SPECIAL CONTRIBUTION

THE BRLSI HERBARIA

by Rob Randall, Trustee (November 1998)

From the requisitioning of 16-18 Queen Square by the Admiralty during World War II until the Collections Sub~committee of the revived Institution first met on the 8th of January 1997, little use was made of the BRLSI collections apart from the geological specimens. The existence of Charles Moore's collections was well known to geologists but knowledge of the other collections was lost when the old Institution and the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club were disbanded.
The initials BRLSI are not the only set that the institution possesses. Botanists around the world identify herbaria by standard sets of initials, for instance 'K' is for Kew and 'BM' stands for the British Museum (Natural History) in London. BRLSI is honoured with several of these.
In 1957, the Botanical Society of the British Isles (BSBI) published for the first time, information about the whereabouts and contents of herbaria (Kent et al. 1957). The entry for Bath was as follows:-
(BAH): Bath Natural History Society. No present information.
(BTH): Museum of the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution.
*L. Blomefield (at present in store).

An asterisk against a name meant ‘herbarium of’.

There is no mention of C.E. Broome nor any of the other collectors. The original natural history society, which was formed by the Rev. Leonard Jenyns (later Blomefield), was the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, and it is probably this society that was intended. The current Bath Natural History Society was formed by Admiralty employees who had moved to Bath and by others who missed the then defunct field club. The current natural history society has never had a permanent base and so any herbaria would have been held by individual members.
A more comprehensive work, which also covered Ireland (Kent & Allen 1984), provides rnore information and it is evident that some of the collections had by then been identified:-
(BATH): Bath Natural History Society. *Not traced.
(BATHG): Avon County Council, Geology Museum, 18 Queen's Square. *L. Blomefield,
*T.H. Green, *W.C. Young, *unknown collector (unlocalized; early l9th century).

The BTH herbaria are mentioned as now housed at BATHG and the initials BAH are no longer used. It is clear from the entries for individual collectors that knowledge of the collections was very confused to say the least. The herbarium of Thomas H. Green is stated to be in 30+ folio volumes. We now know these volumes to be the work of Jenyns. The 'unknown collector' was C.E. Broome (see below), but under his entry the whereabouts of his main collection remained a mystery; data being given only on material of his in the collections of other botanists.
Despite the lack of information, local researchers have made use of the collections. In the 1970s, Dr Crawford of the Botany Department of Bristol University borrowed some specimens of algae. When they were returned in November l 978 Ron Pickford, then curator, left a note that a specimen, labelled ‘Aulacoseira crenulata’ by its collector, G.H.K. Thwaites,
might be designated as a ‘Type’ specimen by Dr Crawford. I have yet to discover whether this actually happened, but it gives an idea of the potential use of the collections for research. A ‘Type’ specimen is an individual specimen which is chosen to officially represent a plant or animal when a new species is described and given a name.
Also in 1978, Clive Lovatt, then a student at Bristol, was preparing a paper on the flora of the Avon Gorge (Lovatt 1982). He removed some specimens collected in and around the Gorge at Clifton and in Leigh Woods, amongst them sorne specimens of white beam. These trees were of particular interest to him as there are a number of rare species which grow in the rocky woods there, including two, ‘Sorbus wilmottiana’ and ‘S. bristoliensis’, which are not known to occur anywhere outside the Gorge. When they were returned, one specimen, previously labelled ‘Pyrus scandica’ had been redetermined to be Sorbus bristoliensis, and a freshly collected and pressed leaf had been attached to the herbarium sheet.
In the 1980s researchers from Bristol University again visited Queen Square. Theywere studying the lichen flora of the Bristol region and were hoping the collections included local material. They did discover such a collection but most of the herbarium sheets did not state the collector. After some careful detective work they were able to establish beyond doubt that the collection had belonged to Christopher Edmund Broome, the esteemed mycologist. The identity of the specimens was checked and the nomenclature brought up to date and corrected. The results were then published in the proceedings of the Bristol Naturalists’ Society (Brown, House & David 1988).
In the 1980s, I too had a look at the collections. I was interested in the flowering plants, and Ron Pickford kindly located some of the plants I was looking for. I hoped there might have been specimens of plants which had once lived in the Bath area, but had since become extinct. I was able to locate material of the Hairy Spurge, a plant which in Britain had only ever been found in the vicinity of Prior Park, and had perhaps originated from the monastery gardens. The label did not give precise details of where the specimen had been collected, but at least I knew what to look for. Several times since, I have searched the area without result, so perhaps it really is gone for good.
When I was invited to join the Collections Sub-committee I had only recently become a member. At that meeting I (perhaps rashly) suggested that I would attempt to catalogue aIl the herbarium material. Now, more than eighteen months later, with the help of Cas Serafin, the task is nearing completion. During that time a card index has been organised for all the collections apart from some exotic ferns and seaweed and the Jenyns herbarium, which already had an index. Individual collections, as they have come to light, have been documented and moved to the ‘strong room’ where the risk of insect attack is slightly less than the rooms with windows and doors to the outside world. Each index has been sorted, initially according to the order used by the collector. This is an interim measure until the nomenclature has been updated and it is possible to create an index that is intelligible to modern botanists.
As soon as news got out that the collections were being catalogued, we received a request for data on specimens collected in Cambridgeshire. Mrs Gigi Crompton, who lives in Swaffham Bulbeck (Jenyns’ parish, before moving to Bath), is compiling a history of Cambridgeshire botany. We were able to provide her with many early records of plants from the Fenlands and the Gog Magog hills.
When the committee held its last meeting, I had to report that the collection of fungi and lichens referred to by the Bristol researchers had not yet been found, but since then the eagle eyes of Denise Cusick have located the missing boxes.
After Roger Vaughan produced his 1990 inventory of all the collections, he provided a summary in the document he produced to celebrate the re-launch (Vaughan 1993). In it he estimated the size of the Jenyns and Broome herbaria to be about 8500 sheets. By sampling the card indexes it has been possible to estimate more accurately the number of herbarium sheets and specimens in our main collections: (see page 74)
The collections can be assessed for three categories of research:-
a) Valuable for taxonomic research: if there are numerous ‘Type’ specimens or other specimens quoted in literature, or good quality reference specimens named by an expert or seen by an expert but left unidentified.
b) Valuable for plant geography and ecology: if there are a large number of collection sites for each species, or specimen notes include data on population size, habitat, local geography, etc.
c) Valuable for historical research: if the age of the collection is significant and determinations of specimens are by contemporary experts.
Based purely on the nurnber of specimens, Dr. Tim Rich, of the Botany section at the National Museum of Wales, would assess the value of a herbarium collection as follows:-

