The Herbarium at Kew
Thursday, February 17th, 2005 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthI was going through old notebooks the other day, and found an account of my visit to the Herbarium at Kew: I'd meant to type it up, but never quite got around to it. And that, of course, is what unemployment is for!
The Herbarium at Kew was built before the advent of electrical light. Much expanded over the years, it's now a hollow square of a building, designed to admit as much daylight as possible. Each window is tall, and opens onto a deep alcove with wide tables on both sides: this is where the work of the Herbarium, the examination and drawing and coding and classification, was -- and still is -- done.
Away from the windows, towards the interior, the specimens are stored. There are rows of lockers -- cupboards, really, in the sense that none of them have locks -- painted glossy white, each bearing a polished brass knob and a typed label. Each locker is divided horizontally by four thick shelves, and on each shelf there's a bundle of manila folders. Each folder holds a sheaf of paper, onto which are taped -- with age-dark, peeling tape -- pressed leaves and flowers. There's a note on each sheet documenting the provenance of the specimens, and these are the original paperwork that accompanied the pressed samples on their arrival at Kew. They are typed, or hand-written, on lined paper, or headed stationery, on index cards, on pages still ragged where they were torn from notebooks.
This folder in my hand documents a single species, though not one I recognise. The red cardboard marker indicates the particular specimen that defines that species: the definitive type. I open it to that page. The florets and stems are taped to the page with narrow gummed strips of white paper, all equally faded and spotted and indistinct with age. This is the work (proclaims bold, elegant copperplate script, written in dark blue ink) of Coll. José Steinbach. He collected the samples in Bolivia in April 1917.
I try to imagine him. German on his father's side, but possibly generations back: his forename is Hispanic. Perhaps his mother is Bolivian. His writing is neat and educated, and free of corrections: he's writing on his own headed notepaper. Is 'Coll' an abbreviation for Colonel? What does the First World War mean, down in the sticky tropical year-round heat of Bolivia? What do his neighbours, family, friends think of his botanising? [EDIT: I wonder if this is the same man noted as collecting paratypes of boas in 1932?]
There's a library here too. Books dating back to 1490. Multiple editions of Gerard's Herbal. There are botanical prints on the wall: but this is a public place, and the books are locked behind glass. There are thousands of volumes, some too big to lift, of painstakingly accurate drawings, exact and meticulous, whose beauty is incidental to their usefulness.
On the wall there's a poster of Banks, Solander and Cook. Joseph Banks founded Kew. Without him, none of this -- none of the desiccated leaves and petals, none of the books, none of the prints, none of the riotous greenery that presses against the walls from the gardens beyond -- would be here.
Now, typing this up, I want to go back and look for William Dampier. I believe his samples, collected in Australia and the Pacific more than three centuries ago, are still stored somewhere at Kew. Perhaps I walked past the locker that held them. Perhaps I could open up a folder, and see his writing, small and neat and faded, and have in my hands something that he had made.
The Herbarium at Kew was built before the advent of electrical light. Much expanded over the years, it's now a hollow square of a building, designed to admit as much daylight as possible. Each window is tall, and opens onto a deep alcove with wide tables on both sides: this is where the work of the Herbarium, the examination and drawing and coding and classification, was -- and still is -- done.
Away from the windows, towards the interior, the specimens are stored. There are rows of lockers -- cupboards, really, in the sense that none of them have locks -- painted glossy white, each bearing a polished brass knob and a typed label. Each locker is divided horizontally by four thick shelves, and on each shelf there's a bundle of manila folders. Each folder holds a sheaf of paper, onto which are taped -- with age-dark, peeling tape -- pressed leaves and flowers. There's a note on each sheet documenting the provenance of the specimens, and these are the original paperwork that accompanied the pressed samples on their arrival at Kew. They are typed, or hand-written, on lined paper, or headed stationery, on index cards, on pages still ragged where they were torn from notebooks.
This folder in my hand documents a single species, though not one I recognise. The red cardboard marker indicates the particular specimen that defines that species: the definitive type. I open it to that page. The florets and stems are taped to the page with narrow gummed strips of white paper, all equally faded and spotted and indistinct with age. This is the work (proclaims bold, elegant copperplate script, written in dark blue ink) of Coll. José Steinbach. He collected the samples in Bolivia in April 1917.
I try to imagine him. German on his father's side, but possibly generations back: his forename is Hispanic. Perhaps his mother is Bolivian. His writing is neat and educated, and free of corrections: he's writing on his own headed notepaper. Is 'Coll' an abbreviation for Colonel? What does the First World War mean, down in the sticky tropical year-round heat of Bolivia? What do his neighbours, family, friends think of his botanising? [EDIT: I wonder if this is the same man noted as collecting paratypes of boas in 1932?]
There's a library here too. Books dating back to 1490. Multiple editions of Gerard's Herbal. There are botanical prints on the wall: but this is a public place, and the books are locked behind glass. There are thousands of volumes, some too big to lift, of painstakingly accurate drawings, exact and meticulous, whose beauty is incidental to their usefulness.
On the wall there's a poster of Banks, Solander and Cook. Joseph Banks founded Kew. Without him, none of this -- none of the desiccated leaves and petals, none of the books, none of the prints, none of the riotous greenery that presses against the walls from the gardens beyond -- would be here.
Now, typing this up, I want to go back and look for William Dampier. I believe his samples, collected in Australia and the Pacific more than three centuries ago, are still stored somewhere at Kew. Perhaps I walked past the locker that held them. Perhaps I could open up a folder, and see his writing, small and neat and faded, and have in my hands something that he had made.
