Dead plants tend to be of little interest to gardeners, except maybe as cautionary tales for future gardening plans. But dried plant specimens, archived in herbaria, are a source of continuous study among botanists and other scientists, providing valuable information about plant habitat, taxonomy, anatomy, genetics and a host of related scientific fields.
There are nearly 3,000 herbaria worldwide, containing a total of 375 million plant species. New York Botanical Garden has the second largest herbarium in the world, containing over 7.8 million preserved plants and fungi (the National Museum of Natural History in Paris has the largest).
In 19th and early 20th-century America, keeping an herbarium was a common practice. At Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, it was a required part of the botany curriculum until 1910. Students were expected to collect at least 300 different specimens. These were dried and mounted on stiff paper, with their names, location and other pertinent details affixed.
Collecting plants was one of the only activities students were permitted to do while taking their daily, mandatory one-mile walk. Mount Holyoke founder Mary Lyon kept an herbarium, along with botany professors Lydia Shattuck and Henrietta Hooker, both Mount Holyoke graduates. Even in its early years, Mount Holyoke emphasized the study of science.
Emily Dickinson, who attended Mount Holyoke from 1847 to 1848, made an exemplary herbarium containing more than 400 specimens. This work was extremely satisfying to her and helped her stay in touch with her good friend and classmate from Amherst Academy, Abiah Root, who had moved away from the Amherst area. In a letter to Root, Dickinson wrote: “Have you made an herbarium yet? I hope you will if you have not, it would be such a treasure to you; most all the girls are making one. If you do, perhaps I can make some additions to it from flowers growing around here.”
Emily’s early interest in plants and flowers presaged her lifelong passion for natural history and botany. She often included pressed flowers in her correspondence, and wrote many plant-themed poems about gentians, indian pipes, may-flowers and other local flora.
Dickinson’s herbarium is housed in Harvard University’s Houghton Library, but due to its fragility the original has been locked in a vault for many years. In 2006, Harvard published “Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Facsimile.” The collection has now been digitized and is searchable by plant name. You can find it on the Internet in Harvard’s digital collections.
Mickey Rathbun can be reached at foxglover8@gmail.com.