Conifers like this fossilized Elatides specimen were common during the Late Cretaceous period. This tree may have resembled the modern Norfolk Island Pine, which exists today and is pictured below.
Botany Blogs
These blogs are written about and by our Section of Botany researchers. The herbarium at the museum which contains approximately 3,000 type specimens--specimens that define an entire plants' species. These type specimens only represent about 0.6 % of the collection.
Mason Heberling, head of the section, regularly shares herbarium specimens that have been "Collected on this day" in history.
Collected on this day in 1907
On January 20, this specimen was found in Montserrat, in the Caribbean, by John A. Shafer, who became the museum’s first curator of the herbarium in 1897. Known as “devil weed,” Chromolaena odorata is in the sunflower family (Asteraceae). It is native to the Caribbean, Mexico, and subtropical United States, and it has become a problematic invader in tropical regions of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.
Botanists at Carnegie Museum of Natural History share pieces of the herbarium’s historical hidden collection on the dates they were discovered or collected. Check back for more!
Collected on this Day in 1935
This eastern wahoo (Euonymus atropurpureus) specimen was collected near Connellsville, Pennsylvania on January 12, 1935 by John Franklin Lewis.
Eastern wahoo is native to midwestern states and parts of Pennsylvania. This specimen is part of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s hidden botany collection.
Botanists at Carnegie Museum of Natural History share pieces of the herbarium’s historical hidden collection on the dates they were discovered or collected. Check back for more!
Butternut
Butternut, a part of the walnut family, displayed in the Hall of Botany at Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Green Russula
Green Russula found in the Hall of Botany
Botany Hall Dioramas in Context
by Aisling Quigley and Colleen O’Reilly, University of Pittsburgh
What is the role of crafted objects in the exchange of scientific knowledge? How might we describe the authority of scientific displays without obscuring their culturally-specific artistic origins? How can natural history museums make the histories of objects in their collection visible to viewers? Can digital infrastructures offer new solutions?
As part of our graduate work at the University of Pittsburgh, we are creating an online exhibition that explores these issues in relation to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Botany Hall, bringing it into contact with objects from other institutions, and positioning it as a focal point for interdisciplinary expert knowledge.
Botany Hall is situated in a corner of the second floor of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, accessible through the Hall of North American Wildlife. Inside, seven window dioramas dating from the 1930s through the 1970s depict seven different biomes of the United States.
In each, a richly painted curved wall supports a highly detailed three-dimensional scene, in which every individual leaf, stem, insect wing, and bit of moss is hand-crafted and botanically accurate. This form of art and scientific display has a long history, and involves specific visual strategies that create an immersive experience for viewers. The backgrounds extend beyond the window frames, allowing the viewer the impression they are looking into another fully articulated world.
The artists paid special attention to the places where the two-dimensional meets the three-dimensional, and employed certain visual devices to make a seamless transition and enhance illusion, such as carefully placed plants or rocks, play with light and shadow, and the repetition of specimens. The exhibition team designed these dioramas based on a complex network of intersecting criteria.
They prioritized fidelity to what would be found in nature, the creation of a complete and representative picture of a particular biome, and the presentation of a harmonious aesthetic. The achieved effect speaks to a yearning for a version of nature that can be harnessed and dominated by human eyes and hands. Each
diorama was conceived as a unified whole, in which all parts work together, both aesthetically and as a natural environment.
Our exhibition will be a research project on Botany Hall itself and will also represent a new way for audiences to learn about natural history museum display. Over the coming months we will be digging in archives, examining objects, conducting workshops, and seeking out collaborations.
Ultimately, visitors to our online space will be able to get various perspectives on Botany Hall, compare the dioramas with objects in other collections, and find out about their history. We will combine our backgrounds in art history and information science to explore how formal concerns intertwine with scientific ones and to look at creative ways of contextualizing the information contained within these objects.
We will explore the interdisciplinary goals that drive the creation of educational objects for natural history museums, and the implications of the material presence of these objects in museum collections over time.