Herbarium specimens reveal the exchange network of British and Irish botanists, 1856–1932

Abstract

The labels on herbarium specimens hold information on the plant collected, but also on the botanist. Recent digitisation allows these data to be used for many types of investigation, including study of the botanists themselves. As a proof of concept, we reconstructed prosopographical networks of botanical exchange that existed in Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth century and investigate the nature of these networks and their actors. Data from British Herbaria digitised on Herbaria@home were used to create network diagrams from the names of collectors, determiners, communicators and curators mentioned on herbarium specimens collected from 1856 to 1932. Data from herbarium specimens credibly reconstructed botanical exchange networks. These networks provided metrics on the actors in botanical exchange and can be used to quantify the role of different categories of actor. The botanical networks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were shown to be highly connected and despite the existence of two exchange clubs during part of this period the network was not divided. Herbarium specimens are a useful resource for botanical scientometrics; revealing scientific links between botanists that are not visible in correspondence, citation and co-authorship networks. Further digitisation of herbarium specimens coupled with openness of the data will further facilitate our understanding of how botanists work.

Full text

Herbarium specimens reveal the exchange
network of British and Irish botanists, 1856–1932
Q. J. Groom*
1
, C. O’Reilly
2
, T. Humphrey
3
1
Botanic Garden Meise, Belgium,
2
Railway Cottages, Northumberland, UK,
3
Botanical Society of Britain and
Ireland, Wallingford, UK
The labels on herbarium specimens hold information on the plant collected, but also on the botanist. Recent
digitisation allows these data to be used for many types of investigation, including study of the botanists
themselves. As a proof of concept, we reconstructed prosopographical networks of botanical exchange
that existed in Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth century and investigate the nature of these
networks and their actors. Data from British Herbaria digitised on Herbaria@home were used to create
network diagrams from the names of collectors, determiners, communicators and curators mentioned on
herbarium specimens collected from 1856 to 1932. Data from herbarium specimens credibly reconstructed
botanical exchange networks. These networks provided metrics on the actors in botanical exchange and
can be used to quantify the role of different categories of actor. The botanical networks of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century were shown to be highly connected and despite the existence of two
exchange clubs during part of this period the network was not divided. Herbarium specimens are a useful
resource for botanical scientometrics; revealing scientific links between botanists that are not visible in
correspondence, citation and co-authorship networks. Further digitisation of herbarium specimens coupled
with openness of the data will further facilitate our understanding of how botanists work.
Keywords: botanical exchange club, prosopographical network, scientometrics, social network analysis, women in science
Introduction
Herbarium specimens contain a wealth of informa-
tion on their labels. Recent digitisation of herbarium
collections has enabled these data to be collated and
repurposed particularly for studies on phytogeogra-
phy and phenology (Primack et al., 2004; Lavoie &
Lachance, 2006; Lavoie et al., 2007; Lavoie, 2013).
However, herbarium specimens are also a rich source
of information on the botanists themselves and we
can exploit this to create prosopographical networks
of botanists.
Data from herbaria sheets were analysed using
social network analysis (SNA). This is a well-
established quantitative method used in sociology
and scientometrics to assess the structure of social
networks (Beaver & Rosen, 1978). SNA of scientific
networks is usually traced back to the work of Solla
Price (1963) and in the last 10 years, it has been
increasingly applied to investigate scientific collabor-
ation and communication (Newman, 2001; Kadu-
shin, 2011). Herbarium sheet data are particularly
suited to SNA because they provide a reliable node
for each individual naturalist and define connected-
ness precisely by the exchange of specimen sheets.
Such a prosopographical approach to historical
research can reveal otherwise hidden social groupings
(Allen, 1990).
The nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth
century were an important and dynamic time for the
study of British natural history. Hewett Cottrell
Watson (1804–1881) published the first volume of his
Cybele Britannica in 1847, Darwin’s Origin of Species
was published in 1859 and the Natural History
Museum was established in 1881. These events and
many others reflected widespread interest in natural
history and stimulated the creation of many clubs
and societies of natural history.
