Curiosity Cabinets

I had a splendid time this morning listening to a Linnean Society webinar entitled "Rearranging the Universe | The Enduring Spell of Curiosity Cabinets" by Geovanni Aloi.  It was an evening  lecture in London, which meant it was an 11:30 event here in ABQ.  That suited me perfectly as I am not terribly active as I recover from surgery.  

The discussion was quite wide-ranging and touched on several points that are relevant to not only my own office (a sort of curiosity cabinet itself) but to botanical gardens in general and herbaria in particular.  It's timely in that I just got word that the BioPark Society has setup one of it's donated herbarium cabinets in there offices down on 10th St.  

Thank you, Rotary Club

Herbaria began to take their modern form 4 centuries ago.  By the 1700's we had fairly standard methods as collections began to take on the role of name bearers.  The concept of the type specimen became central to botanical nomenclature.  We continue to have a myopic focus on named species.  The NM Rare Plants Technical Council focuses most of its energy on listed species and only secondarily on endangered habitats.  Our phenological observations are predicated on data from specific individual plants that we revisit every week.  (In February there is a confluence of these things as the Rare Plants TC meeting and a Nature's Notebook presentation and tour occur on the same day.)

Collections of natural objects have long been a human preoccupation.  Our very survival from deepest times probably owes a great part to our ability to notice our environment and pass on our observations to subsequent generations.  

Our own consciousness at root focuses on patterns:  similarities and differences that have meaning.  Our perception is constrained by our senses, which scan the environment like a searchlight in the dark, sweeping a narrow beam of attention.  Alan Watts, in his work “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are,” Chapter Two: “The Game of Black-and-White” put it eloquently:  

“Attention is therefore something like a scanning mechanism in radar or television [...] But a scanning process that observes the world bit by bit soon persuades its user that the world is a great collection of bits, and these he calls separate things or events. [...] The truth is that in looking at the world bit by bit we convince ourselves that it consists of separate things [...] We do not see that the world is all of a piece like the head-tailed cat.”  

I consider myself both a plant taxonomist and an ecologist.  At that intersection is a world where at first individual species are all important and then, with a twist of the mind, not important at all.  The important thing then becomes the system with all its glorious chaos and moving parts.  As it turns out, both view points are valid and important.  

Returning to the subject of curiosities, whether a garden, a room, a shelf, or a herbarium, we find that they all reflect a great deal about the culture of the times and its values as well as the personality of the collector.  

My office collections feature books, family memorabilia, crafts (mostly gifts from others), photographs, and small figurines that have personal meaning to me.  Grandfather's Mauser, a WW1 war prize, hangs on the wall.  It hasn't been fired in over 100 years and is a testimony to the family's survival through two great wars and all the little ones since.  No Horak has been in the military since Henry was drafted in WW2.  Of course, there's also the teddy bear collection, which has now expanded to a large stuffed critter collection.  Each is named.  Each has a story.

But I digress. 

Turning to more public collections, the botanical garden itself is a horticultural showcase that demonstrates that Albuquerque is a place of cultured appreciation.  Having a noteworthy garden is a point of civic pride and its collections focus on New Mexico habitats, local conservation efforts, and comparisons with similar habitats worldwide.  

The herbarium at the Botanic Garden continues to flourish, albeit slowly.  Cabinets have been obtained.  The collection grows as Sheila and I harvest and press materials.  Summer students help with the mounting.  We have a meeting in two weeks to plot next steps.  At last the herbarium is moving beyond a curiosity, becoming both a notable educational tool and an important part of their IUCN work.  

More to come when I dig deep into the BioPark's conservation efforts like their seed bank and ex sito collections.