All posts tagged with botany

Nestled within the Hang Dong district, Chiang Mai, Thailand, is a 10 acre botanical garden called Dokmai Garden. Run by the Thai family Seehamongkol, it boasts over 1,000 plant species, including orchids, laurels, banana plants, birds-of-paradise plants, and gingers. The Seehamongkol family, and the garden’s biologist and Director, Dr. Eric Danell, have the lucky fortune of not only working in this garden, but also of calling it home.

Recently, the librarians at the Smithsonian Libraries’ Botany-Horticulture Library uncovered a “mini-mystery” involving one of our titles. It started when the botanical illustrator in the Smithsonian’s Department of Botany got a call from a colleague asking why a work in BHL was appearing with black and white illustrations rather than the beautiful color originals.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is pleased to announce that it is the recipient of the Charles Robert Long Award of Extraordinary Merit from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries (CBHL).The highest honor bestowed by CBHL, the Charles Robert Long Award for Extraordinary Merit was founded to honor outstanding contribution and meritorious service to CBHL or to the field of botanical and horticultural libraries or literature. Since 1988, only 14 people have received this award.

Cross-dressing seems to have been a botanical fad in the 18th century – the great Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (responsible for the system by which we name animals and plants today) famously posed in an authentic Sami costume from Lapland, not realising it was a woman’s outfit. Jeanne Baret (or Baré or Barrett – spelling was not as fixed and consistent in the 18th century as it is now) dressed as a boy to accompany the voyage of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville in circumnavigating the globe; the voyage itself was an exercise in saving face after the disastrous French defeat to the British during the Seven Years War (when Britain gained control of Quebec). The intrepid Baret certainly saw more of the world than the notoriously stay-at-home Linnaeus, even though her name today is not well-known.

As BHL is celebrating Women’s History Month by featuring women of science, I could not resist shining a light on Alice Eastwood, one of the California Academy of Sciences’ early female curators. Born in Toronto in 1859, Alice Eastwood spent her teenage years in Denver, Colorado.

If you’ve been following us on Twitter or checking in on our Facebook page, you know that this month is Women’s History Month. BHL is celebrating by highlighting women throughout history who have played in important role in the progression of biodiversity research and knowledge.