By Sabine Klier
Dried plants from all over the world are kept in the botanical garden. These include old specimens that Humboldt collected on his travels. With more than 1.5 million entries, the Herbonauts were a great help with the digitization.
Herbonauts are volunteers who help digitize the more than four million herbarium specimens. The mammoth project started in 2017. 562 herbonauts are now registered throughout Germany. With the 1.5 millionth entry, it is one of the most successful botanical Citizen Science collection projects worldwide.
The plants in the botanical garden are kept on shelves that stretch for kilometers Photo: Stefanie Herbst
The collection is on two floors in the Botanical Museum in Dahlem. Here they are stored behind heavy iron doors on kilometers of shelves. Neatly glued to paper in dried form and provided with a label.
Juraj Paule pulls a precious plant out of the closet Photo: Stefanie Herbst
“These include treasures such as originals by Alexander von Humboldt or type specimens of newly discovered species,” says Juraj Paule (42), curator of the herbarium. These include 300,000 ferns from all over the world alone. The labels next to the plants contain data such as the place where the plant was found, the name of the plant, the date it was found and the name of the collector. Often only handwritten.
The plants are neatly glued to paper and provided with descriptions – some over 100 years old Photo: Stefanie Herbst
“Sometimes it’s not so easy to decipher the old letters,” explains herbonaut Dörte Erps (70) from Prenzlauer Berg. The former pharmacist has been there from the start. She can look at the photographed leaves with the dried plants in pin-sharp detail on her home computer and type in the decoded information right away.
“It’s detective work,” she says. “The places are often called completely different today.” If something cannot be read, there is a forum where the herbonauts can exchange ideas with each other. Swarm knowledge is required.
The digitization of data enables scientists around the world to access the knowledge contained within. “Since we have so much evidence, we can use the data to reconstruct the distribution of species worldwide, even in the past,” says Anton Güntsch, (56), head of the new Center for Biodiversity Informatics and Collection Data Integration. “This is particularly important in the context of climate change and its impact on biodiversity.”
Herbonaut Dörte Erps (70) deciphers the entries on the labels Photo: Stefanie Herbst
The herbonauts are currently starting their largest project to date: 80,000 labels from the Frahm collection – a comprehensive collection of mosses – have to be recorded. This should be completed by the end of October.
Interested parties can register at www.herbonauten.de