Internationally Important 250,000 specimens
Nationally Important 50,000 "
Regionally Important 5,000 "

Our collections are placed relatively early in the history of botanical study and many specimens have been collected or identified by very distinguished men of the time, e.g. J.S. Henslow and C.C. Babington, professors of botany at Cambridge, W.H. Harvey, professor of botany at Dublin, J.H. Balfour, professor of botany at Edinburgh, H.C. Watson of the Botanical Society of London, who was the first to make a systematic study of plant geography, and Broome's friend G.H.K. Thwaites ,who later took up the post of Superintendent of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Ceylon. Our library also contains many of the books referred to, or written by, the collectors. This makes them very useful for historical research and the exsiccatae add to their usefulness for taxonomic research. They are of less use when it comes to ecological Table.

studies as most specimens have little or no annotation on habitat or precise location of collection, and most species are represented by only a few examples.
In addition to the main collections there are other items which can help us understand the mood and interests of the times, like the small collection of specimens gathered on some of W.E. Parry's Arctic expeditions; the beautiful collages using dried seaweed created by a lady from Jersey who, for the time being, remains anonymous, and the specimens illustrated, which have been mounted in small frames as though they were intended to hang on a wall.
Now that our valuable herbaria are becoming more accessible there remains the problem of obtaining permanent storage accommodation for them. They are currently very vulnerable to insect attack because much of the collection is only protected by a wrapping of paper and by any chemicals used as insecticide when they were prepared. We are urgently in need of air-tight herbarium cabinets, and an old chest freezer in which to sterilise material.would also come in handy. If any members have contacts who may be aware of a museum or institution that is modernising its storage facilities and discarding old cabinets please get in touch. We cannot afford to sit back and let nature take its course.

References:-
Brown, D.H., House, K.L. & David, J.C. (I988). On the Indentity of a Cryptogram Herbarium in Bath Geological Museum.. Proceedings of the Bristol Naturalists' Society, 46:43-49.
B.N.S., Bristol.
Kent, D.H., Bangerter, E.B. & Lousley, J.E. (1957). British Herbaria. B.S.B.I., London.
Kent, D.H. & Allen, D.E. (1984). British and Irish Herbaria. B.S.B.I., London.
Lovatt, C.M. (1982) The history, ecology and status of the rare plants and the vegetation of the Avon Gorge, Bristol.. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of Bristol.
Vaughan, R.F. (I993). Re-Launch - The Exhibition.. B.R.L.S.I., Bath.