The hobby of collecting herbarium specimens was
encouraged by various changes in law, technology
and society. Firstly, in 1815, the Apothecaries Act
required a qualification that included knowledge of
plant identification. Also, the Uniform Penny Post
started in 1840 reducing the cost of communication
to anywhere in the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland. It was also a period of the expansion of
the national rail network, allowing rapid and
comparatively cheap access to the countryside.
Many keen collectors were members of the clergy
and botany was probably seen as a wholesome
occupation during the period of the temperance
*Corresponding author: quentin.groom@br.fgov.be
ßBotanical Society of Britain & Ireland 2014
DOI 10.1179/2042349714Y.0000000041 New Journal of Botany 2014 VOL.4 NO.2 95

movement (Armstrong, 2000). It was also a period of
campaigning for women’s rights, but also strict moral
codes. Botany was a socially acceptable way that
upper middle class and aristocratic women could
engage in science.
The nineteenth century saw the founding of many
natural history societies. Botanists in those societies
often exchanged herbarium specimens to expand
their collections; they sought distant or well-travelled
correspondents who could exchange specimens that
were unavailable in their locality. This lead to the
establishing of botanical exchange clubs whose
purpose was to facilitate specimen exchange amongst
botanists. Right from their conception their members
included people of a relatively wide social back-
ground, including scientists, doctors, clergy, trades-
men, manufactures, clerks, lawyers, and landowners
(Allen, 1986).
In 1856, the Botanical Society of London trans-
formed itself into the Botanical Exchange Club
(BEC), the first national club of its kind. In the
winter, members submitted specimens gathered dur-
ing the previous year, along with their desiderata. The
distributor made up the returns starting with those
people who had submitted the largest number of
high-quality specimens. Once all the contributors had
been allocated what they wanted, the remaining
sheets were divided up between the non-contributing
members based upon their desiderata.
After the Hewett Cottrell Watson’s publication of
Topographical Botany in 1874, the Botanical Locality
Records Club was founded and then in 1884, for
obscure reasons, another exchange club was founded,
the Watson Botanical Exchange Club (WBEC),
named after Watson. The Records Club ran until
around 1890, but the BEC and WBEC ran in parallel
until 1934 when the WBEC dissolved (Allen, 1986).
The botanists of the nineteenth and early twentieth
century collaborated with each other, communicating
by post, through publications and through specimen
exchanges (Armstrong, 2000). These herbarium speci-
mens represent evidence of the links in this network.
They are conscientiously marked with the names of
the individual(s) who collected the plant in the field,
those who confirmed or determined the identification
of the specimen, and if the specimen was deposited
in a herbarium, the name of the curator, or the
owner of the herbarium, is usually added. We can
use these names to visualise the network of
botanists, identify important actors and look for
evidence of groups. Each herbarium sheet containing
two or more people’s names acts as evidence of a
link between these individuals, encompassing a range
of forms of scientific and social communication
including collecting together in the field, exchanging
specimens, assistance in identifying specimens, or
acting as taxonomic referees. These networks can be
uncovered, to some extent, through the correspon-
dence of the botanists (Secord, 1994; Stuber et al.,
2008). However, unlike letters, many of which will
have been discarded, herbarium specimens have a
scientific value that leads people to deposit them
with museums and botanic gardens. Some corre-
spondence of leading academics and other profes-
sional botanists has been preserved; but the scientific
legacies of the amateur botanists are their herbarium
specimens.
The specimens used in this study were derived from
the Herbaria@home project (H@H) which, at its
conception in 2006, was a novel and innovative citizen
science project to transcribe the label information on
herbarium specimens and has since been adopted by
many herbaria. As of summer 2013, volunteers using it
have managed to document over 125 000 specimens
from eighteen British and Irish herbaria. The herbar-
ium specimens date from the end of the eighteenth
century almost to the present day. However, the
majority are from the zenith of botanical collecting at
the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the
twentieth century. On the H@H website, volunteers
transcribe the label information from specimen
photographs, including details such as the collection
date, locality, collector, determiner, and herbarium.
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the use of
herbarium specimens using the network of British
and Irish botanists in the second half of the
nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries;
starting in 1856 at the founding of the BEC and
ending in 1932 with the death of George Claridge
Druce (1850–1932). As far as we are aware, this is the
first study using herbarium data to elucidate proso-
pographical networks. We assess the nature of the
network; clarify the contribution made by women,
and the links with other learned societies and
institutions. We also determine whether the parallel
running of two botanical exchange clubs during part
of this period divided botanists and their network.
