Rare collection of plant specimens arrives at Virginia Tech herbarium

Under normal circumstances, anything with origins from the 1840s would more than likely be in a dreadful state of condition.

After all, nothing survives 184 years without incurring some blemishes.

But when Jordan Metzgar recently unfurled the contents of a box of plant specimens from the 1840s sent to him from a curator at the Natural History Museum in London, he found himself immediately unearthing exciting ideas for their use.

Rarely do herbarium curators secure such a harvest. That the specimens arrived in such quality condition is even more rare.

“I was really excited” Metzgar said. “It’s unusual to get that kind of opportunity, so I was super excited to add to our holdings here. We have a specimen from 1829 and a few things around that age, but getting a set of about 50 specimens from the 1840s and in good condition, that’s a first for me since I’ve been here.”

Metzgar doubles as the curator of the Virginia Tech Massey Herbarium and a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences within the College of Science. For those who may not know, an herbarium is a room or building that houses a collection of dried plants within a climate-controlled setting. Metzgar oversees the largest scientific preserved plant collection in Virginia, with the Massey Herbarium – located in Derring Hall – holding more than 100,000 specimens.

Virginia Tech’s recent collection of plant specimens sprouted practically by chance. In January, Metzgar received an email from Norbert Holstein, a curator at the Natural History Museum in London who was working through a backlog of that museum’s specimens. With an excess of specimens from across the southeastern United States, Holstein inquired of Virginia Tech’s interest in the surplus.

“My thinking was, 'How and with whom could the material benefit the most?'” Holstein said. “The specimens are often not identified to the latest taxonomic concept, so they would benefit from access to botanists knowing the local flora.

“The flora of Virginia and Florida and Cuba are quite different. Given the high number of duplicates of each gathering, I thought it would be good to send a top set of each state to one herbarium of that state and send along further duplicates from other — preferably close — states. So Virginia Tech also got some specimens from the Carolinas and Tennessee as well.”

“We have very little material that is that old,” Metzgar said. “A large majority of our collection is from the 1900s or on, so getting material from the 1800s is a rare event for us. We were excited and jumped at the chance to do an exchange with their museum. We sent them some more recent examples, and they sent us the specimens from the 1840s.”

That the Natural History Museum in London had the samples from the U.S. is an interesting story. Ferdinand von Rugel, a German pharmacist with a deep interest in botany, originally collected the specimens. In 1840, von Rugel came to the United States to collect plants, insects, and mollusks after cultivating a relationship with a British botanist named R.J. Shuttleworth, a resident of Bern, Switzerland. During that period, owning certain rare plants was a status symbol for the upper crust of society and thus a lucrative hobby for collectors.

Von Rugel planned to stay in the States for a couple of years before returning to Germany, but wound up marrying a woman from Tennessee and raising a large family. He returned to medical practice, though he often went on excursions and collected plant specimens part time throughout the years. He sent most of them back to Shuttleworth, whose personal herbarium eventually was purchased by the Natural History Museum in London 1877.

Holstein stacked approximately 50 specimens on top of each other with sheets of newspaper in between before shipping them to Virginia Tech. He used cardboard for support to bundle the specimens before tying them tightly to prevent shifting while in transit.

Once in Blacksburg, Metzgar stored the specimens in a freezer for two days to kill any insects.

“There are a lot of insects that like to sneak in and eat our plants,” he said. “Sometimes they can hitch rides from other museums, so when the specimens arrive, I put them in a freezer for two days and then pull them out and let them defrost. That sudden change, going from room temperature, down to freezing, and back up, should have killed off any insects or eggs that were hitchhiking along with the shipment.”

The exchange with the Natural History Museum in London continued Virginia Tech’s emphasis on collecting native plants and seeds. Researchers in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ School of Plant and Environmental Sciences currently are leading a project that aims to replenish and maintain a sustainable pipeline of native seeds for the southern portion of Virginia, also known as Southside, by partnering with underserved farmers from the region. Native seeds and plant specimens are important for research purposes and to sustain the health of natural ecosystems.

As expected, much of the Rugel collection was common native species to Virginia, including several of wildflowers such as red trillium. The ages of the specimens created the excitement more than the variety.

Metzgar and his staff permanently mounted the specimens on standard museum paper and attached a label to each one. They also added the names and collecting information to a database. People with an interest in a group of plant can get the data, or if they need a plant for DNA research, they can borrow it from the herbarium.

“We do a lot of different student projects here in the herbarium, so we’ll have to see where some of the specimens fall,” Metzgar said. “I’m sure over the years that some of them will wind up being used for student projects and research.

“They’re an important historical record. Especially in our collection here, we don’t have a ton of data of what our lands looked like in Virginia or the Southeast almost 200 years ago, so these help us to document that, and they let us look at changes over time. We could do things like look at samples from the same location from 1840 to today and be able to see any differences in the plant. There might be differences due to climate change. There might be differences due to a new pathogen or a new insect or pest or something new arriving. They’ll let us see things like that, and we’ll be able to use them for a lot of biodiversity research as well.”

Metzgar envisions these specimens lasting another 200 years. Thanks to cultivating relationships within the plant world, hopefully herbarium curators will help generations of future scientists and students solve issues in the years to come.