The Big Moss Makeover

Written by Hannah Jenkins, Assistant Curator, Natural Sciences, Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales.

The botany collection at National Museum Cardiff, Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, contains approximately 726,000 botanical specimens from across the world, including around 310,000 bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and hornworts).

Most of our moss specimens (approximately 225,000) are stored in conservation grade packets, however unlike some herbaria, these packets are not mounted on to herbarium sheets but instead are filed directly into drawers within our herbarium.

Large divided wooden drawers housing individual specimen packets © Amgueddfa Cymru

However, tucked away, we also have a small number of outsized bryophyte specimens, the majority of which are mosses, mounted directly on herbarium sheets. This is in a similar vein to some of the historical exsiccatae they are stored with but is a technique more commonly associated with vascular plant herbaria.

Outsized Moss Specimens?

You may think of moss as being small but … not according to these specimens!

Some of the larger outsized specimens include Common Haircap Moss, Polytrichum commune, described by the British and Irish Bryological Society as “one of our [Britain and Ireland’s] largest mosses, with individual stems reaching up to 40 cms long”.

Polytrichum commune (Common Haircap Moss) specimens. A standard herbarium sheet is approximately 42cm high © Amgueddfa Cymru

Our outsized bryophytes arrived at the museum at varying times, from different collections and so illustrate a number of methods historically used to mount botanical specimens, including sewing with thread and strapping.

Although these techniques are still practiced as standard today, some of the historical materials used had begun to deteriorate and I was set the task of re-mounting any specimens that had become loose, replacing strapping that had deteriorated and also removing any non-archival materials.

Some Repair Required

Many of the outsized specimens were in good condition and didn’t need repair. For those that needed a bit more work, once original strapping materials had been carefully removed, specimens were laid out on new herbarium sheets and, trying to follow the original placement as much as possible, remounted using adhesive cotton tape strapping. All original collection labels were also transferred to the new sheet.

Re-mounting of a Breutelia arundinifolia moss specimen. The small paper capsule (above specimen label, bottom right) contains loose material found with the specimen on the original sheet © Amgueddfa Cymru

Before and after photos of epiphyllous moss Ephemeropsis tjibodensis, still attached to the leaves on which it was growing. ©Amgueddfa Cymru

A number of the specimens had been wrapped in a cellophane-type material, attached at the back with sticky tape! These wraps had tightly moulded around the sheets and proved quite awkward to remove while keeping the specimen as flat as possible. Removal of this cellophane enables researchers to access the specimen more easily and better images of the specimen to be taken, as illustrated below.

The placement of this moss, Spiridens reinwardtii, was adjusted slightly to avoid the top of the herbarium sheet where it could be more prone to damage © Amgueddfa Cymru

Richards’ Bryophytes

Many of our outsized bryophyte specimens were collected by Professor Paul W Richards (1908-1995), a prominent botanist and ecologist well known for both his work on the ecology of tropical rainforests and the study of bryophytes.

Richards had a long association with the museum, donating his first specimens in 1920 at the age of 12 and he continued to donate around 11,000 specimens throughout his life. Amgueddfa Cymru also holds a large amount of archive material relating to Professor Richards’ work.

An unnamed epiphyllous liverwort in the outsized collection (in good condition and needing no repair), was collected by Professor Richards in Grenada, August 1929, almost certainly during a stop on the voyage to the Oxford Exploration Club’s expedition to Guyana.

An epiphytic leaf (one that grows on the surface of another plant) and an epiphyllous liverwort (one that grows on the surface of a living leaf) collected by P.W. Richards, Grenada, August 1929. © Amgueddfa Cymru

Richards was still an undergraduate at the time of the expedition and at the British Bryological Society’s Paper Reading Meeting of 1990, talked about his “first steps in tropical bryology” being as he “set foot on Barbados, 1 August 1929, on my way to British Guiana (now Guyana) as a member of the Oxford Exploration Club’s expedition”. He described seeing some epiphyllous liverworts but that “it was not as good a place for bryophytes as Grenada where the ship called the next day”.

Camera Ready

Once the conservation work had been carried out, all outsized specimens were digitised using a specialised imaging set up developed for herbarium sheets. During this process a unique barcode is added to each specimen, the sheet is then placed into a lightbox imaging station with a colour chart and scale bar, and a high-resolution image is taken with a digital camera mounted at the top of the lightbox.

An outsized moss being imaged using a specialised set up for herbarium sheets at National Museum Cardiff @ Amgueddfa Cymru

The specimen images and associated collection data will become available to researchers across the world.

Closing Thoughts

Working on this project provided a lovely opportunity to get to know a different part of our collection and some of the collectors represented within it.

