Unlocking UK's 200-Year-Old Plant Secrets: A Digital Biodiversity Time Capsule

At the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, there is a special collection of over 10,000 dried and pressed plant specimens. This collection, called a herbarium, is like a time-capsule that holds plants from as far back as 1797. Some of these plants were picked more than two centuries ago, and a few have connections to the famous scientist Charles Darwin. The university is now working to digitise the entire collection. This means they are photographing each plant and recording all the information about it on computers. By doing this, they hope to make the collection easier for researchers to use and study.

Dr Kelly Hemmings, who works at the university, says that the herbarium is a hidden record of the UK’s natural history. Until now, the only way to find out what was in the collection was to look through the handwritten sheets one by one. By digitising the collection, all the information will be available online, making it much easier for scientists to study. Dr Hemmings believes that the collection can help researchers learn about climate change, genetics, and how different habitats have changed over time. She says that the herbarium can show patterns of biodiversity change over the last two hundred years, which is very valuable for understanding the environment today.

The Royal Agricultural University is part of a national project that aims to connect around a million plant specimens from museums and herbaria across the UK. The herbarium sheets are carefully preserved, and if looked after properly, they can last for hundreds of years. Many of the plants in the collection were picked when they were in full bloom, and each one has a label with details about where and when it was collected. By comparing old plants with new ones, scientists can see if things like flowering times have changed because of climate change. The university hopes that by digitising the collection, it will be protected for future generations and will help scientists all over the world learn more about the UK’s plants and natural history.