Anniversary Talk – Liverpool’s Herbarium – Preserving our botanical heritage

Talk by Donna Young

Donna has over thirty years’ experience of working with botanical collections – but not the living kind.

As Curator of the Herbarium at National Museums Liverpool, she cares for and facilitates access to their botany collection through loans, research, documentation, exhibits and talks. With a particular interest in the preparation and preservation of historical plant material, Donna has developed training and best practice in the care and curation of botanical collections for curators across the UK and mentored early-career natural science curators. More than just ‘dead plants’ – she has a passion for celebrating these collections by raising awareness of their history, contents, relevance, use and potential.

This talk will introduce the internationally important botanical collection held at the museum, highlighting some of its key items including specimens from the original Liverpool Botanic Garden (opened in 1802). As well as plants collected, dried and brought back from distant travels overseas, this collection holds over three thousand pressed plants grown from seed in the garden’s beds and glasshouses. Species carefully chosen with purpose, they illustrate William Roscoe’s ambition for the garden. As such, these plants represent the origins of the living ‘Liverpool Botanic Collection’ that we know of today at Croxteth Park and here in the Sefton Park Palm House.

Donna is particularly interested in historical and contemporary convergences of art and science and is a guest lecturer on LJM University’s Art in Science MA course. This talk will also explore some of the museum’s botanical prints and drawings collection, as well as plant illustrations held in the Roscoe Archives of the City Library. The latter of which she is helping to research and catalogue through her work with the newly formed Liverpool Botanical Trust.

Celebrating plants, whether dead or alive, they all hold a place in our city’s outstanding botanical heritage.