Roots to Seeds 1 00:00:11,650 --> 00:00:16,360 So welcome, everyone, to this webinar Roots to Seeds: the Evolution of Plant Science. 2 00:00:16,360 --> 00:00:21,670 Thank you very much for being here. My name is Helen Cook and I'm the Education Officer at the Bodleian Libraries. 3 00:00:21,670 --> 00:00:26,590 Just to let you know a few practical things before we start. We are recording the event but as 4 00:00:26,590 --> 00:00:31,960 this is a Zoom webinar, your video and audio are turned off and you won't appear in the video. 5 00:00:31,960 --> 00:00:36,160 We will share a link to the recording about a week after the event. 6 00:00:36,160 --> 00:00:40,600 This event is part of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Oxford Botanic Garden 7 00:00:40,600 --> 00:00:48,910 and Arboretum, marked at the Bodleian Western Library by a wonderful exhibition, Roots to Seeds, which is on until the 24th of October. 8 00:00:48,910 --> 00:00:52,900 This evening we will be looking at a collection and expedition and the plants that have 9 00:00:52,900 --> 00:00:58,150 contributed to four centuries of botanical teaching and research at the University of Oxford. 10 00:00:58,150 --> 00:01:04,120 If you would like to ask a question about the individual items, or botanical research and teaching in general, 11 00:01:04,120 --> 00:01:10,600 please do type it in the Q&A window during the event and do check now that you can find the Q&A. 12 00:01:10,600 --> 00:01:17,110 You can also vote for questions that you are interested in by clicking on the thumbs up and you can comment on questions there. 13 00:01:17,110 --> 00:01:22,930 I will put your questions live to our experts during the session and we may answer some in writing following the event, 14 00:01:22,930 --> 00:01:29,440 depending on time. We really value your feedback, so please do fill out the short questionnaire after the webinar. 15 00:01:29,440 --> 00:01:33,610 The link was in your booking email and we'll share it again in a follow-up email. 16 00:01:33,610 --> 00:01:38,980 This helps us to continue to offer and improve free events like this for everyone. 17 00:01:38,980 --> 00:01:48,280 So once again, welcome. The plan today is to discuss the past, present and future of botanical research and teaching through three fascinating items 18 00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:52,720 and I'm delighted to welcome our speakers, Professor Stephen Harris. Druce Curator 19 00:01:52,720 --> 00:01:57,550 (Herbaria), Associate Professor of Plant Science and curator of Roots to Seeds. 20 00:01:57,550 --> 00:02:03,880 and Chris Thorogood, Deputy Director and Head of Science Oxford Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum. 21 00:02:03,880 --> 00:02:08,740 So our first object you can see on the screen is the Bobart the Elder Herbarium. Stephen, 22 00:02:08,740 --> 00:02:13,270 please tell us more about Jacob Bobart the Elder and his herbarium. Who was he and 23 00:02:13,270 --> 00:02:20,230 why does the herbarium feature in the seminar this evening? Thank you, Helen. So Bobart the 24 00:02:20,230 --> 00:02:25,510 Elder was the first gardener at the Botanic Gardens. 25 00:02:25,510 --> 00:02:28,180 He was appointed in 1642, 26 00:02:28,180 --> 00:02:39,110 twenty-one years after the garden was founded. They didn’t really start growing any plants for twenty-one years. 27 00:02:39,110 --> 00:02:45,930 Bobart, he was a German, he was a German soldier publican. 28 00:02:45,930 --> 00:02:49,370 In fact, he had the pub across the road from the Botanic Gardens. 29 00:02:49,370 --> 00:03:00,010 He was close to home and he built up this collection of plants, medicinal plants, a whole range for different purposes. 30 00:03:00,010 --> 00:03:07,150 And in addition to the living collection, what he did was he also collected dried samples. 31 00:03:07,150 --> 00:03:12,250 And this was really unusual at the time. And he built up this object that's in front of you. 32 00:03:12,250 --> 00:03:18,280 This is Bobart the Elder’s personal herbarium, the founding herbarium of the university 33 00:03:18,280 --> 00:03:32,050 And it dates from about the late 1650s, about three and a half thousand specimens in it. 34 00:03:32,050 --> 00:03:39,250 And the page that you can see open, you can see a whole range of different Auriculas at the top. 35 00:03:39,250 --> 00:03:46,120 And in fact, Bobart the Elder was a very well-known Auricula breeder of the time. 36 00:03:46,120 --> 00:03:52,720 And so what we have is this collection that he was building up, 37 00:03:52,720 --> 00:04:00,850 It was evidence of the things that were growing in the gardens and of course, herbaria have continued to build up. 38 00:04:00,850 --> 00:04:04,960 So I am the curator of the University's Herbarium. 