Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Madame Vincent’s Studies of Flowers and Fruits

Études de fleurs et de fruits: peints d’après nature by Henriette Vincent is a book of beautiful botanical illustrations.  With 48 color plates of stipple engravings of flowers and fruits, this work was first published in Paris, France in 1820. This is a scarce volume with only a few copies known to exist in libraries.

In his Flower and fruit prints of the 18th and early 19th centuries, Gordon Dunthorne calls this book “…among the most exquisite of all flower prints in their beauty and delicacy of execution.”

Among the fruit depicted are plums, currants, cherries, apricots, grapes, apples, pears, peaches, raspberries, and strawberries. The flower assortment includes tulip, daffodil, jasmine, pansy, lilac, hyacinth, iris, nasturtium, and roses in white, red, and pink varieties.

Within these vibrant colored plates, Madame Vincent incorporates imperfections on the fruit, leaves and stems and adds moths, ladybug, and dew drops. True to size, shape, and color, when I look at her work, I feel as though I’m seeing her plant sample in its true form.

As was proper etiquette for women at this time, what you don’t see are roots, seeds, and reproductive plant parts, which would be included in scientific works of this era.

Madame Vincent was a student of renowned botanical artists Pierre-Joseph Redouté and Gerard van Spaendonck and truly learned her craft from the masters. She had the opportunity to exhibit her work in the Paris Salon about the time this volume was published.

The plates are signed “Peint par Mme. Vincent, gravé par Lambert aîné,” which translates to “Painted by Mrs. Vincent, engraved by Lambert elder.”

Explore this magnificent work in BHL, digitized from the collections of the Chicago Botanic Garden Lenhardt Library, and explore all of the illustrations in Flickr.

April 28, 2016by ulib-libraryjobs
Blog Reel, Featured Books

When New England was New
Portrait version of the Biodiversity Heritage Library logo.

It is a small book, palm-size, with pages of less-than-fine paper, the well-worn letters of the type sometimes carelessly inked. The sparse woodcut illustrations are child-like in their simplicity and straight-forwardness. Yet John Josselyn’s New-Englands rarities discovered, printed in London in 1672, drew me in as I went about cataloging the work. Intrigued by the title and the early date of publication, I found myself reading an account of the landscape of my past, from Boston, “down east” (that is, up the coast as represented in the above illustration) to my place of birth, and points all around. That great bibliography, The Hunt Botanical Catalogue, notes that this book is “particularly interesting to people who are fond of Maine.” Indeed. The text provides a sense of place from the 17th century.

Having refreshed my self here [Boston] for some time, and opportunely lighting upon a passage in a Bark belonging to a Friend of my Brothers, and bound to the Eastward, I put to sea again, and on the Fifteenth of August I arrived at Black-point, otherwise called Scarborow, the habitation of my beloved Brother, being about an hundred leagues to the Eastward of Boston; here I resided eight years, and made it my business to discover all along the Natural, Physical, and Chyrurgical Rarities of the New-found World.

New-Englands rarities is an account of the author’s two journeys to America, the first in 1638 for several months and again in 1663 for a stay of eight years. Despite the autobiographical nature of the work, not much is known of Josselyn, “active” in cataloging parlance, from 1630 to 1675, and born around 1608 in Essex County. The author comes across as a learned, if not terribly discerning, gentleman with possibly a medical background. He describes the topography, customs and the natural history of the country, with great interest in the healing properties of organic materials from recipes used by both native Americans and colonists, leading to speculation that the Englishman was a physician. It may be Josselyn was simply well-read and the curious type. The era of European plant exploration in the New World, for both therapeutic, consumption and ornamental purposes, was underway by the time of Josselyn’s travels. There would be a ready audience for such information, particularly in a relatively accessible and inexpensive publication.

“Scarborow” is the coastal area of Scarborough, incorporated as a town in 1658 in the present state of Maine. One of the area settlements was “Black-point” (originally a patent of 1500 acres) that included the rocky shoreline of present-day Prouts Neck, of artist Winslow Homer-fame (a place now known for exclusiveness). It was here that John Josselyn’s brother Henry lived and worked along the sea, rivers, stretches of salt marshes and sandy beaches. Henry Josselyn was representing the Royal grant of land, Council of Gorges’ Province of Maine, by 1636, and later served as Deputy-Governor.

