Vellum keeps a working herbarium of pressed plants alongside an archive of historical botanical plates. Each holding is catalogued, numbered, and read against the illustration that first named it — a slow accounting of the green world, one specimen at a time.
A pressed spike of foxglove, mounted beside the 1887 Köhler plate that the archive holds for the species. The dried corollas keep enough of their spotted throat to read against the illustration, though the violet has cooled to a paper brown over three decades on the…
Valerian pressed at full flower, its domed head of pale pink flowers flattened but intact. The archive keeps it beside the Köhler plate, which shows the same corymb and the thick rhizome the plant is chiefly known for. Even dried, the root fragment on the sheet…
A single flowering stem of arnica, its ray florets pressed slightly askew — the plant does not flatten evenly, and the sheet keeps that awkwardness honestly. It is read against the Köhler plate, which lays the same daisy-like head out with more symmetry than the living…
A cutting from a tall yellow gentian — only the upper flowering whorls, since the whole plant would not fit a standard sheet. The Köhler plate the archive holds shows the full habit, and the two are filed together so the fragment can be read against…
A raceme of monk’s-hood, the hooded blue flowers pressed in profile so the shape that names the plant is legible on the sheet. It is held beside the Köhler plate, which renders the same hood and the divided leaves in more colour than the dried specimen…
One of the earliest sheets in the collection — common yarrow, pressed with its finely divided leaves fanned out to show the feathery structure that gives the species its epithet. It is read against the Köhler plate, though yarrow is common enough that the illustration adds…
“A herbarium is a garden that has agreed to hold still long enough to be read.”— From the accession notes, vol. i
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The old illustrations are gorgeous and occasionally wrong. Both facts matter to the archive.
The most responsible thing a modern herbarium does is refuse most of what it could take.
Holdings can be consulted in person, and the field-notes list carries new accessions as they are catalogued.
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