Posted on 01/30/2009 5:06:48 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Just a stone's throw from UW-Madison's seat of power on top of Bascom Hill is a place that melds old scientific methods with modern research that you likely have not heard of — The Wisconsin State Herbarium.
The herbarium in Birge Hall is a collection of 1.1 million dusty, dried plant specimens, taped or glued inside manila folders and tucked inside row upon row of huge, vertical metal file cabinets protected with insect traps. Boxes of overflowing specimens sit in the hallways.
Now the herbarium staff is trying to get more people interested in the vast collection housed there.
"In a past century people could go outside and name the flowers or trees," said Ken Cameron, the herbarium's director. "Now you take a kid outside and the most they can say is, 'It's a tree.' If we can get students in and get them excited, then I think we've helped to counteract bio-illiteracy."
At two large wooden desks near the herbarium's entrance senior curators Ted Cochrane and Mark Wetter hover over piles of pressed plants — filing, managing and researching.
The herbarium was established the same year as the university: 1849. Specimens are still collected and pressed much the same way they were then — flattened between newspaper, felt and cardboard and held tight with buckles. Some specimens here are even older than the herbarium, dating back as far as the 1600s.
"What I'd like people to know is that in this day and age that is so focused on medical advances and biotech and genetics and molecular work, there's still a place for the more traditional science," Cameron said. "What to one person looks like a dusty, dried sample to another person is a very important look back in time."
Rare herbarium
Herbaria are becoming more of a rarity. And the UW-Madison has the third largest collection of any public university in the country, behind the universities of California and Michigan.
At many universities, botany has been absorbed into large biology departments, and collections put into storage. That has not happened at UW-Madison.
"The combination of having a botany department and a big herbarium is getting pretty rare," said David Baum, botany department chairman. "And more and more herbaria are closing or making the decision to move off campus into storage, which has a real negative effect on research."
Cameron himself is an example of a modern researcher who benefits from traditional specimens. He came to the herbarium in 2008 from the New York Botanical Gardens where he did molecular research using genetics to decipher plants' evolutionary paths.
At the UW-Madison, he keeps a molecular research lab upstairs from the herbarium. Dried plant samples, he said, give researchers the potential to track climate change or biodiversity. For example, tracking lichens, which are extremely sensitive to air quality, can show when an urban area has become so polluted that lichens disappear.
William S. Alverson, a senior conservation ecologist and botanist at The Field Museum in Chicago, praised the UW herbarium for remaining accessible.
"It provides a critical and permanent record of our botanical heritage, and serves to train students and inform natural resource decisions," Alverson said. "It is a very accessible resource to state citizens, and is open to amateur and professional biologists, as well as anyone interested in the flora of the state."
Adding to the importance of maintaining a collection in Wisconsin is that several ecosystem types meet in this state, said Andrew Hipp, a UW-Madison graduate and curator of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Ill.
"Wisconsin has boreal forest, woodlands, prairies, northern bogs — it is floristically fascinating," he said. "A herbarium is a time capsule, kept in the university to provide a record of the changing flora, giving us information on climate change, urbanization and things that lead to the loss of species."
Comprehensive database
For a decade the herbarium has been working on a comprehensive database of its Wisconsin plants that it can make widely available not just to its most regular users - researchers, students and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources — but also the backyard gardener or farmer. It recently completed that task and is available on the Web at www.botany.wisc.edu/herbarium.
"We are open to anybody here, but we do have to screen visitors," Cameron said. "By putting the information online we can do away with screening and make it more democratic."
And now Cameron's staff is taking that a step further, working on a technical high resolution digital scans of its most important specimens chosen to represent that species.
Unlike many states, Wisconsin does not have a published book of all its flora. This heightens the importance of the database and can be more easily updated as new species or plants are discovered.
With a detailed database, why keep the natural history samples around?
Even from a plant that looks brown, dead and lifeless, a scientist can still extract DNA.
"There's just no substitute for a physical specimen," Cameron noted. "You can't do DNA analysis on a digital image or feel the texture or smell."
Why, Oh, WHY must they ruin EVERYTHING and tie it to 'climate change?' Earth's CLIMATE has been changing since DAY ONE. Yeesh!
Gardening Ping!
Bio-illiteracy?
Could that be used to describe urban liberals - who claim to be “environmentalists”, who have never camped, fished, hunted or done anything else which actually involved interacting with nature?...
Just saying.
“Just saying.”
Just agreeing! :)
And another thing... I work “in the biz.” People truly ARE ignorant of the Natural World all around them. They can hardly identify a Geranium in a pot on the front porch fer Pete’s Sake, let alone know what tree is in their front yard.
I take great pride in being the ‘Go-To Gal’ at work. I have one of those minds that holds facts about plants, trees, shrubs, veggies, seeds, grasses, you name it.
You know; like guys that remember who was up to bat in the 3rd inning of the 1953 World Series? And what the pitch was? And what the result was? And if the sun was in his eyes or not? :)
Garden Ping!!!!!!!!!
Interesting site! Thanks for posting the article.
I have a wooden flower press and have preserved many flowers and leaves through the years. After awhile though they fade and are washed out looking because I can’t resist displaying them in frames.
