The world's oldest herbarium specimen collection, Dalea candida Willd NCSC00010804

BLOG - Two dried plant fragments about 40 cm long provide insight into the importance of documentation systems for science. The specimens taken from a rocky cliff in the Americas were unidentified for more than 300 years.

There is no information about who first, in 1501, took the specimen with ID: 376f695f-67b0-414e-82e7-8934027c80b3 from nature and there was no official taxonomic description of the plant until the 1800s, Carl Ludwig Willdenow, wrote to Species Plantarum ed. 4. 3: 1337 (1802) with the name Dalea candida.

Willdenow who got the standard abbreviation Willd was born in Germany on August 22, 1765, and began his career as a pharmacist, but was fond of collecting herbariums in his teens. He is considered one of the earliest figures in phytogeography who investigated the geographical distribution of plants.

Willd became a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1794 and was director of the Botanical Garden in Berlin from 1801 until his death in 1812. He studied many South American plants brought by Alexander von Humboldt (1767-1835), related their adaptation to climate and showed that similar climates had species with similar characteristics.

Humboldt (Humb) was also one of the earliest and most famous phytogeographers who influenced Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel. He eventually continued and helped expand the garden after Willd's death. The herbarium contains over 20,000 species.

Over time the taxon has been synonymized with several species including Petalostemon candidus Willd. (Michx. in Fl. Bor.-Amer. 2: 49, 1803), Psoralea candida Willd. (Poir. in J.B.A.M.de Lamarck, Encycl. 5: 694, 1804) and Kuhnistera candida Willd. (Kuntze in Revis. Gen. Pl. 1: 192, 1891).

Somehow the specimens passed to Delzie Demaree (1889-1987), an American botanist and plant collector. Demaree collected more than 50,000 specimens and are stored at Southern Methodist University, University of Arkansas, University of North Carolina, National Herbarium of Victoria Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, National Herbarium of New South Wales, and Australian National Herbarium.

The specimens are stored at North Carolina State University Vascular Plant Herbarium with catalog ID: NCSC00010804 until now. D. candida is a flowering plant in the Fabaceae, has two varieties, namely Dalea candida var. candida and Dalea candida var. oligophylla (Torr.) Shinners.

Read more:

Species Plantarum. Editio Quarta. Berolini [Berlin], International Plant Names Index (IPNI) https://www.ipni.org/p/1302-2

Dalea candida Willd. Kew Plants of the World Online https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:30189316-2

North Carolina State University Vascular Plant Herbarium (NCSC:NCSC) https://sernecportal.org/portal/collections/individual/index.php?occid=8721780

By Aryo Bandoro
Founder of Dlium.com. You can follow him on X: @Abandoro.

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