Water, fire, & insects

These are three primary worries of herbarium curators. The collection TPP curates is small, only 50,000 or so specimens.  Some of them date back 200 years, some were collected by famous people, and some are precious records of prior diversity. Basically our herbarium is a teaching facility. Still such collections are irreplaceable so their safety must be insured. Insects have not been a problem for us, and the sealed cases work well. However, the collection is on the first floor of a 4 story building and the infrastructure is crumbling particularly the plumbing. See where this is going? Leaks are quite common, and were even more common, and more noxious, when some chemists lived up stairs. When you turn on the tap in a sink in TPP's lab the water runs brown for quite awhile. Now some of the plumbing is due to be replaced, by necessity, so when maintenance people say there may be some unanticipated leaks while repairs are being made, us herbarium curators sit up and pay attention. Oh, and while fire is a long-shot problem, you have to make certain that water isn't used to put out a fire in the herbarium, and you hope no fire must be put out on the floors above. Water always finds its way down. So during the rest of this week TPP will be fitting some plastic sheeting over the rows of specimen cases to offer some protection should the worst happen. Ironically, while doing this the message arrives telling us that the building will be without water over the Thanksgiving break except maybe for leaks. TPP took some time to show the plumbers what the worry was, and interestingly enough, they were impressed by the age and condition of old specimens, and the size of the collection. The next day a big roll of plastic sheeting arrived.

Herbarium specimen filing problem

Here's a problem TPP has never had to deal with before.  Our herbarium contains an unfiled folder of historically important specimens collected a bit over 100 years ago by Mary Strong Clemens, a famous plant collector, from places like Yellowstone National Park, but to be accessible, they need to be in the collection.  The problem is that two to six different unrelated plants specimens are crowed onto 5" x 8"  small pieces of mounting paper (the collector was probably short on paper) and labeled by hand right on the paper right next to the specimen.  Now there are couple of possible solutions.  First, you might attempt paper doll "surgery" to separate the specimens mounting the pieces of the original sheet on a new piece of mounting paper, but even with a careful hand this may not be easy or possible on all of these sheets, and aesthetically, it's a terrible solution.  The solution that is leading the pack is to scan the specimens, like the above image, print it on archival paper and then file the "copies" in the right place for each specimen, but include a pointer on the photocopy "specimens" telling you where to find the "original", which will be filed correctly for one of the specimens.  This sounds like a good little project for the next student intern to come along.  Any other suggestions or solutions? 

Who took the preserved ginkgo?

Specimens are always a problem, and how can you teach students about organisms if you can't put the organism, or at least significant pieces thereof, into their hot little hands?  Let's say you want your students to understand the reproductive structures of a ginkgo, using them to compare to those of conifers, so you have to have specimens.  Now with this in mind, TPP had collected pollen cones and ovulate structures from ginkgo trees and preserved them in ethanol, two half gallon jars of pickled ginkgo, enough to last for years.  The other reason this is necessary is that ginkgo trees don't produce these structures except once a year, usually in the last week of the semester on average, and the lab class is always at a different time of year.  So you go to the cupboard, and there's only one jar; it says ovulate ginkgo on the lid's label, but it's actually pollen cones. Where the bloody hell is the other jar?  Someone used them, and accidentally switched the lids, but for reasons as yet undetermined, did not replace the other jar.  The problem with this is that by the time you figure this out, it's too late.  Even if this had been know at the beginning of the semester, it makes no difference because you can't just go out and buy pickled reproductive structures of ginkgo.  They're only good for just one thing, teaching, and nobody who teaches knows anything.  Something is very suspicious, very suspicious indeed.  There are only so many classes that would use such specimens, and only certain people instruct those classes, so the number of suspects is pretty finite.  Some wandering gypsies didn't make off with them and no ransom notes have been received.  Ginkgo?  Oh, yeah, them trees.  Seems my colleagues have pretty good alibis or very convenient memories.  Guess some things should be kept under lock and key, but TPP is just so trusting.  Now to remember that new specimens are needed when the ginkgo pollination season rolls around again.