“I was going through a box labelled in 1950 ‘to be sorted’. Inside it, wrapped in a newspaper from 1828, I found fungi and seaweed collected by Charles Darwin on the Beagle Voyage in South America during 1832 and 1833. And in a brown paper bag, I discovered plant specimens collected by C.G.Seligmann, doctor on the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait Islands”.
Sent to Cambridge for the University Herbarium’s scientific collection of pressed plants from around the world, these were stored away and have never been looked at since. Chief Technician Christine Bartram is making remarkable finds on a weekly basis as she sorts through the entire collection following its relocation to the University’s Sainsbury Laboratory.
Such specimens, in conjunction with their accompanying field notes, hold fascinating, often unique information that can shed new light on plant evolution and, through analysis of their DNA, help to rediscover lost plant genes that may code for valuable attributes.
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Image: Specimens in centuries-old newspaper
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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