Botanical Marginalia: Pressed Plants in Books as Key to Reinterpreting the History of Botany

Botanical Marginalia will explore a neglected historical source - pressed plants in books -  in relation to pre-Linnaean collecting practices, espcially the bound herbarium.

In probing the early circulation and collection of pressed plants in marginal spaces, it will shed new light on our understanding of why the herbarium emerged as the dominant collection mode which in the following centuries became the foundation of botany as a science.

Pressed plant in early modern books are almost completely absent in the scholarship, in part due to the methodological challenges of finding and interpreting them, but also due to a classical historical dependence on textual sources and known provenance.

This project builds on examples I found as part of my doctoral research, through informal conversations, searches of catalogues and social media platforms, and leafing through the pages of hundreds of books.

It will adopt an interdisciplinary analytical framework, combining history of science, history of the book, marginalia studies, collection studies and digital humanities. The project will be based at the Department of History of Science and Ideas at the University of Uppsala.

The results will be a workshop and booklet on the best practice for handling pressed plants and a photography-rich scholarly book. The discoveries will also be posted on a project Instagram account.