Cultivating Botanical Collections

Across the U.S., the study of plants has suffered from budget cuts and the closing of institutions dedicated to botanical research. At the Penn Museum, an international collaborative project keeps a spotlight on the wonder of plants.

By Joyce White

August 23, 2024

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Members from the Ban Chiang Project’s Year of Botany program trained in plant specimen mounting procedures at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Field specimens are dried when they are collected on site usually folded into newspaper. When they are ready for accessioning to an herbarium the specimens are fastened to acid-free herbarium sheets using special glue, tape, and, if needed, large stems are sewn on to the herbarium sheets; photo by Louis Andracchio.

On the one hand, herbariums and herbarium specimens are endangered, as many institutions have closed down their herbariums (which are essentially libraries for dried scientific plant specimens). On the other hand, herbarium collections are being touted as key to combating climate change and to other political and social concerns like maintaining biodiversity.

An international collaborative project at Penn Museum, the Ban Chiang Project’s Year of Botany, focuses on preserving botanical specimens collected from Thailand more than 40 years ago. This collection will be mined for knowledge about Indigenous wisdom on plant-human relations of deep time depth in that region.

From 1978–1981, a Penn Museum project resulted in a bespoke botanical collection designed to benefit the Museum’s archaeological research in Thailand. For various reasons, that field collection remained untouched since 1981—that is, until 2024.

This year, a team of international scholars and students joined forces at the Penn Museum to curate the original field collection of more than 1,000 botanical specimens by mounting each one to herbarium standards in preparation for the collection’s accessioning to the world-renowned Philadelphia Herbarium at the Academy of Natural Sciences (where Lewis and Clark’s collection is housed).

Data, acquired both during the original fieldwork and from the expertise of the international team, is being compiled for both archival purposes and for publication. It will be available to future research users including archaeobotanists, plant geneticists, and ethnobotanists.

Plants on a porch in Thailand, a photo from the 1970s — This photo shows plants drying on the porch of the house where Joyce White conducted her ethnobotanical study in Ban Chiang village. The pressed plants are sandwiched between cardboard sheets tied as a bundle between wooden latices. Bulk samples such as of fruits and sheaves of rice (called carpological specimens) are bagged separately from the pressed specimens; photo by Joyce White.

Dried plant specimens from Thailand stored in the Penn Museum — In addition to the dried plant sample, labels providing the scientific name, location, date of collection and other information are affixed to each herbarium sheet. A small envelope of fragments such as loose seeds is attached in one corner; photo by Varangrat Nguanchoo.

A man looks at dried plant specimens in the Penn Museum — The Year of Botany team included Dr. Prachaya Srisanga, a leading plant taxonomist from the Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Dr. Srisanga identified the scientific name of each of the more than 1,000 specimens collected by Joyce White in 1978–1981; photo by Kellie O’Brien.

A woman studies plant specimens at the Penn museum — Another Thai member of the Ban Chiang Year of Botany team is Dr. Varangrat Nguanchoo. Using her expertise in Thai ethnobotany (local understanding of plant resources), she compiled the field documentation on each plant specimen into a comprehensive spreadsheet; photo by Stephen Lang.

A researcher from Thailand studies plant specimens in the Penn Museum — Thitipha Kuttawas, a graduate student from the Plant Science Department of Mahidol University, was an intern who participated in all aspects of Year of Botany activities, including specimen mounting; photo by Varangrat Nguanchoo.

As the Director of the Penn Museum’s Ban Chiang Project, I undertook the original field collection of these specimens when I was embedded in Ban Chiang village. I reached out to a plant scientist at Mahidol University, Dr. Sasivimon Swangpol, to find Thai botanical expertise to undertake key curation aspects.

I also reached out to the collections manager of the Philadelphia Herbarium, Dr. Chelsea Smith, to arrange that the collection would be accessioned there, after curation. Dr. Smith not only agreed, she set aside a discrete cabinet at the Philadelphia Herbarium to house the Ban Chiang special collection.

The stage was set for experts to fly in from Thailand and Britain (after Penn’s International Students and Scholars Services took several months to arrange J-1 visas), interns and volunteers were solicited to help with mounting, photography, digitization, and data entry.

A woman on a porch in Thailand in the 1970s, with paperwork and documents — The author Joyce White pictured in the field house with her principal informant Li Hirionatha. As the fieldwork was done before the time of personal laptop computers, data on each plant collected was written by hand in a paper registry. Mr. Hirionatha, an extremely knowledgeable Ban Chiang farmer, provided the local knowledge recorded in the data sheets; photo by Victor Banks.

Three researchers work on plant specimens at the Academy of Natural Sciences — Dr. Chelsea Smith (right), Collections Manager at the Philadelphia Herbarium, trained Dr. Varangrat Nguanchoo (center) and Thitipa Kuttawas at the Academy of Natural Sciences in their mounting protocols.

A researcher attaches plant specimens to paper for archival purposes — Emily Davis, a specimen mounter at the Philadelphia Herbarium with 10 years of experience, was one of the volunteers lent to the Ban Chiang Year of Botany group who helped us finish the mounting program by early August; photo by Varangrat Nguanchoo.

Two people store plant specimens in an archival process — Hannah Villines and Steve Leonard were other volunteers on the mounting team.

The schedule was tight, but Dr. Prachaya Srisanga from the Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden undertook the scientific identifications for the full collection. Dr. Varangrat Nguanchoo, ethnobotanist from Phetchaburi Rajabhat University, created a beautiful herbarium label for each specimen and masterminded the specimen mounting with a team of interns and volunteers.

Dr. Nguanchoo also oversaw the collation of field data that had originally been handwritten in the days before personal computers and digital spreadsheets. She is now preparing an initial publication on the collection and its significance to science.

An herbarium label describing a plant species — Example of an herbarium label for the Ban Chiang collection. Key information includes the research program, the collector and the collector’s specimen number, the Latin name, the taxonomist who determined the Latin classification, and the date and location of the specimen’s collection.

An image of a plant specimen with a color checker and a label — Example of a carpological (bulk) specimen. Pterocarpus macrocarpus is an important durable wood often used in industrial applications for house building. The wing fruits and seeds sample were collected and dried from Ban Pulu for the purpose of creating carpological fruit specimens, and they are ready to be accessioned at the Academy of Natural Sciences; photo by Lea Belland.

A close up image of a plant specimen — Example of a fully prepared specimen for a pressed plant sample. *Nelumbo nucifera,* commonly known as lotus, was used as an edible and medicinal plant by people in Ban Chiang. The flower, leaf and fruits were collected in 1980 from Nong Laeng. In 2024, it was mounted as a specimen, labeled with relevant information, and is now ready to be accessioned at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

An added delight has been the ”discovery” that an ethnographic collection I undertook for the Penn Museum in 1981 provides specific objects that illustrate uses for many plants in the botanical collection!

The ethnobotanical portion of the Ban Chiang Project’s Year of Botany is on the road to completion by the end of the summer, at least the preparation of the specimens for accessioning to the Academy’s herbarium, although photography, data compilation, and formal accessioning will continue into the fall.

So it has taken a village, or at least a global team, to pull off this whirlwind effort for this portion of the Year of Botany.

A team of Penn Museum researchers pose in front of a plant cabinet — The Year of Botany team at the Philadelphia Herbarium where Dr. Chelsea Smith (second from left) has set aside a special cabinet to house the collection, once it has been transferred this fall; photo by Elizabeth Hamilton.

Joyce White is the Director of the Middle Mekong Archaeological Project at Penn Museum and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology.

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