Episode 35 Plant Collections

Hello, my dear leaflets, welcome to episode 35.  It's a prelude to the next mini, as we are going to be talking about plant collectors! So what do plant collectors have to do with the way we see plants now?  Why is Scrat the squirrel mentioned, and who is Otzi?

1. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/120221-oldest-seeds-regenerated-plants-science

https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/a-brief-history-of-plants-in-books

https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/kews-oldest-herbarium-specimens

https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/science/herbarium/about-the-herbarium/

https://www.anbg.gov.au/botanical-history/botanical-discovery.html

https://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/ludwig-leichhardt/botanical-collection-europe-and-australia

Transcript

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Hi, my name is Danny and I am a horticulturalist. Welcome to my little podcast, Leaves, Stems, and Roots. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we are living.

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I would like to pay my respects to elders past and present. Episode 35. Plant collections. Quote Collector's Truth. I am not a hoarder, I am a plant collector. Anonymous. Hello my dear leaflets! I was researching one of my ladies for my minis and realized that what she did needed its own episode. So today, in lieu of Annie Richards, a plant flower collector of the 1800s, I thought I would talk about this and why anyone who has contributed to it in the past 300 or so years are detrimental in what we know about plants today. There was so much information on this topic that I really hope I do it justice. Please remember to follow me on socials Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, follow me on most podcast platforms, and send me a hey. If you're feeling generous, send me a couple of bucks so I can buy a coffee on Yes, buy me a coffee. On with it! To begin with, we will talk about what plant collections are, the history of plant collections, including the oldest specimens recorded, going off on a tangent, which is what I do, on the oldest plant found, and what it has to do with Scrat the Squirrel. Where the word herbarium came from, the biggest herbarium in the world, and the biggest one in Australia, why they are so important, the methods of house from the 1800s to now, and to finish off with how you can have your own plant collection. Before I start, I wanted to let you know that today I am only talking about plant collections, which means I am talking about flowers and other parts of the plants which have been pressed to show the form of the plant we are talking about. There are also living collections, but we'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. At the beginning of this podcast, way back in season one, I spoke briefly about seed banks and why they are so important, the way of the world, and why we keep seeds and how we can add to our own seed collections. Seed banks are also used for educational and environmental reasons, but they are also have a reason for diversity and economically helping the agribusiness sector, including orchards and food banks. Seeds are stored differently and can be salvaged through many ways. Plant materials on the other hand have to be taken care of. So first of all, what is a plant or flower collector? Did you know there is more than one definition? Seriously? Oh my god, yes, seriously. Definitions time. Scientific and preserved collections. Barrier quote. Gathering plant samples in the field, then pressing drying and mounting them on archival plate paper. Its purpose is to serve as a permanent physical record for research, taxonomy, and tracking historical plant communities. Living collections, quote, actively cultivated groups of living plants, such as whole specimens, cuttings or seeds. Its purpose is for education, conservation and preservation of genetical materials. And a third definition, which is hobbyist and ornamental collections, quote, private gatherings of live houseplants, succulents, or heirloom garden varieties maintained by individuals. Its purpose is based on aesthetics or enthusiasts. And all of these definitions came from sciencedirect.com. Okay, let's go back in time. Why should we be excited about these collections? Well, one preservation of plant materials. Two, provides a foundation of nomenclature. Remember this is the basis of identification, as well as having the knowledge of the biological studies to see the molecular and morphological structures of the specimen. This can let us reconstruct plants in ancient times. And number three, a knowledge of the location and therefore ecosystem of said plant. As we know, species of both flora and fauna have been wiped out since man has begun being man. And to have the knowledge of plants that came from hundreds of years ago is just mind-blowing. I have to think about the first person who thought this might be a good idea, because with the rudimentary materials plant collectors had back then, how did they know that fast forward a couple of hundred years, a tall, bespeckled 50 year old would be telling you all about it? Because yes, my dear leaflets, there is a record of a collection from has it a guess of the time frame we're talking. Whoever said the fourteen hundreds, then you are a star. Fourteen hundreds span the late Middle Ages and the early years of the Renaissance. Mind explodes with the magn magnitude of this. Yes, yes, I know we have found things much older than that which are shown in museums around the world. But plant matter weird. But what about Otsy, Danny? Huh? What? Yes, this is the tangent. Otsy, the mummified human found in glacier ice, was mummified due to the ice. Otsy, or the iceman, was found to have been wandering the shores between 3350 and 3105 BC. I wonder if he had any arrows tattooed on his person. Hmm. And then there is Celine Stenophila, a narrow leaf campion, was carbon dated at 32,000 years. In 2012, it was