Methods and materials
Herbarium specimen data were downloaded for the
period 1856–1932 from the H@H website (http://
herbariaunited.org, accessed 21 April 2013). Data were
imported into a database (MS-Access) where they were
cleaned. Table 1 was constructed containing five
columns: the full name, the surname, a unique code to
the specimen, the year of collection, and the role of the
person on the specimen (collector, determiner, commu-
nicator, and herbarium curator). This table contained
220 779 entries before the data cleaning and 192 659
after. The surname field was extracted from the full
name only for the convenience of being able to sort by
surname in the data cleaning process.
Groom et al. Herbarium specimens reveal a botanical network
96 New Journal of Botany 2014 VOL.4 NO.2

Within these data, there are considerable variations
in the format of names. These variations include the
presence and absence of prefixes (Mr, Mrs, Miss, Dr,
Prof., Rev., etc); use of initials instead of full names
and the truncation of names, such as Wm. for
William. All names only represented by initials and
institutional names were deleted. To ensure that
individuals were represented only once in the net-
work, different versions of the same name were
merged following the data cleaning procedure sum-
marised in Fig. 1. Names which could be not be
unambiguously assigned to a single individual were
removed from the dataset. For example, there were
21 different names with the surname Wood in the
database, so the names ‘Wood’, ‘Dr Wood’, and ‘Mr
Wood’ were delete because they could have belonged
to either one or multiple individuals. A particular
difficult case is that of the name ‘J. Fraser’, where
John, James, and Joannis Fraser all collected around
the same period. In cases such as these, only those
names that were unambiguous were kept. Thus, the
network contribution of the Frasers will be under-
represented. This was considered preferable to
including the same person multiple times under
Figure 1 The schema used for cleaning the individual’s names in the dataset.
Table 1 The sources of the specimens on
Herbaria@home and the number of herbarium sheets
contributed, as of 9 May 2013. This amounts to 125 497
specimens, which is more than the number of sheets
because multiple specimens are sometimes mounted on
the same sheet. The letters in parentheses are the Index
Herbariorum codes for the herbaria
Collection Sheets
Aberystwyth University Herbarium (ABS) 15 478
Bolton Museum (BON) 3567
Botanical Exchange Club report for 1887 23
Cambridge University (CGE) 877
Charterhouse School Herbarium (GOD) 281
Gloucester City Museum (GLR) 2956
Launceston Museum (LAUS) 797
Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union (LLN) 15
Manchester Museum (MANCH) 6684
National Botanic Gardens of Ireland,
Glasnevin (DBN)
231
National Museums Liverpool (LIV) 569
Oxford University (OXF) 382
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (K) 2744
Shrewsbury School (SHYB) 2591
South London Botanical Institute (SLBI) 36 946
Tullie House Museum (CLE) 38
University College Dublin (DBC) 2025
University of Birmingham (BIRM) 36 019
Total 112 418
Groom et al. Herbarium specimens reveal a botanical network
New Journal of Botany 2014 VOL.4 NO.2 97

different synonyms. Missing and underrepresented
people, such as these, are already present in these
data, because some peoples’ herbaria will have been
lost and others remain undigitised.
The gender of the person and whether they were
part of the clergy were determined from their first
name, their name prefix, and from biographies. Few
names were gender ambiguous, but those that were,
were assumed to be men.
Throughout the whole procedure, names were
checked against the original herbarium sheets on
H@H to ensure that they were correct and repre-
sented a single individual. If there was doubt that a
particular name represented a single individual, the
spelling on the sheet could be confirmed, as could
other aspects such as their handwriting, the period
during which they were active and the region in
which they collected. In some cases, the data, but
not images of the specimens, are available. In these
cases, the names were treated more sceptically; thus,
if a unique name was present, but had a unlikely
spelling or resembled a known collector, it was
deleted if there was any doubt that it represented a
unique individual.
Once the data had been cleaned, they were se-
parated into seven periods of eleven years each (1856–
1866, 1867–1877, 1878–1888, 1889–1899, 1900–1910,
1911–1921, and 1922–1932). Some of the people in
these data did not collect in the same period, but
determined or received the specimens many years
after. As we are only interested in the active networks
during these periods, only people who collected in the
same period were kept in each period.
