Historical plant collection from Indonesia discovered in Basel

Historical plant collection believed to have been destroyed found in Basel Keystone-SDA

Experts in Basel have found four plant collections belonging to the two naturalists Fritz and Paul Sarasin that were thought to be lost. Until now, scientists had assumed that these pocket herbaria were destroyed in Berlin during the Second World War.

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With the latest discovery in Basel, it is now clear that at least some of them have been preserved, as the Swiss Natural History Collections Network (Swisscollnet) announced on Tuesday. The pocket herbaria contain 28 dried reference plants, so-called type specimens, which were used by botanists to scientifically describe newly discovered species.

The two Basel-based naturalists Paul Sarasin (1856-1929) and Fritz Sarasin (1859-1942) brought back bulging pocket herbaria from their expedition to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. These included plant species that were still unknown at the time and found nowhere else. A bombing in 1943 sparked a fire that destroyed the Berlin herbarium. As a result, the preserved plants from Sulawesi appeared to be lost.

As part of a digitisation project by the University of Basel and Swisscollnet, experts came across Sarasin’s pocket herbaria “in a dusty box” during an audit of the Basel collections, according to the press release.

In addition to the flowering plants, the collection of ferns from Sulawesi, which also contains type specimens, was also digitised as part of this project.

In addition, Fritz Sarasin’s other collections from New Caledonia recently came to light. These include a type specimen that was also thought to be lost, the orchid species Thelymitra sarasiniana, which is named after the researchers. In total, the digitisation team came across over 140 types as part of the project, according to the report.

Translated from German by DeepL/jdp

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