Herbarium & Bestiary
my attempt at studying and archiving the ‘plant life’ and ‘critters’ I encounter
Resources: History and Modern Uses of a Herbarium, by Sarah Verlinde-Azofeifa, October 24th 2016
The term herbarium was first used as ‘a collection of dried medicinal plants cataloged within a bound book’. The Botany professor Luca Ghini is credited (in the 16th century) to be the first person to press and preserve plants under pressure, and bind the specimens within a book.
This quickly became the usual practice throughout Europe. Specimens were housed in researchers’ personal collections, and extra specimens were traded with other botanists.
Nowadays many scientific herbaria are published online and often open to the public, so everyone can access, and even contribute collecting data on plant life.
Herbarium
/həːˈbɛːrɪəm/
noun
a systematically arranged collection of dried plants
Bestiary
/ˈbes.ti.ə.ri/
noun
a book containing descriptions of real and imaginary animals
Californian Poppy | Eschscholzia californica
*Goudpapaver, ‘Slaapmutsje’
Why do I keep one?
Contemporary Herbaria are made for different usages. I pressed my first specimens in 2023 as an experiment. Studying and cataloging the plants I encounter, turned out to be very fascinating and became a big part of my artistic research.
Alongside the physical dried plants and collection of small animals in our ‘BeestjesArchief’, the digital archive has become a tool to attach more visual references and ordering bits and pieces of info. I found this method helps me memorise better and to turn random facts into more long-term knowledge ♥.
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