Using these tables, links for each specimen were
created for the collectors, determiners, communica-
tors, and curators mentioned on each sheet. These
were imported in to Microsoft Excel with the
extension NodeXL (Version 1.0.1.229) (Smith et al.,
2009). All visualisations and calculations of network
parameters were conducted using NodeXL.
The specimens on H@H are not necessarily related
to the activity of the BEC or WBEC. They are mainly
specimens that have at one time or another been
either donated or bequeathed to museums and
herbaria. To examine whether the specimens already
documented on H@H are a representative sample of
the specimens of the exchange clubs, the number of
specimens contributed to the BEC by each member
was taken from the BEC reports 1889–1899. Not all
reports of the exchange clubs have detailed lists of
members or their contributions. However, complete
lists are available for this 11-year period and can be
used for comparison.
Unless stated otherwise, biographical information
was taken from standard references (Kent & Allen,
1984; Haines, 2001).
Results
The process of cleaning the data proved to be a
valuable exercise for discovering errors in the
transcription of herbarium labels. Herbarium labels
of this period are largely handwritten and their
interpretation needs experience to do well. The
networks helped highlight errors showing where
names were synonymous and clarifying ambiguous
handwriting and signatures. Nevertheless, popular
surnames are a problematic issue, particularly as it
was common at the time for first names of men to be
passed on to the next generation. On some specimens,
the suffixes Sr and Jr distinguish father and son, but
this was not always present.
The numbers of specimens reported as being
contributed by each botanist to the BEC in the period
1889–1899 correlates with the number of specimens for
those botanists in H@H for that period (R
2
50.56,
n551). Every botanist contributing to the BEC in this
period had records in the H@H data. For example, the
Reverend William Richardson Linton (1850–1908)
and the Reverend Augustin Ley (1842–1911) were the
two greatest contributors and according to the BEC
reports they contributed 5033 and 4833 specimens
respectively during this period. The H@H data
contains 394 and 1743 specimens respectively for these
two botanists over this time. On average, the number
of specimens in H@H for a collector was 19% of the
total number of specimens they contributed according
to these reports. So, it appears likely that many, if not
the majority, of specimens on H@H for these periods
have passed through the exchange clubs and that these
specimens may represent up to one-fifth of all the
specimens that were exchanged.
A direct comparison of the specimens mentioned in
exchange club reports with the specimens in H@H is
difficult, largely due to changes in taxonomy in
critical groups such as Rubus and Hieracium.
Unfortunately, it was just those taxa that warranted
a mention in the report. The report for 1887, for
example, has comments on only 199 of the 4500
contributed specimens and 35% of these comments
are on the genera Rubus and Hieracium.
To visualise the links between botanists, network
diagrams were constructed for each period. These
diagrams demonstrate that the community of bota-
nists was highly linked and centralised (Fig. 2). In
every period, there is a central core of well-connected
botanists who collected a large number of specimens
and formed the hubs connecting the majority of other
people. Only small numbers of unconnected groups
exist and these are often groups of two or three
botanists who collected relatively few specimens. The
biggest of these subgroups is in the period 1922–1932
and had Dr W. Horton-Smith at its centre and this
was only a group of five people (Fig. 2A).
Groom et al. Herbarium specimens reveal a botanical network
98 New Journal of Botany 2014 VOL.4 NO.2

Collecting activity peaked in the period 1878–1888,
both in terms of the number of people collecting and
the number of specimens (Fig. 3). It then declined
steadily so that from 1911 onward, only about half of
the peak numbers of people were collecting. The
proportion of women participating in these networks
increases with time; in fact, their participation jumps
at the turn of the twentieth century and peaking at
about 18%. In contrast, the proportion of clergy
decreases over the period from 11% in 1856–1866 to
Figure 2 An example of the network of botanical exchanges. Square nodes represent women. Red nodes are members of the
Watson Botanical Exchange Club. Blue nodes are members of the Botanical Exchange Club. Purple nodes are members of both
clubs. The node’s area is proportion to the number of specimens collected by that collector during the period. The width of the
link is proportional to the number of links between those two nodes. (A) The whole network. (B) Detail of the centre of the
network. The network was laid out using the Harel–Koren Fast Multiscale algorithm.
