World Exploration: Preview

On Saturday I spent a few hours at one of the usually-closed buildings at the Missouri Botanical Garden, at an event they called World Exploration: Behind the Science with Garden Botanists. This post is just a preview of what I saw and learned, as I'll be going into more detail throughout the week.

I learned of the event a week or so ago through Twitter, and it promised I would be able to "learn more about the Garden's botanists and tour the Monsanto Research Center, including the library and herbarium." ("Monsanto" is a dirty word with many gardeners, but the huge amount of money that they've contributed to MBG over the years can't be disputed, and is A Good Thing.)

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So what did I see on this Saturday afternoon self-guided tour?

Displays on various MGB research projects around the world:

The history of The Garden itself:

Lots of plant specimens from the herbarium...

...some exceptionally old:

A glimpse at the science behind species ID:

An explanation of how samples are prepared and mounted...

...then stored:

A look at the research library, including the very old books:

The book restoration department:

And the document scanning process:

(which doesn't really lend itself to interesting photos. You can see the results though at tropicos.org)


Lots of really interesting stuff coming in this week's posts!

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