All posts in Featured Books

Economic botany can, in a nutshell (excuse the pun), be described as the use of plants by people. This relationship spans thousands of years and includes both individuals and cultures – making this subject a rich and fascinating link between botany and anthropology. Economic botany collections can essentially be described using the term biocultural.

The Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew holds around 100,000 objects from around the globe. Established as the Museum of Economic Botany by Kew’s first official Director, Sir William Jackson Hooker, in 1847, it was cited as a public repository for ‘all kinds of useful and curious Vegetable Products, which neither the living plants of the Garden nor the specimens in the Herbarium could exhibit’.

The American Daffodil Society (ADS) is a group with international membership that has connected daffodil enthusiasts since its founding in 1954. In the spirit of National Gardening Month, we’re highlighting the ADS’ publication, The Daffodil Journal, which comes to BHL as part of the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project. Early volumes of this quarterly journal from 1964-1968 are currently available on BHL, with more volumes on the way.

William Brewster (1851-1919) was a renowned American amateur ornithologist, serving as a co-founder of the American Ornithologists’ Union, the first president of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and a curator at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). As a part of the CLIR-funded BHL Field Notes Project, MCZ has been digitizing Brewster’s journals, diaries, letters, and photographic prints, which are held in Special Collections at the MCZ’s Ernst Mayr Library.

The North American Sylva is a beautiful scientifically and historically-significant work. Authored by François-André Michaux, it is the first American silva – a descriptive flora of forest trees. Published originally in French in 1810, the first English version appeared in 1817, and it was further enhanced with supplementary volumes by Thomas Nuttall in the 1840s.

Did someone say Spring?!

In Ottawa, we start to see the Canada Geese returning to their summer nesting grounds around this time of year. Large flocks of them fly overhead in the same v-shaped formations we saw months ago when they left in the late fall.​

Aren’t migratory birds fascinating? Along with so many other Canadian bird species.

Birds of Canada by Percy Algernon Taverner remains one of the best accounts of the kinds of birds that occur in Canada. And the first thirty-six pages holds just the right amount of information to open the science of ornithology to bird lovers, yet still enough information to satisfy research needs.​

The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University has contributed a century of their publications to BHL as a part of the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project, including: Bulletin of Popular Information (1915-1940) and Arnoldia (1942-2016). Nancy Rose, an arborist with a background in woody plant research and horticulture extension, served as Arnoldia’s editor from 2008 to February 2018. Before retiring, she shared with us some reflections on the their contributions to BHL.

In the middle of the Cold War, the Smithsonian Institution embarked on the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program (POBSP) to survey U.S. territory islands and atolls dotting the central Pacific Ocean. From 1963 to 1969, researchers sought to inventory the plants and animals present on the islands, observe seasonal variations in numbers and reproduction, and the distribution of pelagic birds. Over the course of the survey, researchers observed approximately 150,000 pelagic birds at sea, banded 1,800,000 birds, and surveyed the flora and fauna of the islands, the most comprehensive study at the time. An incredible amount of data was collected during the POBSP, drastically increasing information available about the ecology of the small islands.