There is some evidence that Henry Josselyn may have ascended the highest mountain in the Northeast, the 6,288-foot (1,917-meter) Mount Washington. His brother John, as did Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524, observed and recorded the peak (known by various names before European settlement) from shipboard in the Atlantic Ocean as “one stately mountain…surmounting the rest”:

“Fourscore miles (upon a direct line) to the Northwest of Scarborow, a Ridge of Mountains run Northwest and Northeast an hundred Leagues, known by the name of the White Mountains, upon which lieth Snow all year, and is a Land-mark twenty miles off at Sea.”

John Josselyn’s further writings indicate that he probably also summited the mountain (as I did one June, when there was still snow on the slopes). Now a not-particularly arduous but long day’s hike in good weather along groomed trails, it was not a casual undertaking in the 1660’s. It is a volatile place with fierce, sometimes unpredictable, weather. The Josselyns probably journeyed along the magnificent Saco River, south of Scarborough, to reach the range. There John Josselyn made meteorological observations (The Mount Washington Observatory on April 12, 1934, recorded the wind at 231 miles per hour, a record that held through the 20th century).

Josselyn liked to compose catalogs and there is humor sprinkled about his lists. In the one on fishes, he prefaced: “Pliny and Isadore write there are not above 144 Kinds of Fishes, but to my knowledge there are nearer 300: I suppose Americawas not known to Pliny and Isadore.” The account of his unfortunate encounter with a wasp nest begins with his belief he was coming across an exotic fruit. And, amusing for readers today, Josselyn was none too fond of the Puritans of the Bay Colony. The Native Americans, on the other hand, were regarded with admiration.

For botany researchers there is much information to decipher from New-Englands rarities. Twenty-two invasive species or weeds are listed under a section “Of such Plants as have sprung up since the English Planted and kept Cattle in New-England” (the reference to cows is of their manure). In Josselyn’s identifications, sow thistle, night shade, mallowes, wormwood, bloodwort, and cheek weed are recorded; some are identifiable today, others not. According to noted botanist, ecologist and conservationist Paul Sears, Josselyn provides the first mention of the now-ubiquitous dandelion in America. From the many references, it is evident that the author had with him the hefty 1633 Thomas Johnson’s edition of Herball by John Gerard, “our famous Herbalist.” Josselyn notes the New World plants described by Gerard as well as Parkinson and points out his own discoveries, such as skunk cabbage and the pitcher-plant.

Recipes, whether for medical purposes or nourishment, are sprinkled throughout the text. The wild turkey is fully described for the first time and what must be one of the earliest records of meat being eaten with cranberries as “it is a delicate Sauce.” Josselyn also mentions “pompions” (pumpkin) pie. The colonists of course learned about the cultivation of pumpkins, squash and corn from the native inhabitants. “Billberries” (blueberries), are reported to be “very good to allay the burning heat of Feavers and hot Agues, either in Syrup or Conserve. A most excellent Summer Dish.” Peas, grown in New England, “are the best in the world.”

Josselyn soon expanded New-Englands rarities with An account of two voyages to New England in 1674 (BHL copy digitized from the Smithsonian Libraries). The dedication in this edition is loftier and more ambitious: to the President and Fellows of the Royal Society. A relative of Josseyln’s, Samuel Fortrey, had helped pay for the printing of the earlier work. There is far more detail on the provisioning and crossings of the ships and attendant illnesses and deaths. There is also a disturbing story of the rape of a slave on Noodles Island in Boston Harbor, a horrifying but important testament in the history of slavery in New England.

Two voyages to New England provides more scenes of the coast. Monhegan Island, a favorite place of mine, is a speck about ten miles from the nearest mainland. Following European explorers Martin Pring, Samuel de Champlain, George Weymouth, John Smith (and before these sailors, possibly the Vikings), Josselyn reported that Monhegan was filled with fisherman’s houses and shacks, long a staging area for drying fish and post for fur traders to send their goods across the Atlantic. Cod was the great commodity, harvested from the abundant fishing grounds of the Gulf of Maine and along the coast. Since the mid-19th century, Monhegan, spectacularly ruggedly beautiful, has been better known as an artist colony and draw for tourists, at least in the summer.

New-Englands rarities was cited by the great Swedish zoologist and botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753, attesting to its completeness and authority on flora and fauna for about a century. It also inspired a certain type of travel literature. Henry David Thoreau was an admirer and in A week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) wrote of Josselyn’s speaking of “the strong new soil.” Soon after I encountered the book in the Cullman Library of Natural History, I came across a reprinted edition while in Salem, Massachusetts in the gift shop of the House of the Seven Gables. Most valued today for its accounting of plants, the book and its successor, An account of two voyages, have much to offer historians of indigenous cultures about the impact of European settlements, cookery, gardens, religion, folklore, meteorology, geology, and maritime and social norms of the early colonial period in America. Its sense of wonder about the landscape of the New World provides the modern reader with a sense of the place.

Josselyn’s last printed words:

“Now by the merciful providence of the Almighty, having performed Two voyages to the North-east parts of the Western-world, I am safely arrived in my Native Countrey; having in part made good the French proverb, Traveul where thou canst, but dye where thou oughtest, that is, in thine own Countrey.”

Notes
New-Englands rarities has frequently been reprinted. Many of those editions, as well as the National Agricultural Library’s copy of the first, have been digitized by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The Cullman Library’s copy had been rebound too tightly for it to be safely scanned. It also lacks the last leaf containing the printer’s device.

The BHL digitized copy in Smithsonian Libraries (the Dibner Library) of Josselyn’s later work: An account of two voyages to New-England : wherein you have the settingout of a ship, with the charges; the prices of all necessaries for furnishing aplanter and his family at his first coming; a description of the countrey,natives and creatures, with their merchantil and physical use : the governmentof the countrey as it is now possessed by the English, &c.; : A largechronological table of the most remarkable passages, from the first discoveringof the continent of America, to the year 1673. London : Printed for Giles Widdows, at the Green-Dragon in St. Paul’s-Church-yard, 1674.

Bulletin of the Josselyn Botanical Society of Maine.

Leighton, Ann. Early American gardens “for meate or medicine.” Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986.

The Scarborough Land Conservation Trust.

March 31, 2016by khage
Blog Reel, Featured Books

John Bartram’s Journey to Onondago

John Bartram was born in Marple, Pennsylvania in 1699. Although he received limited formal education, he eventually distinguished himself as one of the leading botanists of his day. Through an early and intense interest in botany, he collected rare and useful plants and seeds throughout the colonies which he provided to the gentlemen of Europe, an opportunity which arose from his close friendship with the English botanist, Peter Collinson.

He also established one of the finest botanic gardens of the colonial period in Kingsessing (now part of the park system in south Philadelphia). He grew dozens of species of trees, shrubs, and other plants collected on his travels. He even experimented with breeding and selection of cultivars to meet a demand abroad for exotic plants. His botanical supply business was so successful that it provided the income and incentive that enabled him to travel around the colonies and to Florida in search of new specimens.

One such collecting trip occurred in July 1743, when Bartram accompanied Conrad Weiser and Lewis Evans, a skilled cartographer, on a journey to the Iroquois capital, Onondaga (modern day Syracuse). Interestingly, the primary purpose of this trip was more diplomatic than scientific. Weiser was officially Pennsylvania’s main ambassador to the Native Americans. There had been a clash between settlers in Western Virginia and an Iroquois hunting party in the fall of 1742, and rumors of a possible war in Virginia had alarmed those in Pennsylvania. The trip was meant to encourage peace between the Iroquois Confederacy and Virginia. Bartram saw this trip as an opportunity to explore the vast forests in this little known Indian territory, as yet undisturbed by European settlers.

In addition to plant material, Bartram’s English botanist friend, Peter Collinson, had requested a written account of the trip. Unfortunately, in the spring of 1744, the ship carrying Bartram’s manuscript and specimens to London was captured by the French. Bartram had to make another copy of his journal and this copy did not reach Collinson until 1750.

The account of Bartram’s six week journey from Pennsylvania to Upstate New York was so popular among Collinson’s circle that Collinson had the work printed in 1751 by J. Whiston and B. White in London. The published work was entitled Observations on the inhabitants, climate, soil, rivers, productions, animals, and other matters worthy of notice, made by Mr. John Bartram, in his travels from Pensilvania to Onondago, Oswego and the lake Ontario in Canada; to which is annex’d, a curious account of the cataracts at Niagara, by Mr. Peter Kalm, a Swedish gentleman who traveled there and included a brief description of Niagara Falls by the naturalist Peter Kalm.

Unfortunately, at the time, this work was criticized by some for not including enough detail in the descriptions of the plants that Bartram encountered. This criticism does not account for the fact that the journal had been written as a running account for Collinson, who would already have been familiar with the plants that Bartram mentioned. Others criticized the errors in spelling and syntax found throughout the work, due to lack of editing and because the printer had trouble interpreting Bartram’s handwriting and spelling. Today, this work is viewed as an important early insight into the region’s ecology and the activities of the Native American population during the colonial period.

