When following a conversation with a senior editor at Yale University Press earlier this year at an academic conference, I happened to mention on a social media channel of this publication that Prof. Maura Flannery had a new book just published about the history of herbaria, the botany communities among the natural history and history of science enthusiasts who follow the account lit up with a level of excitement comparable to the general population’s assumed reaction if Elvis and John Lennon had been photographed sipping lattes together at a downtown Seattle Starbucks. But then such is to be expected when the author of what is quite likely the world’s best long-running blog on the subject of herbaria collects and makes available her extensive knowledge of the subject in a print published format.
In the Herbarium; The Hidden World of Collecting and Preserving Plants guides the botanically and historically curious through the fascinating five centuries over which collecting and preserving plant specimens into herbaria has been practiced. Essential for researchers in the field of botany, ecology, biodiversity, and climate science, as well as of considerable value to a much wider circle of professional and amateur scholars, and even gardeners and artists, herbaria have, as noted for centuries provides the specimen libraries to which those seeking to learn more about the Earth’s plants can turn for reference. As such, they are well deserved of such a history as only one of the world foremost experts on them could write.
