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The African Plants Initiative (API) is an international collaborative project to create an online database of herbarium specimen images and associated data, contributed by partner herbaria and funded by the Andrew Mellon foundation in New York. The Natural History Museum (NHM) received funding in autumn 2005 to digitise the collection of moss type specimens from Africa and Madagascar (liverworts and hornworts are not included in this project). The NHM herbarium holds approximately 25,000 moss type specimens, 4,000 of which are from Africa and will be entered into the API database. The API website is set to launch in 2007 and is going to be available to institutions by subscription. The subscription rates will work on a sliding scale to ensure affordability for partner institutions in Africa. Several other institutions are also digitising their bryophyte collections for the API project and this article describes the procedures followed at the NHM. |
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The Moss Herbarium at the NHM The herbarium is a vast store of information about plant diversity and systematics. For many parts of Africa large numbers of allegedly endemic taxa have been described, often with poorly defined characters, and there are few floristic accounts of bryophytes. Identification of bryophyte collections may have to be made using only original descriptions (often published in obscure journals) and in some cases the type specimen is the only known collection. The type specimen is the singular entity on which the name of a plant is based, and access to these specimens is imperative for taxonomic work. Information on the location and condition of type specimens is often hard to find and thus creates an impediment to taxonomic study. The cryptogamic herbarium & herbarium specimen folders  
Many of the older moss specimens in the herbarium are glued directly onto
sheets while later collections are enclosed in moss packets kept loose
in folders. Type specimens are kept in red folders to make them easily
visible and give extra protection to the specimens. Prior to WW2, type
material was marked only with a small label on the specimen, if at all.
During the war, type specimens were evacuated from the museum and sent
to country estates across England for safekeeping. Fortunately, only a
small proportion of specimens were destroyed when the NHM was hit by bombing
during the war and the main source of damage came from the water used to
put the fires out. When type specimens came to be re-instated into the
herbarium they were placed in red edged folders so they could be clearly
flagged up in the collections. However, not all type specimens have found
their way into red covers and this digitisation project is providing an
opportunity to work through the collections looking for unmarked original
material.
The
bulk of the NHM bryophyte herbarium consists of the herbaria accumulated
by notable bryologists in the late 18th to early 20th Century. It incorporates
the important African collections of E. Hampe (1795–1880), W. Wilson
(1799–1871), W.P. Schimper (1808–1880), J.D. Hooker (1817–1911),
E. Bescherelle (1828–1903), H.N. Dixon (1861–1944) and duplicate
specimens from the herbaria of C.A.F.W. Müller (1818–1899)
and W. Mitten (1819-1906). These pioneers of bryophyte taxonomy described
thousands of new taxa and their herbaria represent very type rich collections.
H.N. Dixon - portrait and example specimen |
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E. Bescherelle: portait & example specimens 
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portrait & example specimens
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Digitisation Methodology Type validation. As not all type specimens are marked up as such in the collections, some experience and a substantial library are required to identify original material. It has been necessary to work through all the folders of African specimens to locate type material though the time restrictions of the project limit the extent to which nomenclatural research can be undertaken. Scanning
specimens. The specimens are scanned using an inverted Epson
10,000 XL Expression Flatbed Scanner. The specimen sheet is placed
on a platform that is raised up to the inverted scanner and scanned
at 600 dpi, producing an image of approximately 200MB. Scanning specimens
is preferable to photography as the latter leads to problems with resolution
and extensive lighting requirements.
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Associated label information Specimen label information is recorded into a database and this data, along with the specimen images, is exported to the API administrative headquarters in New York. Targets The NHM has pledged to digitise 4,000 moss specimens in one year. We are currently on target for completing this project in December 2006. (With this reckoning we could digitise the entire moss herbarium of approximately 800,000 specimens in only 200 years!). The value of moss specimen images has been questioned during discussions with API partners who are considering digitising their collections. A high-resolution image of a flowering plant specimen is usually sufficient to allow accurate identification, while mosses require microscopic examination. However, the images of moss specimens convey the plants macro features, make important label data accessible and often include other valuable information such as attached protologues, determinations, annotations and illustrations. Example of image resolution: Macromitrium sulcatum
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Example of image resolution: Splachnum rubrum 
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Additional API activities at the NHM Synonymy of African Mosses Collectors Database The Future |
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