Groom et al. Herbarium specimens reveal a botanical network
New Journal of Botany 2014 VOL.4 NO.2 99

4% in 1922–1932 (Fig. 3). The steady decline did
reverse during the period spanning the First World
War 1911–1921.
The main collectors and hubs of these networks
were all men, examples are Mr Charles Bailey FLS
(1838–1924), Mr Francis Buchanan White FLS
(1842–1894), Colonel Henry Maurice Drummond-
Hay (1814–1896), Rev. Douglas Montague Heath
(1881–1961), Mr Isaac A. Helsby (1858–1940), Rev.
Augustin Ley (1842–1911), Mr Job Edward Lousley
(1907–1976), Rev. Edward Shearburn Marshall FLS
(1858–1919), Rev. William Hunt Painter (1835–
1910), Dr Gustavus A. Ornano St Brody FLS
(1828–1901), Mr Harold Stuart Thompson FLS
(1870–1940), Mr Frederick Townsend FLS (1822–
1905), Mr Hewett Cottrell Watson FLS (1804–1881),
and Mr William West Sr FLS (1848–1914). It is
notable how many of these people were clergy and
that all of them were amateur botanists.
A notable feature of these networks is the large
number of small-scale collectors that link to the main
central actors (Figs. 2 and 4). Women are not only
under-represented, but also tend to have fewer links
(lower degree centrality) than men (Fig. 4). Only eight
women in this period had more than ten links; these
were Margaret Dawber (1859–1901), Frances Louisa
Foord-Kelcey (1862–1914), Dorcas Martha Higgins
(1856?–1920), Eliza Standerwick Gregory (1840–1932),
Elizabeth Anne Lomax (1810–1895), Charlotte Ellen
Palmer (1830–1914), Ida Mary Roper (1865–1935), and
Rachel Ford Thompson (1856–1906).
The average geodesic distance is the average
numbers of links between any two nodes in the
network. If the parallel running of the two exchange
Figure 4 A histogram showing the proportions of men and
women in the network who have different numbers of links.
Figure 3 Change in the network parameters with time. The bottom chart plots the history of the national botanical clubs of the
period. The terms of the secretaries of the Botanical Exchange Club are marked. Abbreviations: JB — J.G. Baker, HT — H.
Trimen.
Groom et al. Herbarium specimens reveal a botanical network
100 New Journal of Botany 2014 VOL.4 NO.2

clubs divided the network, then we might expect to
see this reflected in the geodesic distances across the
network. Yet it changes very little in these networks
ranging from 2.7 to 3 (Fig. 3).
The reports of the BEC and WBEC reveal that
members of both clubs were also Fellows of the Linnean
Society. BEC and WBEC members were also members
of societies such as the Royal College of Physicians and
the Royal College of Science. Institutional memberships
included universities, libraries, schools, and regional
natural history societies. Members also included foreign
learned societies and institutions, such as the Riksmu-
seets Botaniska Avdeling (Stockholm); Socie´te´Royale
de Botanique de Belgique (Belgium); Philadelphia Aca-
demy of Natural Sciences (USA), and Bergens Museum
(Norway).
Specimens from members of these networks found
their way into herbaria all around the world. A
search of online herbaria revealed specimens from
E.S. Marshall and William Hadden Beeby (1849–
1910) in the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (JE);
specimens from Prof Charles Cardale Babington
(1808–1895), George Claridge Druce (1850–1932),
Henry Groves (1855–1912) and E.F. Linton at the
Natural History Museum Vienna (W); Charles Edward
Hubbard (1900–1980), Edgar W.B.H. Milne-Redhead
(1906–1996), Thomas A. Sprague (1877–1958) at the
National Herbarium of Victoria, Australia (MEL), and
Edward Francis Linton (1848–1928); Alban Edward
Lomax (1861–1894) at New York Botanical Garden
(NY). Where it was possible to examine photographs
of the specimens, no stampsofeitherbotanical
exchange club were found. A search was also made
amongst British specimens in the herbarium of the
National Botanic Garden of Belgium (BR). This
collection contains specimens collected by C. Bailey,
John Gilbert Baker (1834–1920), Joseph Edward Little
& H.C. Watson. However, only one specimen from the
BEC was discovered and this reached the BR
herbarium by recent exchange, rather than during the
period of interest. It is apparent that exchange with
foreign herbaria frequently occurred, but these
exchanges occurred outside the activities of the
exchange clubs.
