Tag Archives: Herbaria

Herbarium specimens exchange network at the end of the 19th century: the case of Frederic Trèmols

By Laura Gavioli, Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona (Institut Botànic de Barcelona), University of Barcelona.

During my visit at the herbarium of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (P) I was able to find a good number of specimens collected by Frederic Trèmols (Cadaqués 1831–1900). Trèmols was professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, and also pharmacist and botanist. He was member of important scientific organizations, including the Real Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona, the Société Botanique de France (of which he was also president between 1880 and 1885), and the Société Helvétique pour l’Échange des Plantes. He played a prominent role in the Societat Botànica Barcelonesa, being its secretary from its creation until the cessation of activities (1872–1878). As a botanist, his masterpiece was an herbarium of 12,951 specimens that he completed thanks to his own collections and the contributions of international botanists and botanical societies with which he collaborated. This herbarium, kept at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, is one of the first herbaria in Catalonia, largely made up of European plants.

Below you will find the botanists who caused the dispersal of Trèmols specimens in different parts of Europe although, nowadays, all of them are again reunited in the P herbarium. For each author different information is given: (i) a brief biographical note, (ii) data about their relationships with Trèmols and, whenever possible, (iii) an explanation of how the samples of the Catalan botanist arrived in their herbaria. To undersand the relationships between each author and Trèmols, I did a search in the Trèmols herbarium looking for samples of these authors. As a result, I am providing all the specimens collected for each author that are preserved in this collection. The aspect I want to highlight is whether there were direct exchanges between Trèmols and these botanists or, alternatively, whether the sending of plants took place through exchange companies.

Claude Albert Gérard (Vittel 1837–Thonon-les-Bains 1904) worked like Conservator des Hypothèques and, as a botanist, he mainly dealt with phanerogams, cryptogams and fungi. He collected mainly in eastern France and in Haute-Savoie, Ardennes and Bretagne assembling an herbarium of over 10,000 specimens. His herbarium, or at least parts of it, was sold in 1935 by Jean Auguste Ambroise Callé (1906–1981) to Bernard Guy Gaston Baron de Retz de Serviès (1910–2004), but it is unknown how J. Callé came into possession of the Gérard herbarium.

In the Trèmols herbarium we find 36 specimens collected by Gérard: 20 specimens that arrived directly by him, and 16 that arrived through plant exchange societies (mainly the Société Helvétique).

Sébastien René Lenormand (Condé-sur-Noireau 1796–Saint-Germain-de-Tallevende 1871) was a French lawyer, sub-prefect of Vire, and an amateur botanist who specialized in the field of phycology. Without ever leaving France he created a herbarium mainly composed of algae species, with a large number of specimens from botanists-travellers around the world. His herbarium was donated to Caen Botanical Garden, and it still survives despite the damage it suffered following the Allied bombings of 1944.

There is no sample collected by Lenormand in the Trèmols herbarium because the years of activity of both botanists only partially overlapped while they interests were different (algae for Lenormand and higher plants for Trèmols). It is likely that the Trèmols specimens arrived to Lenormand through Henry van Heurck, a Belgian botanist who sent and received herbarium samples from all over the world, and who was correspondent for both of them.

Hector Léveillé (Le Mans 1864–1918) was clergyman and botanist, and member of the Missions étrangères of Paris. In 1887 he travelled to India where he became a specialist in the flora of the Far East, mainly China and Korea. In 1891 he returned to Le Mans where he founded the magazine Le Monde des Plantes and the society Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique of which he became the secretary and director of its journal Bulletin de Géographie Botanique. He also founded the Association Française de Botaniques with Georges Rouy. His remarkable herbarium was acquired by George Forrest, a collector in Yunnan of China, and subsequently by the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.

Although there are no specimens collected by Léveillé in the Trèmols herbarium, we know that the two botanists were in correspondence thanks to two letters sent in 1895 by Trèmols to Rouy (manuscripts Ms 2617 / 592 preserved in the Correspondance scientifique de Georges Rouy collection of the library of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris). In these two letters Trèmols explains that he is arranging the acceptance of the two French botanists as members of the Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona and that he will send specimens to the Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique. This fact explains the presence of specimens collected by Trèmols in the Léveillé herbarium, while the absence of specimens collected by Léveillé in Trèmols herbarium can be thought of as non-reciprocity of these shipments.

Emmanuel Drake del Castillo (Paris 1855–Saint-Cyran-du-Jambot 1904) was the heir of a very rich family, and he devoted himself to botany. From 1884 until his death, he was the mayor of Saint-Cyran-du-Jambot. He studied the flora of Madagascar and created an herbarium of more than 500,000 specimens, which his widow donated to the National Museum of Natural History of Paris. He was president of the Société Botanique de France in the year 1900.