I took a quick peek at the site and am amazed that many of their scans still show quite of bit of color for being so old. This year I’ll try keeping the flowers in a notebook or something out of the light. Maybe it’ll jumpstart me into starting a garden journal again.
While I'm not THAT bad (wink) -- the 10yo did have a great "GOTCHA" moment on ,e back in about September. I asked her to go out to the "kitchen" garden and get me some parsley. She put her hands on her little hips and looked at me and stated matter-of-factly "Mommy, that is cilantro, not parsley out there." Danged if the little snippet wasn't correct..........
FOTFLOL!!!
That is SOOOOOO true!
I remember finding dried leaves and flowers in old books when I was a kid. Most were flowers or leaves. Of course, those species are still popular.
I love nothing more than a pressed Pansy. :)
I also keep a pretty basket on the kitchen table all Summer long. When I’m dead-heading flowers or interesting seed-pods from the garden, they go in there for use later in potpourri.
But fresh herbs are the best, IMHO. Such useful and beautiful plants! I’ll be starting a flat of Basil come March for the garden. We make tons of pesto in the summer. If you want my recipe, just ask. It’s really easy and freezes well. You can have a taste of Summer all year long.
I’ve kept a big Rosemary alive all winter; it’s nearly time to take cuttings from her to make some new plants for Spring, too.
Some folks put ‘geraniums’ or ‘pelargoniums’ into the herb category as well. I LOVE scented pelargoniums. Time to make some cuttings from them, too. :)
Cute story, Gabz.
My 12 year old son also knows his cilantro and basil because one of our dogs hates the smell. He knows he can get a rise out of Sparky and chases him around the yard with it.
You gotta keep an eye on that one at all times, don’t ya? She is a darling. :)
With my boys, it was like pulling teeth to get any help in the garden. And Husband? He’ll till for me, but then it’s, “See ya at Harvest...and at the dinner table!” LOL!
He just gets in the way, anyway.
This year, he’s supposedly having some big ‘tomato growing competition’ with his youngest brother who has just moved back to our state.
You know, heaven forfend that gardening should be FUN! It’s always competition with those guys. *Har-Upmph* :)
(I’m not sharing my recipe for Manure Tea with them. And of course, they won’t invite ME to compete with them; they know I’d win. *Snicker*)
Thanks and regards from the socialist left coast.
Can I introduce an aspect to this discussion please?
My point was sort of - that most liberal “environmental” advocates really haven’t been outdoors much. There are some hardcore Earth-first sorts who actually spend time in the woods, but mostly they’re operating 100% on their programmed agenda.
Mostly they’re shut-in leftist Moveon sort activists, who have never spent a night in a tent without whining, never been in the wild, and never really listened to a forest.
They even hate Boy Scouts! I mean, sheesh. What sort of hypocrisy is that?
Yet they have the nerve to feign some sort of authority, on the subject of nature.
Liberals don’t know anything about nature!
Liberals know Starbucks. And San Francisco.
Conservatives, know nature.
That’s funny!!!!!
I need to find an herb with a scent the cats will hate or els I won’t have a kitchen garden near the kitchen anymore.........the cats seem to think it’s their personal potty.
When my Grandma died, Dad had me go through all of her old books and pick out what I wanted.
My favorite is “The Settlement Cookbook; The Way to a Man’s Heart.” 1938...and this was the twenty-second printing! It was printed in Milwaukee, WI (where I was born) authored by Mrs. Simon Kander.
There are a ton of pressed flowers in that book. :)
I especially love Chapter 1: Household Rules, on how to run a kitchen, wash dishes, care for your silver, how to clear a table properly, etc.
And then there’s ‘Coffee for 40 People’ and ‘Mock Turtle Soup.’ :)
Actually, I look at this a bit differently. That they can catalogue climate change is a good thing. It would show that we have had global warming and cooling through the ages, and that if we are going through a period of "global warming" right now, it's not caused by Al Gore's pollution theory.
LOL!!!!! on the “boys”
Hubby was hauling stuff from a house over on Chincoteague to the dump and here to our burn pile this afternoon. One of the things he told me was coming here to the burn pile was some rotten trellis. When he pulled up out back this afternoon I happened to be standing at the door looking out over the field making mental notes of placement. I hollered down to ask him how bad shape was the trellis in and he said some might be salvageable depending on what I wanted it for. One word -— PEAS!!!! Yippee, no tedious chore of stringing the rows out in the cold this year. So I may actually get more than one planting of them in starting in about 2 weeks.
I had the exact same reaction as you did when I read that sentence about “climate change.”
Pressed pansies are adorable. Once I filled my late aunt’s birthday card with oodles of them. She loved the surprise.
And yes, I’d love your pesto recipe, please. That sounds so good right now. My favorite in the summer is a slice of baguette drizzled in olive oil topped with tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and basil. Drool!
How do you root your rosemary cuttings? I’ve got a pot I’d love to propagate right next to some wonderful pussywillow branches that are starting to root and bloom.
You’ve also reminded me that I need to cut down and repot the pelargoniums. Some of them are going on 6 years old now. They’re like reliable old friends and I can’t wait to see them blooming again. :)
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