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Library recently digitized its copy of this work and has made the volume accessible via BHL at this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.112297. This volume was purchased by the Library in 1941 from a local bookseller. The original owner of this copy was Frank Hayward Severance (1856-1931), a leading authority on the Buffalo /Niagara area during the early twentieth century. After graduating from Cornell University in 1879, Severance spent the early part of his career as a reporter, editor and lecturer. He later authored several books about the Niagara frontier.

References:

  • Berkeley, Edmund and Dorothy Smith Berkeley. (1981). The life and travels of John Bartram : from Lake Ontario to the River St. John. Tallahassee : University Presses of Florida.
  • Severance, Frank Hayward. (2009). In MarquisWho’sWho, Marquis who was who in America 1607-1984. New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who’s Who LLC.
March 24, 2016by ulib-libraryjobs
Blog Reel, User Stories

Following Early Naturalists of the American West

Yellowstone National Park is famous worldwide for its vast forests, abundance of wildlife – including a wide variety of North American megafauna, and its natural landmarks like Old Faithful Geyser. The Park, which spans over 3,400 square miles, was established by Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, making it the first national park ever established. In addition to over 350 species of animals, over 1,000 plant species call the park home. [1]

The first actual flora of the park was published in 1886 by a man named Frank Tweedy. [2] Tweedy was a topographical engineer born in New York City in 1854. Between 1884-85, Tweedy was in Yellowstone mapping the topography of the park for a project with the U.S. Geological Survey. During his time in Yellowstone, Tweedy also collected plant specimens, ultimately spending two full summers botanizing. This work resulted in 600 species being added to his personal herbarium, which is now housed at Yale, and the production of his self-published Flora of the Yellowstone National Park in 1886.

The Flora was a “remarkably accurate” [2, pg. 31] work and is one of freelance field botanist Hollis Marriott’s favorite publications in BHL.

Hollis has worked as a field botanist for forty years, specializing in conservation and public lands projects, mainly in Wyoming and South Dakota. Having the benefit of being “mostly retired,” she now devotes much of her time to nature writing and photography. Topics include natural history, especially botany and geology, and the history of natural history — specifically exploration of the American West. She blogs at In the Company of Plants and Rocks and writes articles for regional publications.

As a valuable source of early literature on plants and botanists, BHL has become a very important asset for Hollis’ research. While she was initially introduced to BHL through our blog, searches for early literature on plants and botanists of the American West led her to our online portal of over 48 million pages. It has now become her go-to resource for information about early naturalists and their work.

“I was really happy to find BHL!” emphasizes Hollis. “Now when I’m looking for information by and about early naturalists, it’s the first place I go. The best thing about BHL is quick, easy access to so much useful information. Documents that were difficult to access or unavailable just a few years ago are now just a search and a click away. What makes BHL stand out for me is all the early literature, especially first-person accounts of early botanical work. There’s something special about reading descriptions, conclusions, opinions and stories written by the pioneering botanists themselves.”

Much of Hollis’ recent work has benefited from the wealth of information available through BHL. She’s used BHL to access “publications and correspondence by the great naturalist Thomas Nuttall; early studies of narrowleaf, Plains and lanceleaf cottonwoods; and a description of the rare Laramie columbine (Aquilegia laramiensis) by Wyoming’s pioneering botanist, Aven Nelson.”  Related to Nelson, Hollis adds, “I just finished a paper for Yellowstone Science about Aven Nelson’s botanical expedition to Yellowstone National Park in 1899. Almost all information about the substantial botanical work in the Park prior to Nelson’s project came from BHL.”

Currently, Hollis is using sources in BHL to inform research for several blog posts and an article about early botanist Edwin James. Her most recent historical botany post, James and Jamesia—a man and his shrub, is about James and his eponymous genus Jamesia (cliffbush), which he discovered during the Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1820. The list of Sources at the end of the post shows just how valuable BHL is for this kind of research. Hollis is also using BHL to support research on another history of botany project about Frank Tweedy, the author of the notable Yellowstone Flora described earlier.

Hollis’ use of BHL is erratic, depending on the needs of her current project. When accessing content on BHL, she will usually read the titles online, copying selected text using the OCR option. For larger excerpts, she downloads custom PDFs with the OCR option.

Hollis is quick to add that her use of BHL isn’t just limited to work-related needs:

“I also use BHL ‘for fun’ — for example browsing in response to a BHL blog post (I’m a regular reader), or just looking for things of interest or ideas for blog posts.”

