Chicago Academy of Sciences Blog

May 7, 2024

Deciphering Handwriting on Botanic Labels

As a collections intern, I contributed to the ongoing process of digitizing the museum’s botanical specimens. This consisted of cataloging each specimen into the online collection system Arctos, creating labels for them, scanning them, and integrating them into the museum’s greater collection. Part of the digitizing process is reading the handwritten labels that go along with each plant. This step is essential as all of the information about the specimens are recorded on the collectors’ labels. The purpose of the digitizing project is to make specimen information accessible and organized within a database, so the label information must be accurately portrayed. This project is crucial in increasing the accessibility of specimen data and provides incredible value to those inside and outside of the Chicago Academy of Sciences and Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum communities. A majority of the specimens I worked with were from the 1800s when cursive handwriting was more ubiquitous than it is today. During the 19th century, there were various styles of penmanship being taught and used for different purposes. The Spencerian method was being taught in schools, while Roundhand was used more artistically. Fairhand was also used in more professional settings to maintain a standard style of writing before typewriters were used. With the botany labels that I worked with, their script was likely a mixture of Fairhand and personal writing styles. The collectors were the ones writing these labels, but the labels were ultimately used for scientific purposes. With the shift to text and print in the 1900s, reading handwriting is an increasingly difficult task. Reading the labels was challenging for myself at the beginning of my internship. As I studied them, I felt like I was a detective deciphering a hidden code made of loopy pen strokes. It was frustrating to decode handwriting that didn’t even resemble words at points, but the satisfaction of solving each puzzle was so rewarding. By the end of my time at the museum, reading the labels became one of my favorite parts of working with the pressed plant specimens. I became familiar with the way collectors wrote each letter and how their words strung together. Reading each label strengthened a kind of one-sided intimacy between myself and these collectors from centuries ago. My mind often ended up wandering while doing some of the more tedious tasks like attaching both the original and the transcribed labels to the botany mounting sheets for each pressed plant. I would think about who these collectors were, what their experiences were like in the field gathering specimens, how they identified each plant, and what they were going through while writing each label. Sometimes, I could tell when the collectors were in more of a rush to write; words would be misspelled, species names would dissipate into squiggles instead of letters, i’s would be missing dots, t’s would be crossless. However, I could also see when collectors had the time to be more meticulous with their penmanship. Each letter was defined, and some swoops resembled calligraphy. These examples of handwriting gave me a greater appreciation for the time it took to write information down as opposed to the convenience of our current digital age. One collector’s handwriting that I became very familiar with was Henry Holmes Babcock. During his lifetime from 1832 to 1881, this botanist collected around 10,000 specimens in Illinois. He was involved with various local institutions, including the Chicago Botanic Garden, Northwestern University, and Chicago Academy of Sciences. Some of the specimens that I worked on cataloging were from his exchange with the Herbarium Horti Botanici Pisani, known as the Herbarium of the University of Pisa currently located in its Botanic Garden. Although he didn’t collect these specimens, he received them in exchange for his Illinois specimens and wrote labels for them. Becoming familiar with Babcock’s handwriting is a way to get to know him as there is so little information available about him as a person. Handwriting is such a unique aspect to every individual, and part of his legacy exists within these labels. I want to highlight some examples of specimens that were the most difficult to decipher, but also ones that were the most pleasing to look at.An example of an uppercase Q: 1873.48.590 This one took me a substantial amount of time to decipher. The species name reads “Quercus pedunculata,” which is a type of oak tree. Trying to read the uppercase Q was difficult, mostly because of how rare it is and how much I thought it resembled the letter D. But figuring out what this label said was one of the most satisfying moments of my internship.

August 29, 2023

Examining How and Why Scientific Names Change

While interning in the Collections Department this summer, I became interested in how and why the scientific names of species evolve over time. Each individual species has a unique scientific name composed of two parts. The first part of the name indicates the genus the species belongs to while the second part of the name is specific and unique to the species. This naming system is called binomial nomenclature, meaning a two-term naming system. Scientific names provide important taxonomic information about a species as they indicate related groups of species. My interest in scientific names was sparked when I was working on labeling botany specimens. Each specimen must have a physical label on it before it can be integrated into our larger collection. These labels provide a summary of key information about the specimen, such as the scientific name, who identified it and when it was identified, the common name, who collected it and where and when it was collected. It is very important to have this essential information about a specimen captured in one place as it makes organization of our specimens much easier. To ensure labels are as accurate as possible, I check each specimen’s scientific name in the Integrated Taxonomic Information System, which is updated with the most accurate taxonomic information for plants in North America. If the taxonomy of a species has changed, I update the identification in Arctos, our online collections management database, and on the physical label to reflect the revised taxonomy.

