Abstract ID
biodiv22
Type
Poster
Theme
biodiv
Full title
Peter Smith University of Botswana Herbarium
Abstract text
A herbarium is a collection of plant specimens that have been pressed, dried and mounted on rigid paper of
archival quality. It is a library and tool for research and teaching used by people concerned with the
identification, classification, botany, including ethno- and economic-botany, ecology, evolution, plant
geography, etc. Peter Smith University of Botswana Herbarium (internationally indexed as PSUB) is one of the
herbaria, which are found in Botswana. PSUB was established with the donation of about 5,000 herbarium
specimens to University of Botswana by the late Peter Alexandra Smith (1931-1999), a famous botanist and
former employee of the Department of Water Affairs, in 1995. Hence, the University of Botswana has honored
his contribution by naming the herbarium after him, i.e. Peter Smith University of Botswana Herbarium.
Although the majority of Smith’s collections were from Okavango Delta, there were also many collections
from the surrounding habitats and southern Botswana. The number of specimens in PSUB has since then
increased to over 8,000 through collections made by researchers at HOORC and donations from other collectors.
The specimens represent about 110 families, 577 genera and more than 600 species. The main objectives of the
herbarium are to collect and preserve plant specimens with adequate labeled notes, provide a standard reference
collection with the aim to verify the identification of newly collected plant specimens of taxonomic and other
botanical uses. PSUB also provides information on species distribution in the country and promotes awareness
in conservation and sustainable utilization of indigenous plants. The scope of PSUB is regional with over 80%
of the collections representing specimens collected from the Okavango Delta, the largest collection of plants in
the Delta. Some other notable collectors whose collections reside at PSUB include G.E. Russel, H.M. Biege and,
recently, Alison and Roger Heath. PSUB has acquired a “herbscan― for digitizing herbarium specimens
recently. The herbscan creates high quality digital scans of flat herbarium specimens while avoiding damage to
the specimens. The quality of scanned images allows users to view original information from the specimen
labels and morphological details of the plants, which could otherwise be accessed only by viewing the
specimens physically. The digitized images will be stored on an archival quality server and made accessible
internally through image server database or externally via a herbarium catalogue. Storing high quality digitized
images not only facilitates access to the specimens but also has a potential ensure long-term preservation of the
specimens by reducing/avoiding the need for direct handling and loans of the physical specimens. Recently,
PSUB has been re-arranged alphabetically by family to make specimens easily accessible by both professionals
and non-professionals interested in plants. Also information on the numbers of families, genera, species and
subspecies represented by the specimens, collectors, dates and places of collections (including their
geographical coordinates), habitat, habit, altitudes of places of collections, phenology, height, uses and local
names are being generated from the herbarium specimens and accompanying labels.
Submission date
2009-09-28
Keywords
Herbscan, Okavango Delta, Plant genera, Plant specimens, Plant families and species
Will be submitting paper?
Yes