39 00:04:04,960 --> 00:04:08,620 The University’s Herbarium is about a million specimens today. 40 00:04:08,620 --> 00:04:16,910 Over the last 400 years or so, we've built up this collection and this collection continues to grow. 41 00:04:16,910 --> 00:04:24,430 And we go onto the onto the next slide. 42 00:04:24,430 --> 00:04:31,270 What we will see, in fact, is a modern specimen. So you'll see that it's not a separate book. 43 00:04:31,270 --> 00:04:37,420 They're housed as individual sheets. 44 00:04:37,420 --> 00:04:44,330 And this is one of about a million specimens in 45 00:04:44,330 --> 00:04:49,630 our collection, it's about one of three hundred million specimens worldwide. 46 00:04:49,630 --> 00:04:56,620 So these specimens, each specimen tells us when and where something was collected. 47 00:04:56,620 --> 00:05:06,010 It becomes fundamental to our understanding of all of the biological diversity that is on the planet. 48 00:05:06,010 --> 00:05:09,940 And they can be used in a very wide range of different ways. 49 00:05:09,940 --> 00:05:18,010 And so this specimen is a recently collected specimen from Gabon. 50 00:05:18,010 --> 00:05:28,330 And in fact, it's a new species. So this is, in fact, the specimen that was used when this new species was described. 51 00:05:28,330 --> 00:05:33,340 And we have lots of these so-called type specimens. 52 00:05:33,340 --> 00:05:44,530 So it's a dynamic living collection, but it has its origins in that book Herbarium that we saw earlier in terms of Bobart’s work. 53 00:05:44,530 --> 00:05:56,170 And again, Bobart’s work was a very novel thing to be happening at that time in Britain. 54 00:05:56,170 --> 00:05:59,050 Thank you. So, you mentioned it's a kind of living collection, 55 00:05:59,050 --> 00:06:04,540 so I wonder, Chris, if you could tell us a little bit more about the living collections in the Botanic Garden today? 56 00:06:04,540 --> 00:06:10,390 Yes, of course. So to start off, I'll acknowledge, of course, that it's our 400th year. 57 00:06:10,390 --> 00:06:16,490 So we're the oldest botanic garden and Oxford Botanic Garden was established first as a physic garden, 58 00:06:16,490 --> 00:06:25,180 as we're hearing about from Stephen's piece, in 1621. And some of the plants were grown for teaching purposes. Preceding that, 59 00:06:25,180 --> 00:06:29,950 the first botanic garden was founded in Padua, in Italy, in the fifteen hundreds. 60 00:06:29,950 --> 00:06:31,990 And like Padua, 61 00:06:31,990 --> 00:06:41,140 Oxford Botanic Garden has been a centre of botanical research where people have been able to marvel at plants and the wonder of plants for centuries. 62 00:06:41,140 --> 00:06:45,490 And of course, that's really what the Roots to Seeds exhibition is all about. 63 00:06:45,490 --> 00:06:52,780 And today, four and a half centuries later, there are about two and a half thousand botanic gardens worldwide. 64 00:06:52,780 --> 00:07:01,210 And together with the herbaria, as Stephen was talking about, they hold many millions of living and dried plant specimens. 65 00:07:01,210 --> 00:07:11,760 They're fundamental. I read a report recently that estimated one hundred and seven thousand living species were held by the world's botanic gardens. 66 00:07:11,760 --> 00:07:15,310 So you can imagine the incredible conservation value they hold. 67 00:07:15,310 --> 00:07:23,260 So today, in the Botanic Garden and the Arboretum, we hold a collection of about five thousand different types of plants, 68 00:07:23,260 --> 00:07:28,300 both species and varieties and cultivars, and they’re temperate, they’re tropical, 69 00:07:28,300 --> 00:07:32,230 some are exceptionally rare or endangered in the wild. 70 00:07:32,230 --> 00:07:37,090 And like other botanic gardens, our collections, 71 00:07:37,090 --> 00:07:45,430 they are sourced from different places around the world and from different, what we say, phylogenetic divisions or families. 72 00:07:45,430 --> 00:07:53,050 So we've got a really assorted, a real diversity of different plants, which is what Botanic Gardens hold. 73 00:07:53,050 --> 00:07:58,330 So if, for example, we think of our conservation collections for a moment. 