found deep in the forest of Siberia. Mature and immature seeds found encased in ice. They were found in the hibernation burrows of squirrels, 38 meters or 124 feet below the permaforest. They were amongst bones of woolly mammoths and rhinos. Most of the mature seeds were damaged, however, the team from Russia was able to retrieve some tissue from the immature seeds and were able to grow them. Yes, plants from very old scrat disposal seeds grow in the world now, and these initial plants have seeds of their own. Picture in the show notes. I actually find this stuff so fascinating, and this comes back to my original story, which is about plant collections. Because of this discovery, the Boffins have tried to regenerate old and ancient seeds, and the seeds open up the ancient gene pool. But let's not get bogged down into that right now. If you want more information on this, and I stress for you to do so if you're as excited about this as I am, there is an article from the National Geographic, and yes, it's in the show notes. So back to the 1400s, the very first documented plant collection belongs to a man named Luca Guinea, who was born in 1490 and died in 1556. He was an Italian botany professor. He would press and dry his plants in books, and this practice became the norm across Europe for hundreds of years. These books would be known as albums of dried plants or hortus sicus, literally means dry garden, or hortus mortis, which means a dead garden. Show me your dead garden. Fun fact, did you know that the term herbarium was originally used in the eighteenth century, not for plant collections but for books about medicinal plants. It wasn't until French botanist Joseph Pitten de Tournefort, I really apologize for that pronunciation, used this for Hortiscus. Interesting, I know. The first herbarium established in Castle, Germany in 1569. There are now many herbariums around the world. Kew Gardens has the largest herbarium in the world, with over seven million species and tens of thousands coming in each year. The herbarium itself is only, yes, only 170 years old, but there are some specimens in there from the 1600s. Their oldest plant is from the pea family, Acacia polycantha, collected in 1696 from around Madras, now Shennai. The Chenye, sorry. The collector was Samuel Brown, a surgeon working for the East Indian Company. Photos will be up in Instagram or Facebook. There is more on the collector Samuel Brown in an article, again in the show notes, and I I would read about it because he was a bit of a character. So this is England. What about Australia Danny? Do we have herbariums in here? Of course we do. Or yes indeedy. The lady I will be talking about in the next mini was a collector in the eighteen hundreds. At this time in Australia, this was the time when most of the collections were established. It was because of the tireless effort of Ferdinand von Mueller and his nameless and often forgotten about actual collectors, the unpaid women who he hired, air quotes don't work in Podland. If you want to hear more about him and obviously my lady, then you will have to listen to the episode the next mini to hear more of that story. It was a time when the plants being found were new and needed to be recorded. They were physically collected and also illustrations were made of them. Some of the collectors were illustration illustrators themselves, or they would bring illustrators with them. So in the time before digital anything, everything had to be done by hand. Traipsing over the countryside with horses or just their feet became tireless and backbreaking. The naturalists would carry basic field gear, which included their trows and geogical hammers in their small satchels. They would have to carry everything with them, as it wouldn't be just a day's work, so tents and food, etc. They relied on indigenous guides and local knowledge to locate and understand the uses of the native flora. The terrain would be hard to navigate, some not being even on the map. They would have to be fit and determined. Specimens were pressed between books, which were brought into the campus too. These were sometimes hung on the side of saddles while they dried. These would have to be labelled, and the more concise the better, including on these labels were location, date and habitat of the find. If they were from overseas, they would have to take their specimens with them, obviously, and trance them by sorry, and transport them by ships. In order not to destroy them, they would house them in Wardian cases, which were early sealed glass terrariums. If they were to stay in the country, their press pages of the books they would be in would be enough to keep them safe from light and other environmental stimuli. In Australia there are many herbariums, although the most talked about ones are in New South Wales, Victoria and Canberra, but every other state and territory in Australia has their own herbarium. Victoria houses the largest and oldest herbarium in Oceania, which is situated in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne. It began in 1853 and holds 1.5 million specimens and is considered Australia's largest botanical library. It houses plants, algae, and fungi. New South Wales holds 1 million plants, including early 800 specimens collected by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solender in 1770 during Captain Cook's first voyage across the Pacific. Canberra holds 1.2 million plants, mainly tropical and local plants. To reiterate, the reasons to have these collections are numerous. 