Follow petcha on Twitter
Search
Journals
Amazon Associate

If you see books or music or tools on this site that you would like to buy through Amazon, click here and thus i have seen will get a small percentage of the purchase price of the item. Thank you. 

The Elements of Typographic Style

Patagonia Synchilla Snap-T Pullover

Minding the Earth, Mending the Word: Zen and the Art of Planetary Crisis

North Face Base Camp Duffel (Medium)

 

 

 

« Growth Data for Wild Rattans | Main | Newt »
Friday
Aug232013

Collections Notebook

When you collect an herbarium specimen (see Herbarium Specimens), you need to write down the information about where you collected it, how big the tree was, what color the flowers and/or fruits were, and, maybe, what the plant is used for. You do this because if you don't you will forget these things, and you need the information to fill out the label that goes with the specimen. All botanists carry a collections notebook in the field for recording this information. My collections notebook from the mid- 1980's when I was working in the Peruvian Amazon is shown above.

Couple of things to note if you can make them out in the image. After 28 years, two of the collections, Nos. 183 and 189, still don't have a name. Collections Nos. 186 and 188, a Caryocar and a Couepia were determined by Sir Ghillean Prance, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew for eleven years and Vice-President for Botanical Science at NYBG before that and the person who hired me. No. 187, a Pourouma (see Uvilla), was determined by the late C.C. Berg, Dutch botanist, great guy, and world expert on the Moraceae, an enormous plant family comprising over 40 genera and 1000 species. 

I love looking through all of the stuff that's inside this old collections notebook, but the cover (see below) is also pretty fantastic. Was all that I could find at the time in Iquitos, Peru, but the bunny holding the tulip with the little bird on it seems perfect. [NOTE: I especially like the fact that I drew a moustache on the bunny for some reason].   

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>