Ukrainian scientists entered a war zone to save thousands of dead plants. I would do the same.
What would you risk in the name of science and history?
This week, an article covering the rescue of an herbarium collection in war-torn Kherson, Ukraine, was published in WIRED magazine: Ukraine's Botanists Risked Their Lives for a Priceless Collection. It details the lengths to which botany professors had to go to save the Kherson herbarium, described as “an irreplaceable collection of more than 32,000 plants, lichen, mosses, and fungi, amassed over a century by generations of scientists.”
What are the factors that would push scientists to literally risk life and limb to rescue boxes full of dried, pressed plants? To understand this, first I need to explain what an herbarium is.
What is an herbarium?
An herbarium is a specialized collection of dried, labeled, and systematically arranged plant specimens, serving as a crucial data source for biodiversity, ecological, and evolutionary research. Functioning as a biological library, herbaria document plant variations across different habitats and timelines, enabling investigations into genomic structure, DNA-level variation, and gene expression, thus providing a foundational resource for understanding global biodiversity.
I wrote about this in The Plant Hunter:
When people hear the term herbarium, visions of lush tropical greenhouses often come to mind, but an herbarium is more like a library—instead of shelves of books, there are stacks of flattened plant specimens that have been dried and glued to sheets of acid- free paper. In other words, herbaria are a type of natural history collection, each herbarium sheet represents the state at which a plant found in a certain point in time in a certain geographic space. Herbarium specimens serve as a record of life and are essential to research across the fields of botany, ecology, climate change research, ethnobotany, and, in my case, medicine. —The Plant Hunter, Cassandra Quave
How many herbaria are there?
According to the Index Herbariorum, a comprehensive global online database, there are 3,100 herbaria housing 390 million botanical specimens. In the USA, there 686 active collections.
Why should herbaria be saved?
Whereas a seed bank holds the future of plants (seeds that can be grown out), herbaria represent a picture of the past, offering the only verifiable documentation of plant life on Earth in specific places and at specific points in time. In some cases, herbaria are the only records we have remaining of plants that are extinct or at the precipice of extinction.
“There is no need to risk anyone's life to save some equipment or a building,” Moisienko says, noting with passing remorse how he’d been pained to leave behind one of his prized microscopes. “For this collection, when it's gone, it's gone. There is no way to get it back.” —WIRED article by Johanna Chisolm
The United States National Herbarium, based within the National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, offers a list of 32 uses for herbaria. Here are ten that I want to highlight:
Discover or confirm the identity of a plant or determine that it is new to science
Serve as a secure repository for “type” specimens;
Document which plants grew where through time (invasive species, climate change, habitat destruction, etc.);
Document what plants grew with what other plants (ecology);
Document the morphology and anatomy of individuals of a particular species in different locations (environmental variation);
Provide material for DNA analysis (systematics, evolution, genetics);
Provide material for teaching (botany, taxonomy, field botany, plant communities);
Provide information for studies of expeditions and explorers (history of science);
Serve as a means of locating rare or possibly extinct species via recollecting areas listed on label data (conservation biology, environmental impact statements, endangered species, etc.);
Serve as an educational tool for the public (garden clubs, school groups, etc.).
Additionally, in my own research, herbarium specimens are critical as the basis for authenticating the identity of species that we study in the lab in our search for new medicines from nature. Our research would not be possible without such this university collection. One recent study noted that small herbaria, in particular, make unique contributions to the biogeography of regions across time and space.
Globally, herbaria, especially smaller small (<100k specimens) like those found in Kherson State University or my home institution, Emory University Herbarium, are under threat. These collections face possible extinction due to regional instability caused by war, or due to insufficient operating budgets needed for staff and infrastructure maintenance. Herbaria are often undervalued, ranking low on the list of priorities for university support or funding. Despite this, they are essential to the infrastructure of biological research and provide a glimpse into Earth's past—a perspective that is becoming increasingly crucial as the impacts of climate change intensify.
I know this struggle all too well. Before volunteering to take on the Emory Herbarium as Curator/Director in 2012, it had been abandoned for years, the specimens left in disarray and without sufficient climate and insect control measures in place. Slowly, over the next decade, we repaired and updated over 23,000 physical specimens, and then digitized them to increase global access via the SERNEC web portal.
Without a fixed operational budget from the university, we struggle each year to keep our doors open, scraping by with what philanthropic donations we can secure from local plant enthusiasts. Ultimately, the only path forward I can envision to securing the collection in perpetuity is to raise an endowment of $2 million USD. An endowment at this level would generate enough interest income each year to cover the costs of one staff person (collections manager) and basic supplies to support our operations.
But, $2 million is a big number. Where to start on this journey to secure the Emory Herbarium’s future? If you or someone in your network might be able to help us, please reach out to me by email at cquave@emory.com. If you can’t contribute large sums to an endowment campaign, but would like to make a small donation directly to the Emory Herbarium to support operations, you can do so through this secure giving link at Emory. All donations are extremely appreciated as we fight to keep the doors open on this important resource.
The Takeaway
The importance of herbaria to natural history and research in the research fields of botany, biology, ecology, genetics, chemistry, drug discovery, climate change, and food systems cannot be underestimated. Botanists know this all too well—to the point that they are willing to risk their lives in the midst of a war to save herbarium specimens. Ironically, at the same time that scientists in Ukraine fight to save their specimens from bombs and fire damage, many collections in the USA are quietly disappearing due to neglect and lack of funding. I hope you’ll join me in fighting to keep the Emory Herbarium open.
Yours in health, Dr. Quave
Cassandra L. Quave, Ph.D. is a scientist, author, speaker, podcast host, wife, mother, explorer, and professor at Emory University School of Medicine. She teaches college courses and leads a group of research scientists studying medicinal plants to find new life-saving drugs from nature. She hosts the Foodie Pharmacology podcast and writes the Nature’s Pharmacy newsletter to share the science behind natural medicines. To support her effort, consider a paid or founding subscription, with founding members receiving an autographed 1st edition hardcover copy of her book, The Plant Hunter.
I want to mention private herbaria. I happen to have a tiny one that I started in a Botany 101 class at the University of North Georgia. After that, I had to make myself a plant press. I don't do anything by the books but it's a wonderful resource for me, as important as the files in my cabinet.