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2 months ago
Photo by Finn Blythe on September 10, 2026. May be an image of ivy and text.
Photo by Finn Blythe on September 10, 2026. May be an image of musical instrument and text that says 'across hey still arrive inside a sheet of newspaper, exactly as they have done for the best part of two centuries. A stem, a leaf, a flower, flattened and dried somewhere in a rainforest or on a riverbank. The specimens travel to the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, carried in a plant press, to begin the next several hundred years of their life. Rosie Clegg, Kew's senior curator botanist, shows me an example, while explaining that even in an age of DNA sequencing and gigapixel scanners, the herbarium still receives the natural world wrapped in yesterday's headlines.'.
Photo by Finn Blythe on September 10, 2026. May be an image of text.
Photo by Finn Blythe on September 10, 2026. May be an image of text that says 'Inside the building, the walls rise like canyons, each floor packed end to end with cabinets, corridor after corridor of pressed and dried life, kept in a deep, cool hush. The collection functions less as a single institution than as one node in something larger. "There's exchange of plant specimens, there's exchange of knowledge, and there's exchange of people," Clegg says ofthe global network ofherbaria that lend, borrow and cross- reference each other's holdings, insuring the world's flora against the loss of any single collection.'.
Photo by Finn Blythe on September 10, 2026. May be an image of studying, microscope, office and text.
Photo by Finn Blythe on September 10, 2026. May be an image of text that says 'The Victorians who built this herbarium set out to collect, name and order the living world in the belief that it could one day be wholly known, a fixed and finished creation, to be catalogued once and for all. The collection still names and orders, but where its founders sought to hold nature still, it is now used to watch it move. Dated records reveal how flowering times have shifted as the climate has warmed, their accumulated weight underpins conservation assessments and global policy on biodiversity loss. Rocky RockyMounaiaHerturium Mountain erbarium Salix glauea|'.
Photo by Finn Blythe on September 10, 2026. May be an image of text.
Photo by Finn Blythe on September 10, 2026. May be an illustration of poster, magazine and text.
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Posted On: September 10th 2026, 04:56 pm
Earlier this summer I was given access to the Herbarium at @kewgardens - home to almost 7 million plant specimens spanning three centuries and every continent 🌺

Part-archive, part-research institute, it plays a key role in decision making around environmental policy and conservation – areas I know very little of but really enjoyed writing about for the @obsnewreview
Comments (4)
claudiaalicelee 2 months ago

claudiaalicelee

👏❤️

katebogan 2 months ago

katebogan

Wonderful 🌱

lilytsb 2 months ago

lilytsb

😍🍂

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