Introducing the time machine for plants

It's a very exciting time for natural science collections, which means a very exciting time for everyone, as the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and other institutions around the world mobilise to make their collections digitally available to everyone, everywhere. Biodiversity loss, food security, and changing climates are among pressing challenges both at home here in Scotland, and globally. If we hope to solve them, we need tools and resources built to meet these challenges.
Digitisers and researchers at the Botanics are unlocking the stories, secrets, and science of the natural world using the Herbarium which houses around three million plant and fungi specimens collected from almost everywhere on Earth, some over 300 years old.
By capturing important scientific and historical data stored in this collection, like species names, and when and where specimens were collected, we can explore the storied history of life on our planet.
Trained digitisers photograph specimens and, combining the data and images, creates our online herbarium catalogue, available to anyone with an internet connection.
An entirely digital herbarium of plants from all over the world in the palm of your hand might sound like science fiction, but it’s real and it’s exactly the kind of tool we need to get good science done. Think of the Herbarium as a time machine, letting us peer back through time at how and where plants grew in the past. We can see how species, habitats, and whole ecosystems responded to changes like rising temperatures, and the growth of towns and cities. In this way, future conservation is informed and inspired by the patterns of the past.
This isn’t a new concept. Scientists have used collections like our Herbarium for hundreds of years to better understand the world around us, but digitisation is what takes us from peering through the keyhole for answers, to throwing the doors open wide, making this wonderful resource accessible to everyone.
Already, the organisation's Scottish Plant Recovery project is working to restore populations of 10 threatened native plants like the alpine blue-sow-thistle. By studying the histories of these plants, decision-makers are empowered to take effective, informed action to protect irreplaceable native wildlife.
The many and varied challenges facing us, and future generations, can only be tackled through an equal variety of solutions. These solutions? They’re found with a still greater variety of people; scientists and problem-solvers of all kinds who approach from unique angles and points of view, working together to reach novel and creative answers.
Science is for everyone and needs everyone. We’re all scientists, whether we realise it or not. You can be lab-coated and be-goggled, or watering houseplants on your windowsill; connecting dots for global ecosystem cycles or noticing when leaves change colour and fall from the trees. It’s this act of observing, of being curious, that underpins all science and links all scientists together. You’ve been thinking like a scientist all along, and by putting the tools of discovery, like the Botanics' Herbarium, in as many hands as possible, the better off we’ll be for the benefits that unlocking their knowledge will bring.