Tag Archives for natural science collections

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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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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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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