Glimpse king Tut's olive branch at Kew

8:47am Monday 12th September 2005

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THE discovery of boy king Tutankhamen's tomb hit the headlines in 1923 as the most sensational find of its time. But the discovery of several olive branches buried along with the pharaoh to help him in the after life is a much lesser known fact.

At the time a mystery surrounded what type of plant the branches were, so a professor took a sample and sent it to the Botanical Gardens at Kew to be named.

Botanists at the herbarium at Kew identified the plant as an olive branch, which still remains neatly pressed in the collection centre to this day, along with more than seven million other plant species from around the world.

The centre houses the largest collection of dried preserved historical plant specimens and represents nearly 98 per cent of all the genera in the world.

Normally closed to the public, the herbarium will have an open day this weekend.

Research carried out at the herbarium is central for plant diversity on earth and collections include personal donations from some of Britain's most celebrated scientists and explorers of the past.

Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker, David Livingstone, John Hanning Speke, Richard Spruce, Ernest Chinese' Wilson and Miles Joseph Berkeley are just a few of the famous names whose contributions can still be studied at Kew.

The herbarium and library were founded by botanists George Bentham and W A Broomfield, who donated their own collections and in 1877 the first wing was added.

Charles Darwin, a personal friend of the two founders, advised them to start an index of the specimens when they started flooding in at an alarming rate.

The layout of the inside of the first wing is reminiscent of a Victorian prison and houses row upon row of cupboards brimming with folders of pressed plants, which have been painstakingly arranged on each page.

The specimens are arranged systematically by family, region, genus and species, so that anyone can find them within minutes.

They are dried and pressed, plants are stuck on a sheet of cartridge with a label attached to indicate provenance, collector, number and identity.

Daniela Zappi, a botanist at the herbarium, says: "There is about a 60,000 specimen turnaround. Plants come in from say South America and there is a lot of plant traffic going on and clerical staff handle them to start with.

"When things come in they have to be frozen and we have to keep them under control. They come wrapped in newspaper with notes.

"People send them in so we can name them or they want us to swap them or they want us to send named specimens to them.

"The herbarium is one place at Kew where we have more languages spoken than anywhere else in the gardens."

The first wing was purpose built for collections and has two spiral staircases leading up to each floor with a large space in the middle of the room.

Although this may be deemed a waste of space, it was designed this way so that the botanists could be watched by their employers in case they decided to pilfer any plants or derivation of them.

Daniela continues: "After botanists have retired, they still come back here. It is very handy as they know the names of some of the families (plant families) that the younger botanists don't know.

The second wing of the Herbarium was built in 1955 and when the third came along it was all made a good deal more functional.

The library, which is laid out in a neat and methodical way, has one of the largest collections of material in the world relating to botany, including over 150,000 monographs and 200,000 prints and drawings.

"This is the area that makes a botanist's mouth water. This is where they go to look up any group they are studying," Daniela says animatedly.

Some interesting facts are relayed by Daniela. The simple pea, which seems so small and unassuming, is one of the biggest families along with orchids and daisies.

The plants kept at the centre start with ferns, there are no algae or mosses.

Ironically, one of the largest fungi in the world was found growing on a tree outside the herbarium, which has now rotted away, and the botanists have an ongoing battle with insects, which could get inside and destroy some of the species.

Workers are constantly keeping an eye out within the herbarium for the offending insects and there are pictures of the dangerous little critters all over the centre for quick identification.

Daniela tells me: "We've hardly lost anything but if somebody loans us something and it was destroyed by insects, it would be terrible.

"We have pictures of the insects in case somebody spots them. We have a lot of people working on the collections looking for the first sign."

Employees of the centre are also paid to carry out quite an unusual task of checking the potpourri sold in shops. Some have been found to be poisonous and on one occasion strychnine was discovered, which is an alkaloid molecule found in the seeds of plants, and had to be taken off the shelf.

The collection at the herbarium is still growing with a yearly addition of around 30,000 new specimens through a programme of joint work with overseas colleagues, expeditions, gifts and exchanges with other institutes at home and abroad. When studied, specimens sometimes prove to be previously unknown species, which in due course will be described and named as new to science.

Other species, once examined and determined, will provide essential research material for in-depth studies.

It seems like the botanists here are fairly passionate about what they do and Daniela confirms this: "Botanists here can name something from just a few leaves. We love working here and most of the time we don't want to go home. There is a real combination of history and botany which makes it unique.

"When you work here you can't work with the idea that you are going to finish something, because it is always ongoing. If you did, you would start going spare."

The herbarium will open its doors to the public on September 17 and 18.

Scientists and botanists will be on hand to explain their vital work in plant conservation and librarians and archivists will be available to talk about the history of Kew.