May 23, 2023

Into the Rabbit Hole of Woods Hole

My first encounter with Woods Hole was not during a summer trip to Cape Cod, but instead here at the collections facility of the Nature Museum. What I thought to be a spelling mistake turned out to be a door to a rabbit hole investigation that would take me through one village’s transformative history. I often come across a myriad of curiosities when processing the museum’s botanical backlog collection. While much of the fun is in observing the dried, pressed plants themselves, the original labels attached to these specimens can also inspire a thirst for knowledge. A well documented label will contain information such as the identification of a plant, the location it was collected in, the date it was collected on, and whom it was collected by. While transcribing labels from the late 1800s, I found my interest piquing when I came across “Wood’s Holl”.

May 21, 2023

Flora of the Frontier: Mounting Specimens from the Wheeler Survey

There’s a unique thrill in preserving historical specimens. It makes history real and gives me an affinity for the individuals who were really there at the time the specimens were collected. Sometimes, when we’re lucky, botanical specimens come with exciting little clues that reveal the sweeping history of 19th century America. There are many ways to preserve biological specimens, depending on their type and intended use. For example, animals might be prepared as taxidermy mounts or submerged in jars of various liquid chemicals. When it comes to botanical specimens, the plants are simply pressed and dried, much the same way you would press a flower in an old book. A botanist collecting in the field will use a specialized plant press to clamp layers of specimens together between sheets of paper and cardboard. After the plants are collected and dried, they find their way to an herbarium collection where staff and volunteers complete the preparation by gluing the specimens and their labels to archival herbarium sheets (this is my favorite part of the job). Mounting plants this way is important for a few reasons. It makes the specimens easy to organize and helps keep them safe from physical damage, but it also highlights important features that scientists are likely to study in the future. When pressing and mounting plants, it is preferable to position them where flowers, fruits, roots, and the tops and bottoms of leaves are all visible at the same time. This gives botanists the maximum amount of information to work with. Even after mounting is complete, the preservation process is never quite finished. We continuously protect our collections by storing them in a controlled environment (temperature, light, relative humidity, etc.) while regularly monitoring the space for hungry insect pests. We are currently working toward fully digitizing the herbarium backlog, which includes many specimens that have remained unmounted since they were collected in the 1800s.

May 9, 2023

The Importance of Digitizing the Botany Collection

For the past few months, I have been a part of the Chicago Academy of Sciences’ effort to digitize their botany collection. This consists of mounting specimens from the backlog, cataloging the information about each specimen into Arctos, labeling the specimens, scanning them, and finally, integrating them into the collection. This process takes a lot of time and has been underway since 2020 thanks to a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). But why are we doing this? Is it really worth all the time, effort, and money? There are many reasons why digitizing – the process of creating a digital representation of the physical item – the botany collection is important. One reason is that it makes it easier to know what is in the collection when the information is put into an easily searchable database. Before this effort began, many specimens were still in their original pressing papers in boxes of which the contents were unclear. Once each specimen is fully processed and integrated into the larger collection, storage information is entered into its corresponding record in Arctos so that it can be easily found in the future. Through the online collections management system, Arctos, that the Academy uses, researchers and the public also have access to information in the collection that was previously inaccessible.

January 10, 2023

When Working at the Nature Museum Doesn’t Feel Like Work

I am approaching my second year of working at the Nature Museum and through my journey I have come upon unexpected discoveries, both personally and professionally. When I first graduated with my degree in environmental science, I pictured myself working out in the forest preserves, harvesting on an urban farm, or writing environmental impact assessments. I also pictured myself doing all of this in Seattle but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I moved back to Chicago earlier than I anticipated. The environment and culture between the two cities are vastly different, and the opportunities for my degree in Seattle did not exactly translate in Chicago. I struggled for a while with my job search, unable to find something that called out to me until the Nature Museum came along. In 2021, I found an education internship opportunity with the Nature Museum working for their Teenagers Exploring and Explaining Nature and Science (TEENS) program. Participating in this program as one of the mentors and educators felt very reflective of who I am as a person, someone who enjoys working hands-on with the environment and demonstrating the wonders of nature right outside your door. Being able to spend time with young students who are likewise interested in the environment was a special bonus. The mission of the Nature Museum became very clear to me then, and I realized how much it coincided with my own.