There are no specimens of Drake in the Trèmols herbarium; therefore, they did not exchange plants directly and the Trèmols specimens arrived in Drake herbarium through other botanists such as Rouy or van Heurck.

Eugène-Laurent Berher (Épinal 1822–1900) was doctor, botanist and bryologist in Épinal and he specialized in vascular plants, mosses and lichens. He mainly collected in the Vosges department and published a catalogue of vascular plants and one of the liverworts and mosses of Alsace.

In the Trèmols herbarium there are 52 specimens collected by Berher, mainly coming from the Société Helvétique, just like the specimes of Trèmols preserved in Berher herbarium.

Georges Rouy (Paris 1851–Asnières 1924) was born into a wealthy family, and he became a business administrator, journalist, secretary of a press union and a botanist. He collected plants in France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and Algeria, but he also enriched his herbarium thanks to the plant exchanges with many botanists and by purchase. His herbarium contains more than 500,000 samples; the vascular cryptogams are preserved in the National Museum of Natural History of Paris, and the rest in the University of Lyon. He was director of the Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique and vice-president of the Société Botanique de France.

In the Trèmols herbarium there are five specimens collected by Rouy and 33 of an exsiccata linked to Rouy (the transcription of the label’s heading of the exsiccate is: Herbier G. ROUY à PARIS 22 PASSAGE SAULNIER). These specimens were collected by ten different botanists like Julien Foucaud (1847–1904), Eugénio Schmitz (collector years 1868–1882), Eugène Jordan de Puyfol (1819–1891), Agostino Todaro (1818–1892), and Édouard Timbal-Lagrave (1819–1888).

There is evidence that the two botanists exchanged letters and plants, thanks to the existence of a letter from Trèmols to Rouy in 1895 in which he announced that he and Levéillé had been accepted as correspondent members of the Reial Academia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona (manuscripts Ms 2617 / 593 preserved in the Correspondance scientifique de Georges Rouy collection of the library of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris).

Xavier Vendrely (Champagney 1837–1908) was pharmacist and a botanist specialized in the flora of Franche-Comté. He created an important herbarium, with about 30,000 specimens from Western and Central Europe, the Balkans, America, Africa and even Australia and Nepal, now preserved in the National Museum of Natural History of Paris.

The Trèmols herbarium includes 24 specimens collected by Vendrely, mostly coming from the Société Helvétique of which both were members.

Ludovic Giraudias (Saintes 1848–Orléans 1922) was receveur de l’enregistrement [tax collector] in Asprières, composer and amateur botanist. He mainly collected in Aveyron and was the founder of the Association Pyrénéenne pour l’Échange des Plantes.

In the Trèmols herbarium there are 25 specimens sent by Giraudias. The two botanists most likely exchanged their specimens directly, although or exchange through societies (such as Société Helvétique and Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique) cannot be ruled out.

All this material gives us a clear idea of the amount of exchanges that existed at that time directly between botanists or through botanic societies or academies. All the authors mentioned above were members of these societies, which allowed them to be in relation with other botanists. All these facts explain quite well the presence in the P herbarium of a certain number of samples of a Catalan botanist who probably never went to Paris but was very active in the exchange of plants.

All images of specimens have been taken down from the National Museum of Natural History of Paris and those of the letters have been taken from Central Library of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris. Copyright: © MUSÉUM NATIONAL D’HISTOIRE NATURELLE

Circulation of algae in exsiccatae: James Lloyd’s collections

By Louise Couëffé, University of Angers

James Lloyd was an amateur botanist author of local floras in western France. He gathered an important herbarium from 1838 to 1895 and was in correspondence with several important botanists of this period, such as François Crépin (1830–1903).

James Lloyd, 1865. Gadeceau, “Notice sur les travaux et la vie de James Lloyd » in Annales de la Société académique de Nantes et du département de la Loire-Inférieure, vol. 7 sér.7, Nantes, Mellinet, 1896, p. 205.

James Lloyd was born in England in 1811. When he was six years old, he left England to live in France, in Thouaré near Nantes, where James’s mother, Elisa Lake, married M. Ranson. Very interested in music and horticulture, he begun to study botany on his own in Nantes in 1835, using De Candolle’s flora.

In 1844, on the basis of his herbaria and the plants sent by many amateurs of botany, he published a local flora (Flore de la Loire-Inférieure). In 1854, this flora was extended to western France with the Flore de l’Ouest de la France.