As early field notes are so important to Hollis’ work, she’s eager to see more digitized for the BHL collection. It’s a wish that will soon be fulfilled, thanks to our recently-funded “Biodiversity Heritage Library Field Notes Project,” which will support work to digitize archival field notes in participating institution collections.

Historic literature is a vital source of information about the natural world and the efforts of early naturalists to explore, catalog, and describe the great diversity of life on our planet. We’re proud that BHL, by providing free and open access to library and archival collections around the world, can help researchers like Hollis share the incredible stories that these materials hold.

BHL’s existence depends on the support of its patrons. Help us keep this free resource alive with a tax-deductible donation.

References
[1] “Park Facts“. National Park Service. December 22, 2015. Retrieved 2016-3-3.
[2] “Park Botanist Jennifer Whipple and Yellowstone’s Herbarium.” Yellowstone Science. 12.4 (2004): 25-34. Accessed Online.

March 7, 2016by michelle.underhill
Blog Reel, User Stories

Early Land Plants and the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation

Bryophytes are green land plants that lack true vascular tissue. They encompass mosses (Bryophyta), hornworts (Anthocerotophyta) and liverworts (Marchantiophyta). Bryophytes form an important component in many ecosystems, offering microhabitats for an abundance of biodiversity including single-celled eukaryotes, protozoa, and many invertebrates (Gerson 1982). They also play an important part in the global carbon budget and can support climate change research by serving as “indicators of past climate change, [validating] climate models, and as potential indicators of global warming” (Söderström et al. 2016).

While bryophytes play such a critical role in their respective ecosystems, and while nomenclatural and auxiliary data for mosses is fairly strong, there has traditionally been a poor understanding of the full diversity and distribution of liverworts and hornworts. In the past, estimates of the number of liverwort species have ranged from 4,500-9,000 (a considerably wide range), while hornwort numbers are estimated to be in the low 200s (Söderström et al. 2016).

Having a complete picture of the world’s biodiversity allows us to understand the complexities of individual ecosystems, identify all of the contributors to those ecosystems and the roles that each plays, and thereby better understand the implications of losing one or more of those species. Such information supports the development of more holistic conservation strategies and provides policy makers with the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding research, development, and sustainability.

Recognizing this need to catalog Earth’s biodiversity, in 2002 The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) set a target to develop “a widely accessible working list of all known plant species, as a step towards a complete world Flora” by 2010 (Lughadha 2004). Version 1.0 of The Plant List (http://www.theplantlist.org/), which aimed to be comprehensive for vascular plants and bryophytes, was released in December 2010. That same year, the GSPC’s target was revised to include “an online flora of all known plants” by 2020 (Söderström et al. 2016). Although it was Darwin himself who more than a century ago voiced his intention to compile a complete catalog of all known plant species, such is yet to be realized.

To achieve the goal of a comprehensive online flora, working lists of plant taxa worldwide need to be created. The hornworts and liverworts, as described, were in particular need of such a working list, which, if created, could integrate dispersed taxonomic, systematic, and nomenclatural information and enable a better understanding of these plants’ “diversity, patterns and processes” (Söderström et al. 2016).

On January 29, 2016, the first worldwide checklist of liverworts and hornworts was published through PhytoKeys, representing the culmination of an extensive effort led by Prof. Lars Söderström from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The checklist was produced through a collaboration of 41 taxonomic specialists and regional experts from 18 countries around the world. It provides a list and proposed systematic treatment for all known and currently accepted species of liverworts and hornworts along with citations for the first published scientific description of each. It includes 8,078 taxa (species and below) in 7,486 species representing 398 genera, 92 families, 20 orders and 7 classes from the two phyla. Each taxa is ranked by a three-star system indicating the level of confidence in the taxon’s status and validity. The checklist is built on an underlying dataset which includes a “bibliography of 25,000 publications and approximately 39,000 published liverwort names (including “accepted” taxa, synonyms, invalid and illegitimate names)” (Söderström et al. 2016).

The bibliographic references contained in the checklist are a crucial “resource for liverwort and hornwort systematic and taxonomic research.” It’s a resource that BHL contributed extensively to. As the authors note, “A fundamental problem common to all nomenclatural indexing projects is the dispersed nature of the biological literature, some of which may date back over 250 years” (Söderström et al. 2016). Wherever possible, the checklist includes links to literature in BHL, which provides a central repository for much of the foundational taxonomic literature. Dr. Matthew von Konrat, co-author of the checklist, emphasized the significant role that BHL played in its development:

“Can I make BHL collectively blush with a list of adjectives describing how amazing BHL has been as a resource? I could write an entire diatribe, but very briefly, BHL has had a fundamental impact to our work and greatly accelerated our research efforts. BHL has saved us, literally, months and months of total hours of labour-intensive work. At the peak of when we were researching for the checklist, we would access BHL dozens of times a day.”