Discussion
Using herbarium specimens unveils a complex net-
work, created by botanists for the exchange of
specimens. While the use of specimens to reveal a
network cannot give a comprehensive diagram of the
sociological links between botanists, it has advan-
tages over the use of correspondence, citations, and
co-authorships, and is a complementary approach.
As with any reconstruction of a social network, links
and actors may be missing due to the destruction of
source material and the available material may be
biased. Yet herbarium specimens do reveal actors
whose correspondence is unlikely to have been
preserved and even if such correspondence does exist,
it will be scattered and not digitised. Furthermore,
the degree of bias in herbarium data is unlikely to be
better in correspondence networks. While name
ambiguity will remain an issue, the development of
open digital biographical dictionaries will certainly
aid future research in this area.
The results show that a high proportion of the
specimens exchanged in this period still exist and it is
anticipated that further digitisation of herbarium
specimens from herbaria will further reveal the
networks of botanists.
The botanical exchange clubs were clearly an
effective method for communication between bota-
nists of this period. The presence of two clubs did not
impede communication; most important botanists
were members of both clubs. It is not entirely clear
why there were two clubs or whether there was a
degree of rivalry between the managers of these clubs;
the fact that the WBEC decided to dissolve, rather
than merge with the BEC does not clarify the
situation. The choice between closure, rather than
merging of the WBEC club with the BEC, was put to
a vote and 16 members voted for merger and 17 for
closer. This left the final decision to the officers of the
Club, who chose closure (Thompson, 1934). Why this
option was preferred is not clear, but it may have
been simply the easiest choice and avoided further
administration for the retiring officers. The fact that
at no point was the botanical network split implies
that the relationship between the two clubs was
amicable. Therefore the presence of two parallel clubs
can be seen as a positive influence on British and Irish
botany as a whole. The competition between clubs
could have stimulated their work and the presence of
two secretaries and two distributors boosted capacity
for distribution of specimens.
There is no evidence for the parallel running of two
exchange clubs damaging the coherence of the
botanical network. Indeed, average geodesic dis-
tances are considerably shorter than those for co-
authorship networks of scientists, which range from 4
to 9.7, rather than averaging 2.9 in this case
(Newman, 2001). Exchanging of herbarium speci-
mens requires far less interaction between the actors
than co-authorship. The search for varied and novel
specimens is an incentive to interact with as many
different people as possible, whereas there is little
motivation to co-author papers with such a wide
variety of people. In comparison to citation and
correspondence networks, specimen networks show a
different aspect of scientific collaboration that
focuses on data gathering. They show links in
the network that would otherwise remain hidden,
Groom et al. Herbarium specimens reveal a botanical network
New Journal of Botany 2014 VOL.4 NO.2 101

particularly with actors whose scientific standing was
insufficient for their correspondence to be kept.
Networks with short geodesic distances, like these
of the botanical exchange clubs, are good for
conveying information rapidly and such a tightly
linked community helps the actors identify with the
group as a whole.
There is no evidence of any other major networks
of botanists running in parallel to the exchange clubs.
The largest unattached network was that of Dr
Horton-Smith in the period 1922–1932. Dr Horton-
Smith and his associates C. Schill and B.R. Lucas
were members of the Conchological Society of Great
Britain and Ireland (Lucas, 1906; Horton-Smith,
1917). One can speculate that the five people in this
subnetwork were connected by their interest in
conchology and where perhaps members of a discrete
network of conchologists who happened to exchange
the occasional herbarium specimen. Other isolated
subnetworks existed of two or three people and of
course, there were individuals who collected alone
and did not exchange specimens. However, none of
these people was a collector of large numbers of
specimens. All prolific collectors were also well
connected.
Participation of women in the network is consider-
able lower than in the current membership of the
Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI),
which runs at about 40% (BSBI Yearbook, 2013). Yet
it is considerably higher than other scientific societies
of the period (Mason, 1995). The exchange clubs and
the Botanical Society have always had a socially
diverse membership (Allen, 1986). The increase in
women’s participation at the turn of the twentieth
century coincided with a period of women’s political
mobilisation. The National Union of Women’s
Suffrage Societies was founded in 1897 and the
Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903.