James Lloyd was very interested in algae. His library contained several books on algae, published by European specialists between 1818 and 1850. He probably collected his first algae with his stepfather, M. Ranson. He collected algae for exsiccatae.

Exsiccatae were part of the process of the commodification of sciences. They enabled botanists to gather plants from all over the world without travelling and to access types confirmed by specialists without going to national museums. Exsiccatae were a specific type of collection created at the end of the 18th century to increase the circulation of types of botanical specimens.

The exsiccata is a specific genre of scientific output between the herbaria and the book. It would be edited by a botanist who produced several identical herbaria, containing the same set of species. They were considered scientific references because plants’ names were confirmed by well-known botanists or because they contained descriptions and types of new species. Unlike books or scientific illustrations, exsiccatae contained real plants, presenting both the characteristics of the species and the idiosyncratic particularities of the specimen. They enabled more precise observations and comparisons. Below each plant, a printed label indicated the title of the collection and its author’s name, the name of the species, it’s author, and sometimes the place and date of collecting.


Muséum de sciences naturelles d’Angers. Fonds James Lloyd – Algues de l’Ouest de la France, n°209 – Gloiosiphonia capillaris Glam

James Lloyd contributed to the exsiccata Algues marines du Finistère edited in 1852 by two brothers, Pierre-Louis (1798–1871) and Hippolyte-Marie (1802–1871) Crouan, pharmacists from Brest. This exsiccata was published in 50 exemplars and contained 404 species of algae. Some of its content was collected by James Lloyd, who was at the same time making his own exsiccata, Algues de l’Ouest de la France, began in 1847.

This collection was composed of twenty-four volumes of herbaria and made on subscription: buyers had to pay before receiving it, partly to finance James Lloyd travels to gather algae. He collected 83 percent of the specimens published in this collection. Fourteen collectors took part in the project. Some of them were specialists of algae, such as Gustave Thuret and Edouard Bornet; others were amateurs or Lloyd’s friends.

Specimens were carefully collected: they had to be similar, collected at the same phase of development (flowers, fruits, etc.), with visible organs. To make the various exemplars of the exsiccatae, collectors had to pick up many specimens of the same species (sometimes 50, sometimes several hundreds). This was a problem for rare species: some of them were collected in different places in order to get enough specimens without damaging or threatening the presence of the species in the localities. It was the case for the Nytophyllim punctatum var. ocellatum collected in Belle-Ile and le Croisic, even if the number of specimens from le Croisic were finally sufficient.

This exsiccata was published in few exemplars, from 1847 to 1894. Some of them were bought by local amateurs (Bourgault-Ducoudray, Mme Mosneron du Pin, etc.); others were acquired by well-known botanists, such as Gustave Thuret. One teacher of botany at the University of Uppsala, Johan Erhard Areschoug (1811–1887), asked James Lloyd to send him an exemplar of the exsiccata, but no exemplar is conserved in Uppsala now. Nowadays, some of them are conserved at Harvard, Oxford, Paris, Autun, Nancy, and Montpellier. Those collections increased the circulation of specimens collected by amateurs.

Bibliography

DAYRAT B., Les botanistes et la flore de France, trois siècles de découvertes, Paris, Publications scientifiques du Muséum, 2003, pp. 407–416.

DIXON P.S., “Notes on important algal herbaria”, British Phycological Bulletin, 3(2), 1967, pp. 213–218.

LAMY D., « Le savoir botanique par les herbiers », Colloque « Voyages en botanique », 16 et 17 juin 2005, Besançon, en ligne sur www.livre-franchecomte.org, pp. 1–13.

LAMY D., « Les herbiers de plantes cryptogames : méthodes, emplois, perspectives » in PIERREL R. et J.-P. REDURON (ed), Les herbiers : un outil d’avenir. Tradition et modernité, Actes du colloque de Lyon, 20–22 novembre 2002, Villers-lès-Nancy, 2004, pp. 30–39.

ROUILLARD T., BAZAN S., et COUEFFE L., « L’exsiccata des Algues de l’Ouest de la France du botaniste nantais James Lloyd », Bulletin de la Société d’éetudes scientifiques de l’Anjou, 2019, pp. 153–181.

STAFLEU F. A. and R. S. COWAN, 1976-1988 Taxonomic literature: A selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types, vol. III Lh-O, Utrecht, Bohn, Scheltema & Holkema, 1981, pp. 127–128.

STAFLEU F. A. and R. S. COWAN, 1976-1988 Taxonomic literature: A selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types, vol. I A-G, Utrecht, Bohn, Scheltema & Holkema,1976, pp. 569–570.