Dr. von Konrat is the Head of Botanical Collections, Adjunct Curator, and McCarter Collections Manager (Bryophytes and Pteridophytes) at The Field Museum. His areas of interest include early land plants (bryophytes), plant evolution and taxonomy, outreach and citizen science. While plants have always been a passion of his (“I have early memories of walking through New Zealand rainforests admiring giant trees,” he told us), his focused study in the field began with a bachelor’s degree in botany in 1989, followed by a Masters studying ferns. “However,” Matt confided, “My academic and professional life took a turn when I started my PhD in an enigmatic group of plants called liverworts back in 1996.”

While Matt was generally aware of BHL as early as 2007, he became fully aware of its potential and usefulness in 2009, thanks to the passionate outreach efforts of staff at The Field Museum Library, including Christine Giannoni and Diana Duncan. Since then, Matt has become a strong BHL supporter, even speaking at our Open BHL Day during the 2015 Annual Meeting in Chicago at The Field Museum.

“People from all over the world have rapid access to publications and journals that otherwise they would never have access to,” lauds Matt. “This is critical when we live in an age of a major extinction crisis and there are not enough taxonomists to describe and document biodiversity before many species become extinct.”

His enthusiasm extends to a number of the features offered in BHL:

“The fact that this information is free and readily available, having the capacity to search text in PDF’s, access OCR/text files, the friendly user interface, the connectivity between taxonomic names and publications, the external accessibility if books or articles have been scanned elsewhere etc. are just a few of [BHL’s] outstanding features. I think it is important, in my enthusiasm for the technical elements, to not forget the people behind BHL that make this resource happen. This is everyone from our local librarians to the technological talent behind BHL.”

Indeed, it’s the dedicated team behind BHL that make it an invaluable tool for scientists like Matt and others around the world working to identify, describe, and perhaps even create checklists for Earth’s biodiversity.

The World Checklist of Hornworts and Liverworts “was the first phase in providing a worldwide list of accepted names.” Next, the authors plan “to establish a generally recognized online repository to augment the huge underlying informational auxiliary data of over 25,000 publications, almost 39,000 published names, and the over 700,000 geographical observations” (Söderström et al. 2016).

While there is still more work to be done, this checklist represents a major milestone for liverwort and hornwort research and is an enormous accomplishment by the bryological community that not only involved the authors themselves, but many of their bryological colleagues, librarians, herbarium curators and staff who helped in countless ways, and many of the institutions that provided logistical or financial support including the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, The Field Museum, The National Science Foundation, and the Encyclopedia of Life. As the authors state in their publication, “The checklist has far reaching implications and applications, including providing a valuable tool for taxonomists and systematists, analyzing phytogeographic and diversity patterns, aiding in the assessment of floristic and taxonomic knowledge, and identifying geographical gaps in our understanding of the global liverwort and hornwort flora.”

Furthermore, we’re now one step closer to achieving “an online flora of all known plants” by 2020.

How can you help make a difference to the study of early land plants? Try your hand at MicroPlants, a citizen science initiative that asks you to measure microleaves in order to help scientists document and describe new species. The project is led by Matt and other scientists at The Field Museum and is hosted on Zooniverse – the platform which also hosts BHL’s Science Gossip project!

References

  • Gerson U (1982) Bryophytes and invertebrates. In: Smith AJE (Ed.) Bryophyte Ecology. Chapman & Hall, London, 291–332. doi: 10.1007/978-94-009-5891-3_9
  • Lughadha EN (2004) Towards a working list of all known plant species. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B 359 (1444): 681–687. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2003.1446
  • Söderström L, Hagborg A, von Konrat M, Bartholomew-Began S, Bell D, Briscoe L, Brown E, Cargill DC, Costa DP, Crandall-Stotler BJ, Cooper ED, Dauphin G, Engel JJ, Feldberg K, Glenny D, Gradstein SR, He X, Heinrichs J, Hentschel J, Ilkiu-Borges AL, Katagiri T, Konstantinova NA, Larraín J, Long DG, Nebel M, Pócs T, Felisa Puche F, Reiner-Drehwald E, Renner MAM, Sass-Gyarmati A, Schäfer-Verwimp A, Moragues JGS, Stotler RE, Sukkharak P, Thiers BM, Uribe J, Váňa J, Villarreal JC, Wigginton M, Zhang L, Zhu R-L (2016) World checklist of hornworts and liverworts. PhytoKeys 59: 1-821. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.59.6261
March 1, 2016by michelle.underhill
BHL News, Blog Reel

New Postage Stamps Featuring Images from the NYBG Nursery & Seed Catalog Collection
Portrait version of the Biodiversity Heritage Library logo.

