Tag Archives for natural science collections

The Okapi: Biology, Conservation, and Why this Elusive Species matters to Collections

Written by Emma Winnard, Sixth form student studying A-level Biology, Chemistry, and Geology, with a strong interest in zoology, botany, and museum collections.

The okapi (Okapia johnstoni) is one of the most distinctive large mammals in the world, yet it remains one of the least well understood. Endemic to the dense tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the okapi occupies an ecological niche that is both geographically restricted and extremely difficult to study directly. As a result, much of what we know about the species has been built not only from limited field observations, but also from museum specimens, archival records, and associated botanical and habitat material held in natural science collections.

This is what makes the okapi such a useful example for thinking about collections. When an animal is rarely seen, difficult to survey, and increasingly threatened, preserved specimens and older records can become far more than historical curiosities.

A pair of okapi in a lush forest setting. The species’ striped legs and dark coat help break up its outline in the dappled light of dense forest habitat.
© Photo by Brett Aukburg, via Pexels. Pexels Licence.

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The Curious Case of a Historical Seed Collection

Written by Hideko Yamamoto (former Volunteer, Natural History Museum, London) with input from Jovita C. Yesilyurt (Senior Curator, General Herbarium, Natural History Museum, London).

For centuries, a quiet corner of the Natural History Museum has concealed a secret: a previously undocumented historical seed collection. Hidden in locked cabinets, hundreds of small paper packets hold botanical specimens—and unanswered questions. This article offers a glimpse into this overlooked collection, the detective work behind its investigation, and the exciting possibilities that still lie ahead. The mystery remains unsolved—for now.

A Vast Botanical Treasure

The Natural History Museum’s botany collection contains more than five million specimens gathered worldwide over 300 years. These range from herbarium sheets and carpological (fruit) collections to microscopic slides, wet specimens, and seeds (Fig. 1). Ideally, each specimen carries detailed scientific and historical information, allowing researchers to reconstruct past ecosystems, track species distributions, and study evolutionary and climate-related change over time.

Figure 1: Tray with one of the sets of the seed collections

Equally important is the historical context: who collected the specimen, under what circumstances, and how it entered the Museum. Such information brings collections to life, revealing the people, motivations, and networks behind scientific discovery. Yet many specimens lack this documentation. Among them are seed packets stored quietly in locked cabinets of the herbarium.

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Darwin and Marx in the Museum. A review of Joel Wainwright’s ‘The End: Marx, Darwin and the Natural History of the Climate Crisis’.

Written by Joe Rigby, Senior Lecturer, University of Chester: Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

‘Storehouses for dinosaur bones, mineral samples, and fading dioramas portraying early humans. Do such places have something to tell us about capitalism and the climate crisis?’ (Wainwright 2025, p. 8)

Attached cover image of Joel Wainwright’s The End

As readers of the Natsca blog will appreciate, the discipline of ‘natural history’ encompasses a wide range of what today have become institutionalised as more or less separate fields of knowledge, including geology, biology, geography, anthropology, and history. In The End: Marx, Darwin and the Natural History of the Climate Crisis Joel Wainwright argues that recovering this kind of knowledge of ‘the history of nature and the role of nature in history’ (Wainwright 2025, p. 8) is essential to help address the current climate crisis. Whilst Wainwright is hardly the first person to make such a claim about the importance of natural history today, The End makes a convincing case for the importance of drawing jointly on the ideas of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx in order to do so.

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A New Generation of Bolton Field Naturalists.

Written by Lauren Field, Curator of Natural History, Bolton Museum. 

In 1895 The Borough of Bolton Botanical Society was formed. This group concerned itself, as the name implies, with botany alone but eventually a feeling emerged among naturalists in Bolton that other aspects of natural history should be covered.

On February 7th 1907 a group of keen local naturalists met at the Chadwick Museum (Bolton Museum’s first building). The group included members of the Botanical Society as well as ornithologists, entomologists and others representing natural history from astronomy to geology – from the heights of the sky to the depths of the earth.

They soon settled on the name Bolton Field Naturalists’ Society.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – July 2025

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

Welcome to the July 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

Geological Collections Group – Dinosaur trackways field workshop

There is still time to register for the GCG Dinosaur Trackways field workshop, happening later this month on the 24th July.

This one-day field workshop will teach participants how to clean out large sauropod footprints and, take measurements of both isolated prints and entire trackways. This is a practical field workshop, with hands on experience of working with dinosaur trackways. For this reason, participants must be able to move across uneven ground unaided.

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