74 00:07:58,330 --> 00:08:01,550 We carry out conservation locally here in Oxfordshire. 75 00:08:01,550 --> 00:08:07,870 So we've got some rare plants growing just about 10 metres where I'm sitting now that are very rare in Oxfordshire. 76 00:08:07,870 --> 00:08:13,600 And we've also got plants that we've collected with other botanists from around the world. 77 00:08:13,600 --> 00:08:18,610 So we do conservation work, for example, in the Canary Islands and in Japan in particular, 78 00:08:18,610 --> 00:08:24,700 For quite a few years now, a conservation-related project has been ongoing. 79 00:08:24,700 --> 00:08:27,460 Japan is, by the way, a biodiversity hotspot. 80 00:08:27,460 --> 00:08:42,040 So one of 30 odd places around the world where there's a particularly rich diversity of species in quite a vulnerable or sensitive area. 81 00:08:42,040 --> 00:08:48,130 And so we've worked extensively with Japanese colleagues in Japan and we've collected four hundred species. 82 00:08:48,130 --> 00:08:55,960 And I wanted to show you, no, not that one, I wanted to show you a tiny one. It is actually really, 83 00:08:55,960 --> 00:09:00,730 really beautiful, but I'm not sure I can do it justice, or not on a Zoom call. 84 00:09:00,730 --> 00:09:04,990 This is an Aristolochia, Aristolochia Zollingeriana 85 00:09:04,990 --> 00:09:12,790 and we collected seeds of it in 2018 in Okinawa, one of the tropical islands in the south of Japan. 86 00:09:12,790 --> 00:09:18,910 And this is a plant that is quite basal in the language we use, 87 00:09:18,910 --> 00:09:24,130 which means in a sense, it's one of the more primitive of the flowering plants. 88 00:09:24,130 --> 00:09:30,280 And that means that this is a plant that not only has conservation value, it has teaching value as well. 89 00:09:30,280 --> 00:09:37,690 A couple of minutes before we went live, I announced that I was going to share a surprise. 90 00:09:37,690 --> 00:09:42,610 So I'm going to show you something that I think Stephen will find really exciting and he doesn't know what it is. 91 00:09:42,610 --> 00:09:47,110 So you're about to witness his live reaction. 92 00:09:47,110 --> 00:09:55,240 So this is something that we've been growing in the Botanic Gardens, and I hope you can all see that. 93 00:09:55,240 --> 00:10:00,970 And I know that Stephen will know what this is, but perhaps some of the others won’t, 94 00:10:00,970 --> 00:10:05,200 so I'm going to explain this and why it's so special. 95 00:10:05,200 --> 00:10:10,090 This is a Broomrape. It's scientific name is Orobanche. 96 00:10:10,090 --> 00:10:14,080 And in this case, it's called Orobanche Picridis, and it's very rare. 97 00:10:14,080 --> 00:10:20,350 So this is the plant we're looking at, this sort of ivory coloured one, and it's a parasitic plant. 98 00:10:20,350 --> 00:10:27,100 So it's parasitising this green plant here. And this one has no chlorophyll of its own. 99 00:10:27,100 --> 00:10:36,280 And the reason I thought Stephen might like to see this is because some years ago, Stephen, Simon Hiscock and I did some work, 100 00:10:36,280 --> 00:10:45,100 some research examining particularly the genetic structure of populations of these plants, and our work 101 00:10:45,100 --> 00:10:53,920 was showing that these parasitic plants are actually in the process of forming new species on different host plants. 102 00:10:53,920 --> 00:10:55,780 In this case, this one is growing on a Hawkweed. 103 00:10:55,780 --> 00:11:01,360 But they grow on different things and they become isolated on different host plants that grow in different places, 104 00:11:01,360 --> 00:11:09,100 and this is a barrier to them sharing genes. And then over time, they become separated, and they evolve new species. 105 00:11:09,100 --> 00:11:14,290 And that's what some of our work show. But that's a plant that doesn't feature typically in botanic gardens. 106 00:11:14,290 --> 00:11:21,280 It's often been ignored by conservationists. And so we're really excited to be able to grow plants like that. 107 00:11:21,280 --> 00:11:27,010 And I'll just finish my answer to that question by saying that there's a related 108 00:11:27,010 --> 00:11:31,270 plant to this that I can't show you because we're not able to grow it yet. 109 00:11:31,270 --> 00:11:36,880 But it's a plant called Cistanche that grows from the Middle East eastward to China. 