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.

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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A Mammoth Task: Stabilising and Protecting Fossil Mammal Specimens in a Sustainable and Access-friendly Way for a Large-scale Collections Move.

Written by Lydia Amies, Caitlin Jenkins, Emanuele Casafredda, Lucia Petrera, Tanya Nakamoto and Fabiana Portoni, Natural History Museum, London.

The Natural History Museum, London (NHM) is moving a third of its collection (28 million) specimens to a to a new, purpose-built centre at Thames Valley Science Park near Reading. Under the umbrella of the Unlocked Programme a new facility is being designed and built to house natural history specimens, research laboratories, working space, and digitisation facilities. The project started in 2020 and the moves stage will commence in 2028.

The Unlocked Conservation Team is working to assess, treat and stabilise at-risk specimens that are due to move. Our focus is to futureproof collection storage while using materials in a sustainable and cost-effective way. Our work will improve access to the collections and enable safe handling of specimens. One of the largest and most complex collections we are working on is the Fossil Mammal Collection which is made up of a wide variety of species, from tiny extinct rodents to woolly mammoths.

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The Past, Present and Future of the NatSCA Conference

By Eimear Ashe, Collections Moves Project Manager, National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.

Ulster Museum lecture theatre

NatSCA as a named subject specialist network and membership organisation, held its first conference in 2004 at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. This year, the conference took place in Northern Ireland for the first time — hosted by the Ulster Museum in the heart of Belfast. NatSCA has always sited its conference in the UK and Ireland. In the map below, green flags represent a museum that has hosted the conference once, and yellow stars represent sites that have hosted twice (Leeds and Dublin):

Where has NatSCA held its annual conferences?

This year’s programme was notably wide‑ranging, attracting a diverse mix of attendees from across the sector. Given my current role as Project Manager for the redevelopment of the Natural History Museum at the National Museum of Ireland, several talks particularly resonated with me. I was especially interested in the presentation by Lydi a Amies and Emanuele Casafredda, which focused on stabilising and relocating fossil mammal collections. Collection moves and storage planning have been a recurring theme throughout my career, so it was really worthwhile seeing how colleagues elsewhere are tackling similar logistical and conservation challenges.

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Beyond the Scientific Record: Using Photography to Inspire Curiosity about Natural History Collections

Photo essay, written and produced by Molly Wilders, Photographer, mollywilders.com.

While museum collections on display are designed to be viewed and understood by the public, collection storerooms primarily exist to support research. Museum professionals spend their lives studying and caring for specimens but few outsiders truly understand what that work looks like.

As a photographer with a background in biology, my projects often focus on documenting the work of researchers in laboratories and the field. In 2022 I reached out to Ashleigh Whiffin, Curator of Entomology at National Museums Scotland, to collaborate on a photography project focusing on her work and the collections she oversees.

The digitisation of museum collections has become increasingly important, with high-quality images supporting research and education, allowing collections to reach audiences without geographical barriers. However, while digitised specimens are invaluable scientific resources, they have a limited ability to inspire awe in the average viewer.

Our first experiences of nature are usually emotional, with feelings coming before facts. Yet it can be difficult to connect with a specimen viewed only as scientific data. My work as a photographer is to make the viewer feel something about these collections and the people who care for them. If an image then inspires someone to ask questions about a specimen, collection or curator, then my job is complete.

Huge thanks to Ashleigh for being so generous with her time. It’s been a delight to make these photographs with her and to see her use them in her own science communication work.