References

British Bryological Society Bulletin (1991), The Paper Reading Meeting, 1990, Cambridge, Summary of P.W. Richards autobiographical talk, British Bryological Society Bulletin 57, March 1991 11-12

British and Irish Bryological Society website, Species Finder, Polytrichum commune. Web access 12 October  2026 Polytrichum commune – British and Irish Bryological Society

Davies, N.M.J., Drinkwell, C and Utteridge, T.M.A., (eds) (2023) The Herbarium Handbook, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Harrison, S.G., (1982) The Collections in the Welsh National Herbarium – National Museum of Wales, Nature In Wales Journal NS Vol 1 Part 2.

Richards, P.W., (1991) A bryologist in British Guiana and the West Indies, Journal of Bryology 16(3) 437 – 441.

Slade, K. (in press), The British and Irish Bryological Society Herbarium in 2026. Field Bryology 136.

Where are the Women? Uncovering Hidden Connections to Calke Abbey’s Natural History Collection

Written by Julie Griffith, Property Experience Curator, Calke Abbey, National Trust.

Exploring the stories of Selina (1822-1905), Georgiana (1824-1910) and Matilda (1831-1899) Lovell, uncovers three curious and accomplished women. With interests in botany and conchology and stretching from Derbyshire to Australia, their story is of both individual achievement and natural history connecting sisters across the globe.

With existing narratives around Calke Abbey’s natural history collection overwhelmingly male focussed, recent research into the three Lovell sisters aims to bring women’s stories and connections to natural history into the spotlight at this country house property.

Selina Lovell (1822-1905). Credit: National Trust/David Midgelow
Georgiana Lovell (1824-1910). Credit: National Trust/Ian Buxton, David Midgelow and Brian Birch
Matilda Lovell (1831-1899). AI created image

Who were the Lovell sisters?

The Lovell sisters were closely related to the Harpur Crewe family of Calke Abbey through their mother, Selina Crewe (d.1838), a daughter of Sir Henry, Calke’s 7th Baronet and Nanny, Lady Crewe. Their father, Vice-Admiral William Stanhope Lovell (c.1788-1859) was a distinguished naval officer and veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – October 2026

Compiled by Milo Phillips, Digitisation Co-ordinator at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Welcome to the October edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

A monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences, and training opportunities. We are keen to hear from you if you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

MIDS Standard Public Review Now Open

The MIDS Task Group is pleased to announce that the public review of the Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen (MIDS) standard is now open.

MIDS gives collections a shared, measurable definition of what it means for a specimen to be “digitized”. It helps institutions prioritize digitization work, track progress consistently, and publish specimen data that are fit for research and reuse. MIDS complements existing standards such as Darwin Core and ABCD rather than replacing them.

The review begins on 5 October 2026 and will remain open until 4 December 2026. You can participate via the TDWG site here.

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Micro to Macro: Modelling and Magnifying Insects

Written by Maria Dragoi, PhD Candidate, UCL Institute of Archaeology & NHM Science.

Insects are very numerous, and very small. Their ubiquity and importance has meant that they need to be addressed in natural history galleries, but their minute size and fragile nature can make this a challenge. Various techniques have been developed to represent insects in galleries, including projection, illustration, and sculpture. This blog looks at model making as a technique used to enlarge insects for public displays at the Natural History Museum in London in the 20th century. It reflects on what magnification as a representation and display tactic does to how we construct a relationship with an insect.

I think something that’s important to remember about when we interact with insect models is that we know and recognise them as such. We are aware that they are not the thing in itself, but a representation of it. What we don’t often realise is that there needs to be a cultural schema around us for us to know and understand these things as representations. There’s some really interesting research by Pauline Kusiak on the use of projections to teach West African communities about the dangers of malaria in the early twentieth century. French Christian missionaries used new projection technology in order to show enlarged images of mosquitoes and their larvae to create awareness within these communities about the transmission of disease. At first it didn’t go very well, because the people that were shown the projections didn’t understand them as such. They told the French missionaries they clearly had no idea what was going on, because what they had shown was huge, a monster, whereas the insects that were known by communities to cause a problem were very small. Before using the model, or projection, as an educational tactic, the missionaries realised they first had to build up an understanding of what their representation technology was.

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The Dead Plants Society – A Case Study for Fundraising for Natural Science Collections

Written by Clare Brown, Leeds Museums and Galleries.

#fundraising #naturalsciencecollections #howtogetfunding #howtofundmyproject #fundingnaturalscience #botanyfunding #fundingforplantcollections etc

A long time ago, longer than I care to think about, I ran a herbarium coffee morning every week at Portsmouth Museums and Records Office. A group of us – staff and volunteers – got together, catalogued plants and had a coffee-and-biscuit break at about 11. The volunteers involved talked about their love of plants and their love of a good chinwag every week. For some it was their only regular social event. It was incredibly wholesome, inclusive, friendly and productive, and I have wanted to replicate it for ages.

© Leeds Museums and Galleries/Space 2

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