The Plant Thieves: Secrets of the Herbarium

The National Herbarium of New South Wales, Australia, acts as setting and springboard for Prudence Gibson’s narratives about and descriptions of preserved plants. Gibson holds in admirable tension the wonders of the herbarium and the troubling colonialism that assumed authority over Australia’s plants, collecting them without permission, naming and organizing them by European standards. The question of who owns plants hovers in the background.

Gibson spent three years seeking “to find out what plant-human relations really are and what they mean. And what that meaning tells us about the herbarium” (p. xvi).

The chapter on Joseph Banks, for instance, dwells on the irony of Banksia, a widespread tree in Australia, being named for the famous English plant collector. Yes, he was an amazing collector, but the plant was there long before he arrived. Gibson describes some current efforts to add plant names used by Indigenous people to the herbarium descriptions. The task is challenging in part because the many Aboriginal groups have different names for the same plants.

The National Herbarium moved to a new site during the years Gibson was working on this project. The Plant Thieves includes some lively conversations between Gibson and local women artists creating art for the new building. Throughout Gibson expresses awe at the care given the plant samples in the herbarium.

One chapter recounts a collaboration between botanists and Indigenous Elders to solve a mystery about black beans. These large seeds (also called bogum or Moreton Bay chestnuts, also known as Castanospermum australe) are toxic, but Indigenous people process them for use in a bread called damper. (I used Google frequently to translate Australian terms.) Somehow the plant had spread hundreds of miles, puzzling scientists, because this plant does not spread easily. European settlers believed Indigenous people were not organized enough to establish long trade routes, a logical way the plant could have traveled. The Elders told a Songline story of an ancestral spirit carrying a bag of beans many miles. When scientists examined plants along the route described in the story, they found bean plants everywhere. This evidence supports the presence of a highly developed Indigenous social organization.

The Plant Thieves reads very easily. Gibson brings to life the many people she meets and provides much intriguing information about plants and their ties to the herbarium.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 10, Issue 9, September 2023

Herbaria: A Guide for Young People

“Herbaria: A Guide for Young People” is a delight. Written and illustrated by Kelly LaFarge, this book blends a mix of drawings and photographs along with lift-up flaps and fold out pages to introduce these critical institutions to an audience that appreciates an interactive experience.

In just 32 pages, the author guides the reader through the intricacies of collecting and preserving plants while explaining the value of such collections. The scope is global, both for places of plant collection, and the location of significant herbarium collections.

Even though I’m familiar with the Otis Douglas Hyde Herbarium next door to the Miller Library, I learned many new facts. For example, while familiar with herbarium sheets that are 16.5 x 11.5 inches, I didn’t know that “all herbaria around the world use the exact same size paper. This makes it easy to trade and store exchanged specimens.”

Excerpted from Brian Thompson’s article in the Summer 2023 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Field Study: Meditations on a Year at the Herbarium

Imagine a plant carefully and dutifully dried, pressed, and preserved between sheets of paper. Now imagine a room full of cabinets and drawers in which are stacked plant upon plant upon plant in this fashion, over 140,000 dried plant specimens in all. It would be a feat of admirable persistence and curiosity to explore every single specimen. Yet, that is exactly the task Helen Humphreys set out to do in writing Field Study: Meditations on a Year at the Herbarium.

Over the course of a year, Humphreys does just this. She lingers, wondering aloud about the individuals who went out into the world, found these plants, and committed those plants to lives between sheets of paper. Images and stories throughout Field Study show the reader the variations between plant collectors: how they displayed the plants, the information they included alongside the plant, what kinds of plants interested each collector, and sometimes snippets of biography of the collectors themselves. Humphreys interlaces her own musings on history, culture, and ecological place as such thoughts are inspired by the specimens.These musings about dead plants collectively create a book about life and death and how we come to understand the losses in our lives. Partway through her project, after spending months thinking about the death of individual plants, Humphreys was forced to reckon with loss in her own personal life when her beloved dog became incurably ill and passed. Much of this book, in turn, became a love-filled meditation on the fleeting joys of her dog and the memories they shared walking everyday in the nearby woods surrounded by beautiful plants. That loss and grief shaped her meditations and sharpened her thinking on what we leave behind us when we pass.

This book is written beautifully and fluidly and Humphreys includes a well-chosen array of photographs and illustrations throughout, making it a delight to read. What at first glance appears to be a light and airy romp through a fascinating world of dried plants, however, ultimately becomes a rather serious examination of the fragility of humanity, personal loss, and what we collectively leave behind. Humphreys initially believed plants were the fragile ones. “And yet,” she says toward the end of her stay, “the flowers still take up their space, still resemble themselves, and I can feel their enduring presence, whereas I am starting to feel like I am the fleeting, temporary thing, that my human life is so brief in comparison to the genetic continuance of this gentian, or this violet.” This is not said without hope, though. As Humphreys understood following her dog’s passing, there is something beautiful to behold in such fragility and impermanence as new insights grow from between the cracks of loss.

Reviewed by Nick Williams in Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 10, Issue 5, May 2023

Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium

Emily Dickinson's herbarium cover “Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium” is a full-size, facsimile of an album of pressed flowers, leaves, and other plant parts created in the 1840s when Dickinson was a student at Amherst Academy. There is no stated purpose or obvious order to this collection, which includes both native plants of western Massachusetts and specimens that could only come from a garden or conservatory. As a traditional herbarium the value is limited, as none of the important collection information (date, exact location, etc.) are recorded.

Over 400 specimens survive, some accurately labeled by the author using botanical guides of the day, others with descriptive if incorrect Latin binomials (for example, Petunia alba for a white petunia). Others have lost their labels. The Harvard University Herbaria staff has identified nearly all despite numerous challenges. A detailed catalog records all this detective work.

But the value of this book is not as a traditional herbarium. I see it as a piece of history, and of an early glimpse of the life of one of our country’s most valued poets. And, if you’ve ever attempted your own collection of pressed plants, you will appreciate the considerable effort taken not only to produce this book, but also to preserve it for over 160 years.

Accompanying essays document the herbarium’s conservation, the history of the family battles over Dickinson’s legacy, and securing the Dickinson collection for Harvard. Best is the article by Richard B. Sewall, “Science and the Poet: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium and ‘The Clue Divine,'” in which he begins, “Take Emily’s Herbarium far enough, and you have her.” Perhaps. In any case, he argues for the close connection she found between science and art — an argument that could be equally well applied to William Bartram.

“Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium,” because of its size, cannot be checked out, but is available to all to study and view in the Miller Library.

Excerpted from the Summer 2008 Arboretum Bulletin.