December 14, 2022

Club Mosses and their Mighty Ancestors

Some of the most visually striking organisms bear a resemblance to their extinct prehistoric relatives. They transport our imaginations to a time when the land beneath our feet looked very different and starred a completely different cast of plants and animals. While dinosaurs and other giants come to mind, small and unassuming plants, like this club moss, can also tell exciting stories about the alien world of Earth’s deep past. Club mosses have a deceptive name. Despite their fuzzy green appearance, they are not mosses at all. Where does this confusion come from, you might ask? In the system of scientific classification, every species has an official scientific name, which is usually based in Latin or Greek (eg. Dendrolycopodium dendroideum, seen here). To make it easier for us pronunciation-wise, most species also have a common name, an unofficial nickname we can use for convenience. Misleading nicknames are everywhere in botany. Many species have multiple common names that vary by culture, dialect, or geographic region. Scientific names help cut through vernacular confusion by providing a standardized language that can be used by all different speakers.

August 8, 2022

It’s Finally Thyme: Processing the Botany Backlog

In 1944, the Chicago Academy of Sciences’ Honorary Curator of Botany, Anna Pedersen Kummer, reflected on recent developments to the Academy’s Herbarium in The Chicago Naturalist: “Much excellent materials been discovered in this most recent attempt at good housekeeping,” she wrote. “Just now we feel that all else can wait until we have the unmounted three-fourths of our Chicago region material in order. We would like to be able to turn at once to the Galinsoga that Moffatt collected in 1891 at the old Exposition building and labeled ‘rare,’ or the Myosotis that Babcock found ‘abundant’ in Riverside. Meantime, all other material has been sorted according to its geography, treated with insecticide, and wrapped securely.”1

June 27, 2022

Collections Reveal Traces of Living Animals

What if there were a way to look back in time and observe living animals interacting directly with their environment? Natural history collections preserve the remains of organisms and the wealth of data that describe them, but there is also a world of information hidden in the ephemeral tracks and traces left behind by animals during their lifetime. I am a collections technician at the Chicago Academy of Sciences / Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Early in the process of digitizing the botany collection, I came across this specimen of Asclepias exaltata, or poke milkweed. This specimen has obvious insect damage: notice the holes in the leaves. Here at the museum, this would normally be a very bad sign! Collections staff regularly monitor our facilities for the presence of insects that might want to feast upon our irreplaceable preserved specimens. Damaged leaves might indicate an infestation of pests in the collection. However, as an amateur gardener myself, I recognized these particular holes as the work of monarch caterpillars, meaning that the damage was done before this plant specimen was collected for the museum. Oh, and the coolest part is that this specimen was collected back in 1871! What makes us think the damage was done by caterpillars 151 years ago, and not by unwanted museum pests more recently? Milkweed is the only host plant of Monarch butterflies, meaning that they rely on the plant during the larval stage of their lifecycle. Caterpillars grow rapidly, making different traces on the milkweed leaves as they eat, first making tiny holes, then slightly larger ones, and eventually taking big scallop-shaped bites out of the leaf’s edge (Eisman et. al, 2010). Looking at the holes of different sizes, we can imagine watching one little caterpillar develop, taking bigger and bigger bites out of the leaves as its body and appetite grow. Then, along came one of our favorite botanists, Elizabeth Emerson Atwater, who collected this masticated milkweed for her impressive herbarium collection. Atwater’s collection was donated to the Academy shortly after the Great Chicago Fire. Okay, that’s a cute story, but how do we know holes didn’t get there after the plant was collected? A century and a half is a long time for pests to potentially get in and do their worst. Plants that are damaged in life can actually heal from their injuries. Looking very closely at the holes in this specimen, we can see a thin border line around the edges. This is scar tissue that tells us the damage was done while the plant was still alive (Meineke, 2018). Before this plant was collected, it had the time to heal some of its wounds. For comparison, we can look at plant specimens that were damaged by pests after being collected and dried. Notice where the edges are broken and jagged, without any apparent healing.