Sustainability Forum

In our first of two back to back episodes concerning the overlap between ecological conservation and cultural heritage conservation, Lindsey speaks with Dr Jordan Teisher, director of the herbarium at the Missouri Botanic Gardens in St Louis, Missouri.

Herbariums and other natural history collections contain a wealth of human heritage even if socially we no longer associate them with 'art' or other 'cultural' objects of value. While some cultures have particular reverence or place significant value upon specific plants, animals or places, it seems that the people of most Western nations have largely ignored the value of our ecological heritage unless participating in the botanical community themselves.

Many of the challenges faced by herbarium collections are familiar to museum and library conservators: from navigating overseas loans, developing robust integrated pest management plans, maintaining databases, and participating in digitization efforts. Jordan points out that even though an herbarium specimen isn't a man-made object like a book or a painting, it still  is curated and because it was harvested, mounted, and described through the perspective of a person has historical and cultural significance beyond its ecological significance .

Even conservation professionals may not see plants as having their own material culture value unless they are elements of an 'art object' made by a person, since then they better fall under our purview.

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