Contribution short abstract:

The herbarium specimen is something between a vegetal being and an archival object. Caught between field and archive, between life and death, even between the named and the name itself. How might the notion of the more-than-human archive help us understand these intricacies?

Contribution long abstract:

As of December 2021, according to NYBG's Index Herbariorum, there were 3522 active herbaria around the world, holding a combined collection of 397,598,253 dried, pressed plants. Typically speaking, each botanical specimen is a scientific data point; a biological record in space and time, a dot of evolutionary evidence. And yet, each specimen is also (inescapably) a cultural data point; an intimate moment of plant-human interaction, a specific attempt to comprehend, to describe, to classify a more-than-human life. Herbaria are also sites of significant transformation. Most crucially, the transformation of vegetal being into archival object, or perhaps something in between. So too, are herbaria sites of essential tension and endless transition. Taxonomists disagree, technology updates, classifications change, and specimens shuffle. How then, might we consider herbaria as more-than-human archives? What kinds of relationships might this notion prompt? And what curatorial processes or approaches might this encourage? To pose these questions, I will be bring with me a specimen from the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - where I work as a Curator-Botanist.