Although not connected to these networks Lydia
Ernestine Becker (1827–1890) has specimens from
1864 at Manchester Museum (MANCH) and on
H@H. She authored Botany for Novices (Becker,
1864); was an early campaigner for women’s suffrage
and had a prominent role in the Manchester Ladies’
Literary Society. It was in the latter context that she
corresponded with Charles Darwin on botany
(Becker, 1867). Her specimens were entries in the
British Botanical Competition organised by the
South Kensington Horticultural Society (Middleton
& Middleton, 2007).
In contrast to other scientific disciplines at that time,
women were much more engaged in botany; for
example, botanical illustrators were mainly women
during this period (Blunt & Stearn, 1994). In these
networks, there are examples of active female bota-
nists. Marian Farquharson (1846–1912) authored the
Pocket Guide to British Ferns and campaigned for
women’s admission to the Royal and Linnean Soci-
eties (Ridley, 1881; Mason, 1995); Eliza Standerwick
Gregory (1840–1832) wrote a monograph on Violets
(Gregory, 1912); Gwendolen Day (1884–1967) was
president of the Bedford Natural History and
Archaeological Society; Lady Joanna Davy (1865–
1955) and Gertrude Foggit (A.K.A Gertrude Bacon,
1874–1949) were co-discoverers of Carex microglochin
in Britain (Desmond, 1977). Gertrude Foggit was a
particularly pioneering woman, being the first woman
to fly in an airship and the first English woman to fly in
an airplane (Haines, 2001).
Women often played a contributing role to support
male botanical authors, for example, Georgiana
Elisabeth Kilderbee (1798–1868) provided specimens
for the Flora Vectensis (Bromfield, 1856), Martha
Atwood to the Flora of Bristol (White, 1912) and
Flora of Gloucestershire (Riddelsdell et al., 1948) and
Elizabeth Bray to the Flora of Sussex (Wolley-Dod,
1937).
Although women did not generally act as hubs in
the network, one exception was Ida M. Roper (1865–
1935), who was also a fellow of the Linnaean Society
and member of both botanical exchange clubs. She
was also notable as being one of the few women to be
a determiner of specimens in the exchange reports.
Her herbarium, which was donated to the University
of Leeds, has only been partially digitised, and for
this reason her contribution to the network is
probably underestimated.
The parson naturalists of the nineteenth century
are peculiar phenomena (Armstrong, 2000). The
clergy made a significant contribution to these
networks, both in terms of the volume of collections
and their number of links. British and Irish field
botany of this period is dominated by amateur
botanists, just as it is today. However, the proportion
of clergy declines over the period just as the
proportion of women increases. This is perhaps a
reflection of the social changes that were occurring
during the period.
Botanists of this period created an active network
for the exchange of specimens. However, it is clear
that botanists came from a wide variety of back-
grounds. Not only were these botanists linked to each
other, but the network members are linked to their
own networks which include political movements, the
church, educational institutions and other research
networks. The digitisation of the world’s herbaria is
far from complete and yet it is not difficult to find
examples of specimens from the exchange club
members in herbaria in Europe, Australia, and the
USA. Apparently, these specimens reached these
distant herbaria either by bilateral exchanges, dona-
tions or other international exchange systems.
Groom et al. Herbarium specimens reveal a botanical network
102 New Journal of Botany 2014 VOL.4 NO.2

Ultimately, when the digitisation of the world’s
herbaria is complete, it will be possible to create a
more complete map of the networks of botanists.
This will undoubtedly reveal more about the history
of botany, but will also be a useful tool for the
validation of herbarium sheet details and linking
botanical literature to their supporting data. It will,
however, require herbaria to be as generous and open
with their data as have those herbaria contributing to
H@H.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to David Allen and Clive Lovatt for helping
us with additional details of the exchange clubs;
Sabine Metzger for proof reading the manuscript; the
volunteers on H@H, particularly Nick Miller and
Christopher Olive and all the herbaria that have
contributed specimens and data to H@H. The
Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland supports
H@H.
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