Today, January 29, 2016, the U.S. Postal Service released 10 new postage stamps featuring images from catalogs in The New York Botanical Garden’s nursery and seed catalog collection.

The 10 Botanical Art Forever stamps feature illustrations from American nursery catalogs printed between 1891 and 1912. NYBG’s nursery and seed catalog collection is one of the largest and most important collections in the United States. The collection and similar collections in other institutions are treasure troves of historical information for scholars and scientists studying a wide range of subjects, including the history of botany, horticulture, commercial agriculture, landscape design, plant exploration, graphic arts and publishing.

The flowers featured on the stamps include corn lilies, tulips, stocks, roses, petunias, dahlias, Japanese Iris, daffodils and jonquils. The artists responsible for the work seen on early nursery catalogs are mostly unknown, but thanks to these stamps, the catalogs, and ongoing work to digitize the catalogs and make them freely available worldwide, the incredible works of these artists live on.

You can find most of the catalogs featured in the stamps in BHL. Below is the list of catalogs featured on the stamps and, where available, the links to them in BHL. The copies in BHL were digitized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library. The remaining catalogs will be uploaded to BHL by NYBG.

We’re excited that so many letters will now be adorned with stunning botanical art thanks to the Botanical Art Forever stamps. You can browse over 20,000 seed and nursery catalogs contributed by both NYBG and other BHL partner institutions in BHL. Learn more about the importance of these catalogs in our Garden Stories campaign.

January 29, 2016by ulib-libraryjobs
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Celebrating Mary Gunn and 100 Years of Library Excellence in South Africa

In 2013, BHL Africa officially launched with the mission to provide open access to the valuable biodiversity literature found within African libraries and institutions. Today, eleven institutions have signed the BHL Africa MOU and, thanks to support from the JRS Biodiversity Foundation, each is working to contribute content from their collections to BHL. The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), which has been a member of BHL Africa since its inception, leads the current JRS-funded work.

SANBI has two libraries: the Harry Molteno Library at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town, and the Mary Gunn Library at the Pretoria National Botanical Garden. The mission of SANBI libraries is to meet the information needs of all SANBI staff and to address a public demand for comprehensive, easily accessible information on the biodiversity of southern Africa.

The Mary Gunn Library dates back to 1916 and will celebrate its centenary this year. Today, Ms Mary Gunn’s efforts are reflected in this library’s being one of the most important botanical and biodiversity resources in Africa. Subjects covered in the collection include taxonomy, biodiversity, climate change, global warming, morphology, plant anatomy, plant geography, ethnobotany, conservation ecology, history of botany, palaeobotany and plant exploration.

Mary Davidson Gunn (1899–1989) 

Mary Davidson Gunn was born on 15 May 1899 in Kirriemuir, Scotland. Her father served in a Scottish regiment during the Anglo Boer War in South Africa and after the war, he decided to immigrate his family to South Africa. They settled in Pretoria where Ms Gunn attended the now defunct State Gymnasium. In September 1916, Ms Gunn was appointed as a clerk with ‘knowledge of typing’ in the Department of Agriculture’s Botany Division. She was not constantly busy and to keep herself occupied, she would dismantle and study the workings of her watch. Caught in the act by the chief of the division, Dr Pole Evans, she was tasked with the job of taking care of the books and building up a library. She approached her new responsibilities with great enthusiasm even though the few books did not even fill one shelf. Every night at home, she would describe each book she catalogued in detail to her father.

As Ms Gunn did not have a botanical background, she studied the catalogues of well-known antiquarian booksellers to establish which works were available and how she could purchase them. She became more and more interested in botanical literature and her knowledge developed rapidly. With enthusiasm and dedication she purchased relevant books and journals and even obtained a great number of publications as gifts – the basis of the current extensive antiquarian collection of the library. Her love for old botanical works became one of her main passions in life and made her one of the country’s most knowledgeable persons on rare botanical books and plant collectors of southern Africa.

Because of limited funds, various ways and means were devised to acquire treasures. She was very persuasive in getting rare and expensive books donated or sponsored to the library during her time as librarian. In her own words, ‘I frequently had to go hat-in-hand asking for money from influential people so that I can buy what I wanted!’ Her acquiring gifts, as well as purchasing and exchanging books and journals, populated Ms Gunn’s library until she had enough of a variety for the public. To this day, the global exchange programme remains one of the chief ways in which the Mary Gunn Library receives new journals.

The Mary Gunn Library houses a magnificent Rare Antiquarian Book Collection that includes publications such as the broadsheet edition of Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s Les Liliacées. Redouté published Les Liliacées from 1802–1816 and the institute’s copy is one of only 18 broadsheet editions published. Redouté himself finished the plates in this edition by hand. Ms Gunn bought this rare work in England and conveyed it to South Africa in General Jan Smuts’ personal luggage after attending the signing of the Versailles Treaty. Smuts was a good friend of Ms Gunn and introduced her to businessmen such as Myles Bourke, Charles Maggs and J.J. Kirkness who donated funds to the library for purchasing rare books.

Nikolas Joseph Jacquin published Stapeliarum in 1808. The book contains 64 colour plates of stapeliads grown in the botanic garden of the University of Vienna. In 1938, Ms Gunn spotted the book in a booksellers’ catalogue and, with donations, she managed to purchase this rare book. The library now also houses other rare works by Jacquin.

One of the rarest and oldest works on the botany of the Cape of Good Hope is Descriptions plantarum ex Capite Bonae Spei (1767) by Peter Jonas Bergius, based in part on specimens collected at the Cape by the Swede, Mikael Grubb. It predates Linnaeus’s famous Mantissa Plantarum by one month. The library’s copy of this work was once owned by Prof. W.H. Harvey, the co-initiator of Flora Capensis. A handwritten note in the book explains that the book once belonged to a young botanist, George Forster, who, with his father, accompanied Captain Cook on his second voyage around the world with this very book.

The unique 52 xylotheque (wooden) book set by C.H. Wehdemann is the only South African example ever made. Wehdemann came to the Cape Colony in the early 1800s as part of the army of the Dutch East India Company. After his dismissal in 1806, he moved to the Eastern Cape settling on a farm near Somerset East where he died in 1836. Each wooden book represents an indigenous tree. At the top of the book is a slide which gives you access to the inside of the book. Inside is a short description of the tree, some illustrations and a small cane tube with seeds inside. Of the original set of 60, the Mary Gunn Library has the remaining 52 books.

Other treasures in the library:

Dr Pole Evans’ continuous queries about botanical explorers led Ms Gunn to her second passion, namely biographical research of early botanists and plant collectors. Information on Thunberg, Burchell, Masson, Ecklon, Drège and more were collected from all corners of the world. In 1981 the major part of this information was used to publish Botanical exploration of southern Africa: an illustrated history of early botanical literature on the Cape flora. This work, produced in collaboration with Dr Leslie Codd, was the culmination of more than 60 years of research. In 2010 the work was revised and published as part of SANBI’s Strelitzia series.

Ms Gunn possessed charm, coupled with a sharp wit, a sense of humour, steely determination and a high regard for those she felt warranted respect. After her official retirement in 1954, she continued working at the institute until 1973. In honour of Ms Gunn’s devotion to botanical literature for 60 years of her life, the National Herbarium Library was renamed the Mary Gunn Library in 1969.

Through their participation in BHL Africa, SANBI will work to digitize the treasures in the Mary Gunn Library and make them openly, globally, and freely available in BHL. In the meantime, you can view many of the books mentioned in this post in the BHL collection thanks to contributions from several of our other partner libraries.

We are excited to see the continued growth of BHL and its collections thanks to the dedicated efforts of our partners around the world. We have a feeling that Ms Gunn would heartily concur.

References 

  1. Fourie, D. Obituary of Mary Davidson Gunn. Bothalia 20, 1: 127-130 1990.
  2. Fourie, D. The history of the Botanical Research Institute 1903-1989. Bothalia 28, 2 1998.
  3. Glen, H.F. Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa: An illustrated history of early botanical literature on the Cape Flora, Biographical accounts of the leading plant collectors and their activities in southern Africa form the days of the East India Company until the modern times. 2nd ed. Pretoria: SANBI, 2010.
  4. Gunn, M. and Codd, L. Botanical exploration of southern Africa: an illustrated history of early botanical literature on the Cape flora. Cape Town: Balkema, 1981.
  5. Killick, D.J.B. The Mary Gunn Library. 1992. Pamphlet.
January 28, 2016by ulib-libraryjobs
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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to digitize the natural history literature held in their collections and make it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.”

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