Latest Event Updates
Happy New Year 2012!
It may have snowed on the blog during December, but so far this wet and windy winter has been quite gentle to the museum allotment. From up here in the herbarium tower it’s looking quite green down there in the museum courtyard.
Some of the greenery is from perennial plants such as the strawberries which are waiting for the spring, but there are also plenty of over-wintering crops such as kale, winter cabbage and kohl rabi.
There are also little spearheads of garlic (Allium sativum) emerging from out of the compost. Despite needing sunshine in the summer and well-drained soil to keep away the damp, it’s said that the flavour of the garlic inproves if it gets a winter chill. There is still plenty of winter to come if you want to try growing it at home.
Touring the herbarium with Manchester’s plant scientists
Yesterday I welcomed a group of scientists from the University of Manchester to the herbarium. Some study flowering plants like tobacco and barley, while others work with ferns, mosses and algae.
We discussed the ways that herbaria can be used, both to conduct scientific research and to teach people about plants. It’s nice to think how little the aims of the herbarium have changed over the years since the collections were first being put together.
Take our beautiful plant models for example:
In 1892, Frederick Wiess (the second Professor of Botany at the University of Manchester) valued the way that models could show the fine structure of a plant to a room full of people, saying that: “there are models and there are models…..the carefully prepared models, as supplied by Brendel, are a lesson in themselves.”
In the intervening years, there have been great changes both in the tools available to study plants and those to show them to an audience. But despite inventions such as Powerpoint and improvements in microscopy, these models still do the job that they were made for and are viewed by 1st year undergraduates learning about the variety of life.
To read more about models by Brendel, follow this link:
http://curatorialtrainee.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/botanical-models/
How time flies……..
………when you’re having fun! I’m Rachel, the new curator of botany and I can’t believe I’ve already been here over a month. I guess it’s because there are just so many interesting things to look at.
museum souvenir book
Choosing objects to be professionally photographed for a new Manchester Museum coffee table book.
Glass jars from Materia medica:
And some illustrations of orchids
Break
Still having a break from the blog.
Will resume when we have a new Curator of Botany (hopefully soon!)
drawing
Selecting boxed specimens to go in the museum’s Resource Centre for art students. They can come in and draw anytime the museum is open.
I had fun choosing a variety of colours and textures.
Curator of Botany
Fancy working here? This post is now being advertised:
Curator of Botany, The Manchester Museum
Closing date: 27/06/2011
Reference: ACS/12148
We are looking for a Curator of Botany with experience of interpreting botanical collections and managing botanical collections. With around one million botanical specimens, the Manchester Museum has one of the finest collections of its kind in the UK.
You will work in a vibrant environment on a range of activities. Working collaboratively towards the delivery of institutional workplans is an essential and key part of the role. You will have managerial responsibility for the botanical collections and staff; participate in and lead on the development of exhibitions and projects; work as a go-between between academia and the museum’s audiences, and contribute to the teaching, research and social responsibility agendas of the University of Manchester.
The successful candidate will have a first degree in biological sciences and a minimum of three years’ experience of working with natural sciences collections. You will have excellent communication skills, the ability to work with others, excellent organisational skills and a flexible approach to work. This is a full time post, but may be suitable for job share.
Full details and forms to download
Quiet
Things are going to be a bit quiet on the Herbology Manchester blog as I’m having a blog break for a few months.
I’ll still be on twitter (follow me: my twitter name is Aristolochia).
See you later in the year!
Fern Hunting in China
There are 1500 species of fern in Yunnan Province, China – compared to just 50 in Britain. Yvonne Golding of the British Pteridiological Society arranged a fern hunting trip to Yunnan last year, and in February 2011 gave a talk with slides about the hundreds of ferns they saw, what they ate and the people they met.
Two herbarium sheets and some of Yvonne’s chinese fern books
Unusual Trees to Look Out for (8) & (9)
Araucaria heterophylla, Norfolk Island Pine 165/24
Meaning: The genus is named for the Araucaria Indians of Patagonia, and heterophylla = different-leaved, referring to the conspicuous difference between young and mature plants. Sometimes also called “star pine” because of its symmetrical shape as a sapling. Synonym: A. excelsa. There are 19 species in the genus.
No more a pine than the Chile Pine (Monkey-Puzzle Tree), these survivors of a very old coniferous family are scattered around the Pacific and of course, Chile. From an origin in the Triassic, the family expanded and diversified in both hemispheres in the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous and remained a significant component of Gondwanan vegetation until the latter part of the Cenozoic. Norfolk Island is located between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia, and the genus is especially concentrated about 700 km north of Norfolk Island, where 13 closely related species are found. In their native habitat A. heterophylla can grow to a height of up to 65m.
According to two supposedly authoritative sources, the only known outdoor specimen in the British Isles is in the Scillies, but I think this may be out of date. In recent years, they have had some popularity as an indoor potted Christmas tree, although they need some care to flourish. Outdoors, although they’re known to be quite happy in salt and wind, they’re said not to survive in areas of prolonged cold. Some people may have a strong allergic reaction if they touch the leaves. They are, however, widely planted in Australia, New Zealand, southern Florida, coastal California, south Texas, Hawaii, coastal Chile, South Africa, and some cities of Brazil.
There’s a considerable bit of history attached to Norfolk Island and its ‘pines’, and other plants, too, particularly New Zealand flax. It was made a penal colony in the 1780s, mainly for Australian convicts who were too mutinous even for Australia, and this practice continued until 1847. Meanwhile, in 1789, the Bounty mutineers had been marooned on Pitcairn Island. They intermarried with Tahitians, and by 1856, 194 of their descendants, who had become too numerous for Pitcairn, were allowed to resettle on Norfolk. The story of how the settlers had planted two rows of the pines to create a magnificent avenue, and how, now a majestic 80 feet tall and six feet in diameter, they came to be cut down in the course of World War II in the Pacific, is told in James A. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, Chapter 3, “Mutiny”. We also have Michener’s book to thank for the musical. The island of Bali-ha’i in the stage story and film is said by no less an authority than Stephen Jay Gould to be based on the island of Moorea, and some of Moorea’s natural history is also the subject of an essay in Gould’s Eight Little Piggies.
Araucaria araucana, Monkey-Puzzle Tree 165/24
Meaning: As above, plus species named for the Araucano Indians of Chile.
The tree was first found in Chile in the 1780s by the botanical explorer Molina. Before 1850, it was known in England as “Joseph Banks’s Pine” or “Chile Pine”. In about 1850, when it began to be cultivated in England, the species was still very rare in gardens and not widely known. The proud owner of a young specimen at Pencarrow Gardens near Bodmin, in Cornwall, was showing it to a group of friends. One remarked that “It would puzzle a monkey to climb that”, and the name “Monkey-puzzle” stuck as a popular term.
A. araucana in Whalley Range, Manchester
In the mountains of Chile
A big thank you to Botany volunteer Dan King for the idea, words and images of ‘Unusual Trees Around Manchester’.
Herbology Manchester 