A holiday in London to see Monty Python live—that’s right, Monty-frickin’-Python—is enough excitement to melt your eyeballs, but you really can’t visit London without visiting a museum or two. On this trip the highlight was an afternoon in the Natural History Museum to visit the seaweed collection.
The Natural History* Museum is home to 70 million specimens—mammals, birds, rocks, algae, plants, fish, fossils, everything— the largest collection of its kind in the world. Remember when you were a kid, the first time you saw a real life dinosaur fossil and your brain exploded? This place has all those skeletons AND a robotic T-Rex. And admission is free. I love this place.
*An aside: the term “natural history” is vague and, for me, conjures images of dead things in dusty jars and Victorian England. In fact, “Natural History” broadly encompasses the observation and description of life and relationship of organisms to each other and the environment. Fundamental stuff and, sadly, long in decline as a scientific discipline. Click here for an interesting paper on the role of Natural History in science and society.
Most collections are not on display to the public, including the 250,000 seaweed specimens. I do love the dinos, but think the more obvious crowd-pleaser would have been a robotic giant kelp (with lifelike blade movement and real-time photosynthesis) over a T-Rex. They could keep the roar to freak out the babies…artistic license. Anyway, we asked and were given a tour behind-the-scenes in the Cryptogamic Herbarium (“cryptogam” is an old term to describe something “plant-like”—algae, ferns, bryophytes, fungi—that reproduces without seeds or flowers. Seaweeds be in this group).
The Herbarium is a large wing stuffed to the brim with cabinets and bookshelves, microscopy slide drawers, desks laden with materials and boxes that looked untouched for years—in other words, like every other wonderul herbarium I’ve seen except this one has so much history (see photos below). The Curator of Algae, Jo Wilbraham, very kindly gave us a tour, patiently answering my questions and quietly enduring my outbursts.
Natural history is cool and museums like the NHM are vital, not just for cataloging our biodiversity, but for making all the weird, wonderful, diverse creatures out there accessible to people who may not otherwise see them. Educational institutions like the NHM and other natural history museums allow people, children and adults alike, to nurture their instinctive curiosity about nature, explore, ask questions and learn fundamental concepts about how the natural world works.
Nowadays, you don’t even have to visit in person to access the collections of many museums (though you should, cause they’re awesome). For example, you can access many of the NHM’s collections on their website, including their seaweeds(!). What about Canada? We’ve got lots of online resources too, including the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University of British Columbia and the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Check’em out! And happy learning.
Natural History Museum’s collections: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/collections/index.html
British seaweeds collection: http://seaweeds.myspecies.info
Canadian Museum of Nature algal collection: http://www.nature-cana.ca/databases/index.php
National Phycology Collection of Canada: link
UBC Herbarium: http://www.beatymuseum.ubc.ca/herbarium-algae
E-Flora, electronic atlas of B.C. flora: http://www.geog.ubc.ca/biodiversity/eflora/
E-Fauna, same thing but for critters: http://www.geog.ubc.ca/biodiversity/efauna/
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