance of Herbaria

Category(-ies): Herbaria

On August 24, 2004, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists released a position statement on the importance of herbaria. The statement cites the scientific and economic value of natural history collections and advocates for the maintenance and support of these often-irreplaceable collections.

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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 3:33 PM

Royal Botanical Gardens Posts Large Deficit

Category(-ies): Herbaria , Other Botanical Gardens

The Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, has lost over two million CAD since 2001. To tackle the deficit, they have closed their herbarium to researchers and students, closed their library to the public, laid off staff and imposed parking fees on trailheads (RBG's landbase includes four nature sanctuaries).

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:38 PM

National Herbarium of Haiti

Category(-ies): Herbaria

Modern history is rife with examples of museum lootings and artifact destruction due to political instability. What about natural history collections?

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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 12:27 PM

University of Iowa Herbarium

Category(-ies): Herbaria , Plant Legal News and Issues

The likely closing of the University of Iowa Herbarium has been known in botanical circles for some time, but this past week things have heated up: 'cease and desist' letters have been sent and the courts have imposed a temporary restraining order on the removal of the collection.

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 11:28 PM