‘This is how you start’
Pressed Plants: Making a Herbarium
by Linda P. J. Lipsen, with illustrations by Derek Tan
Victoria: Royal BC Museum Publications, 2023
$19.95 / 9780772680563
Reviewed by Briony Penn
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Diving into the calm pool of Pressed Plants: Making a Herbarium, after a hailstorm of international news, was such a pleasure. As the many botanists who offer their praise for Pressed Plants remark, this is a “friendly,” “elegant,” “enthusiastic,” “informative,” and “timely” guide to a western tradition of pressing plants that can set you off on a lifelong relationship with plants. The introduction and chapters prepare you for making your own herbarium which is a gesture of goodwill, hope, and desire to “note their place on earth” and contribute to good stewardship. The author is Linda Lipsen, who is the collections curator of the UBC Herbarium at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum and she and her colleague, artist Derek Tan, have created a beautiful little book with simple instructions on why, what, how, and when (subtitle of Chapter 2) and when not to. “If you don’t see at least 20 blooming individuals then do not collect.” Although the book is written through a western botanist’s lens, the practice is gently suffused with tips drawing on the guidance of Indigenous knowledge keepers like Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Know the ways of the ones
Who take care of you, so that
You make take care of them.
Never take the first
Never take the last.
The impetus for the book comes from the publisher to update Dr. Christopher Brayshaw’s “beloved” Plant Collecting for the Amateur. Those of us lucky enough to have botanized with Dr. Brayshaw will be delighted that the friendship and enthusiasm which he extended to every plant and person he encountered, is still present in this update. My interview with Dr. Brayshaw, for an article 30 years ago, included the virtues of botanizing from a bus. He spotted a rare aquatic plant in a ditch as well as many new introduced species, on his way back and forth to work at the museum.
Besides launching you on a hobby that needs only a bus pass, a big book for a press, good cardboard, and a few standard household items to start, the guide takes you through the steps from rank amateur to friend-of-the-museum-curator. The guide walks you through Collecting Plants (Chapter 2), Pressing and Drying your Plants (Chapter 3), to Mounting your Plants (Chapter 4) culminating in what Lipsen calls “mounting parties” where you gather with the experts around a table mounting the specimens of species—typically new to regions—for the provincial collection. It would be wonderful to sit around sharing stories about the plants, places, and people you encounter with Lipsen and Tan.
For those with less ambition to make it to the hallowed herbariums, Chapter 5 reveals how to preserve and store your own little herbarium for future generations. The value of this is apparent when you see the collections of previous generations for yourself. For every mounted plant, Lipsen describes their labelling as the story of the day: the name of the collectors, the plant, the weather, the geographic location, the elevation, the habitat in which it thrived, and notes on what you saw that day. I love collections: they are critical tools for understanding where we have come from and where we are going. For example, today you can view the pressed 1826 Douglas-fir specimen collected by David Douglas, the early Scottish botanist who gave Douglas-fir its colonial name, at the Natural History Museum herbarium in London. The specimen survived a journey halfway around the world, being sold and lost for a century and then reappearing again. These beautifully preserved specimens bring history into sharp focus and enable scientists today to answer questions about the changes that have occurred, such as colonization and climate change, in the last 200 years, with the ability to extract DNA (there are tips on how best to preserve DNA).
Chapter 6, Identifying your Specimen, starts “there are an estimated 300,000 flowering plant species in the world.” There are 315,000 if you count the conifers and the ferns. Lipsen warns “this is no small task and requires time and patience,” but she offers good references and the key features of large families with illustrations. For example, the rose family always have more than ten stamens and typically five petals; and mustards are four-petalled flowers that look like an X. She also offers the gift of friendship. My life has been so enriched by my friendships with plants and botanists—the lines blur whether you are an amateur or professional, western botanist or elder, adult or child. People who love plants are universally encouraging and keen to share that love. It is a small book, but I hope someone picks it up and shares it with a young person who is searching for a community of happy beings to belong to. This is how you start.
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Briony Penn is the author of A Year on the Wild Side: A West Coast Naturalist’s Almanac, which was a finalist for a BC & Yukon Book Prize in 2020. The Real Thing: The Natural History of Ian McTaggart Cowan won the 2023 North American Wildlife Society Award. In 2021, Following the Good River: The Life and Times of Wa’xaid won the Butler Award. [Editor’s Note: Briony Penn has previous reviewed the work of Vicky Earle for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster