Pressed botany

Few though there may be, one of the benefits of spending time at home during the lockdown is a chance to organise all the stuff one accumulates over the years – a character trait common amongst naturalists and biologists. I have more “stuff” than I can easily house and, although I put much well-intended effort into recording and cataloguing it, things inevitablyaccumulate in random piles and boxes put aside to organise “later”; dried mosses, lichens, , innumerable invertebrates and various other dead animals (hygienically preserved!), microscope slides, seeds, cones, rocks, fossils, shells, corals, feathers and objects I can’t identify!

Rummaging around in an effort to impose a little order this week, I came across a long-forgotten herbarium book, a set of large bound pages, each about 35 by 50cm, that have, neatly affixed to them, pressed botanical specimens which were collected, I believe, in the Victorian era – it is sadly not dated but is obviously at least that old. My first photo is of a sample page from it of pressed orchids. 

I found this book at a sale in Hartlebury years ago. It represents a collection of forbs, grasses and ferns all gathered locally and carefully labelled according to what was the botanical nomenclature of the time, now much changed. Although some of the specimens have been damaged and a few are missing, most are still in remarkable condition for their age and should remain so if kept cool and dry.

We are inclined to be critical of the sometimes over-zealous nature of Victorian collectors, not without reason, but in this case it was simply what the collector, one W. J. Smith, found growing in the area of Worcester, one specimen of each being pressed, dried, mounted and labelled. The value of such collections is in the snapshot it gives us of local botany in a past era,representing actual specimens of plants, many of which having certainly changed their patterns of occurrence and distribution, and perhaps even their genotypes and phenotypes, since then.

The specimens in general are remarkable in retainingeven some of their original colour. My second photo,from another page covering the asterids, demonstrates this in the specimen of yellow archangel Lamium galeobdolon (L.) Crantz, in those days going under the wonderful moniker of “yellow weasel-snout”.

This herbarium book has now been brought out onto a secure shelf in a cool place away from any humidity so that I can photograph and list the specimens, no small task as there are over forty pages of them and the labelling, though in beautiful hand-written script, is very far removed from the botanical taxonomy of today! 

I must do some more rummaging before the coronavirus lockdown ends. Any other interesting forgotten treasures I uncover I will report!