1. To have a record of all plants across the world in the present and past, 2. To provide physical and proof of plant existence, location and traits over the centuries, 3. To track environmental changes, 4. To discover new species, and 5 to save endangered flora from extinction. So how has the process changed from the 1800s to now, 2026? Truthfully, not much. The only real big difference is that collectors of today would digitize everything, take photos and get instant gratification of their find. And uh cameras would be used instead of using illustrators, really. People still do illustrations of them though. The physical collections evolve using secretaires, having a ziploc bag, a pen and label, and there you have it. The website, the Natural Herbarium, has some really great articles in it for everything herbarium. So if you want to get deeper into this rabbit warren, or should I say squirrel burrow, then I suggest starting there. Okay, so how do I make my own collection, Danny? I remember at uni I had to do a weed collection. I had to collect 20 different weeds, dry them out, and mount them. I remember people trying to figure out how to dry them the night before, because yes, procrastination came in and things didn't get done until the night before. I never did that. Anyway. And I remember seeing some people try and dry their plants in the microwave. Yes! And wonder why they would end up with soggy messes. Now, if any of you had ever been in a dorm in the 90s, you would never use the communal anything, especially the microwave, because it had crusted cheese and an unidentified sauce that weirdly smelt of dirty socks. So one would not be putting anything in there, let alone old weeds. Well, hmm. In the dorm rooms there were pipes through the floors, and these pipes were filled with very, very hot water, it was boiling hot water. It was our heat source. I lay my specimens near this, not on, but near. I also remember that most of us failed. I did not, because their specimens ended up mouldy and gross, and some smelt faintly of old cheese and socks. So how do we do it? It's actually really simple. Collect plant material, lay on some absorbent paper, you can use parchment paper or baking paper, baking paper, you know what I mean. Make sure you use tweezers to style the plant in the way you want to see it. This is important. There are flower presses which are easy to get your get your hands on these days, or you can build your own, or use very heavy books, which is what I do. I think the mounting the specimen is the hardest part because you want it to show all parts of the plant. Place another piece of parchment on top, slip it between your press or between your very heavy books, larger than your specimen of course, and leave it for a while. Now labelling is a must and don't do what the procrastinators did at Uni and forget, and just add the list of plants you needed to collect and the chi-smelling specimens and let your teacher have to figure it out and cry when she or he gave you an F. You still do need to do your homework about when you are mounting your specimens because when you're collected you should have written down all the specifics. I mean you have that computer in your pocket, take a snap of it in situ, and then once you've collected it, you can add all the different parts that you can see. And you know, describing if you want to get right into it, there are books, lots of books about identification, and you can describe the shape of the leaves or the stems or the roots, or you know, you can talk about fibrous roots or whatever. Whatever you want to put in your collection, you put in, but make it that it's for every plant that you collect, you do exactly the same thing with every specimen. So, where can I collect plants? In Australia, it is illegal to take any plant from national parks, reserves, etc. Also, it's not a great idea to take it from your neighbour's house without permission. There are huge fines. I had a boss once who lived near a national a national park. I'm not going to say which one or who the person was, I don't think he listens, but you never know. He would take some of the material from the national park because his boundary was next to it. He used them for cuttings. It really irked me that he didn't see a problem with it. But if anyone had come into onto his property and done the same thing, he would be the first one to go to the plant police. Yes, the plant police. Very hard to say. Anyway, I have had a few collections over the years, unfortunately, they have all been misplaced or lost or got wet or whatever, destroyed. But I am thinking it might be a nice project to do with the plants in my backyard, because it would be a good thing to do. Also, if you um you're fond of a particular plant or species, it might be a nice way to keep you involved. And also, you don't have to press your flowers or plants, you can actually have them as a living collection, which is what we talked about earlier in this episode. So if you there are a lot these days of uh indoor plants, a lot of people like to collect indoor plants, so that is a type of collection. At the Geelong Botanical Gardens, they have a lovely collection of 20 old species of salvias. So, you know, if you decided that you like banks or I don't know, um peas, you could have a collection of anything. So that is very exciting. Anyway, what have I got in my garden at the moment? The weather has been frightful. However, I was able to plant some seeds the other day. I planted spinach, silver beet, bok choy, radish, and spring onions. I also planted some garlic and ginger. I have seen the beginnings of the spring onions and spinach. Fingers crossed, anything else is coming along. It's been very cold and wet start to the season, but hey, it's only going to get colder. As I've always said, it's a love-hate relationship we gardeners have with the rain. I also had some cuttings I did yesterday, I think. Um I did Allegine Hoogly, which is actually the native hibiscus, which I had a gigantic one in one of my beds, and it died. So I've done a few of those. I've also got oregano, which is weird because I always do oregano in I put the stems straight into water and not into like as cutting, so it will be interesting if that works. Uh what else do I have? Oh, I can't remember. Oh, I also planted seeds of radishes because it's a good time to plant them. I hope you enjoyed this episode, the prelude to the mini. Send me a comment or query through my email, stemsleaves, roots at gmail.com. Until next time, my dear leaflets, toodle oo.

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