110 00:11:36,880 --> 00:11:43,690 And it looks a bit like that, but huge. It's really, really big, robust looking plant that grows in the deserts. 111 00:11:43,690 --> 00:11:49,840 And we're doing a project together with scientists at the University of Reading and also in China as well, 112 00:11:49,840 --> 00:11:53,020 to examine the relatedness of these complicated plants. 113 00:11:53,020 --> 00:11:59,710 And we look at both living specimens and herbarium specimens, just like the one Stephen was showing, 114 00:11:59,710 --> 00:12:09,460 pressed specimens, which have enormous value in terms of looking at what we call type specimens, the true first one 115 00:12:09,460 --> 00:12:15,910 that is linked to the description of a species. And so we look at those as well as the living representatives. 116 00:12:15,910 --> 00:12:18,310 And it's really important that we do. 117 00:12:18,310 --> 00:12:28,390 And I can give an example of an application, this parasitic plant that I've described, it can grow on plants called Saxaul and Tamarisk, 118 00:12:28,390 --> 00:12:38,200 which are being planted currently across the world's deserts to halt land degradation, which is a major global crisis, actually. 119 00:12:38,200 --> 00:12:49,120 And if we can grow the Cistanche linked to those plantations, that's really exciting because Cistanche is potentially a famine food and a crop, 120 00:12:49,120 --> 00:12:51,070 it's used widely for herbal medicine. 121 00:12:51,070 --> 00:12:59,540 And if we grow it in a controlled way, it means that people no longer have to harvest them potentially illegally from rare wild populations. 122 00:12:59,540 --> 00:13:07,990 So there's a conservation aspect too and all of that comes from examining the herbarium specimens like the one Stephen showed. 123 00:13:07,990 --> 00:13:15,900 So sometimes these dried specimens, there's a lot more to it, I think, than necessarily meets the eye. 124 00:13:15,900 --> 00:13:23,430 Thank you very much. That really helps make the connexion between the herbarium that Stephen was talking about and your kind of living collection. 125 00:13:23,430 --> 00:13:31,110 We’ve got a moment or two for questions. And if any attendees would like to pose a question in the Q&A, please do. 126 00:13:31,110 --> 00:13:34,770 And we've got briefly one, just asking again for the Latin name, 127 00:13:34,770 --> 00:13:38,730 I think it was the first plant you showed from the biodiversity hotspots in Japan. 128 00:13:38,730 --> 00:13:44,040 Yes, I'll say it and we can share the name after, but it's Aristolochia zollingeriana. 129 00:13:44,040 --> 00:13:52,140 Thank you very much. So if anyone else has a question, please do write it in the Q&A. 130 00:13:52,140 --> 00:13:52,710 So do you, I 131 00:13:52,710 --> 00:14:00,750 was just going to ask Chris, are you actively using the herbaria that Stephen kind of looks after, and others in the collection 132 00:14:00,750 --> 00:14:05,070 when you doing your research or looking at when you're growing new species and so on? 133 00:14:05,070 --> 00:14:12,810 Very much so. And Stephen and I see one another regularly, more online now than before, 134 00:14:12,810 --> 00:14:19,290 but that we very much see the collections as linked and actually I'd say inseparable. 135 00:14:19,290 --> 00:14:29,820 You probably agree, Stephen? Yes, I would. And as of course, in the 19th century, 136 00:14:29,820 --> 00:14:39,090 Charles Daubeny, when he revitalised the garden after a century or so of decline, 137 00:14:39,090 --> 00:14:43,920 one of his big points was the fact that the living collections and, if you like, 138 00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:48,320 the dead collections I look after, they complement each other. 139 00:14:48,320 --> 00:14:55,470 So there are things that you can do with the living collections that you can't do with the dead collections and vice versa. 140 00:14:55,470 --> 00:15:00,810 But together there's this great synergy between them. 141 00:15:00,810 --> 00:15:07,360 The other thing that I think is really exciting on that point, as well as your question, is that the advances in technology 142 00:15:07,360 --> 00:15:15,990 is such that extracting and using DNA from dried specimens is so much more feasible than it once was. 143 00:15:15,990 --> 00:15:19,250 And that's opened up a whole world of possibilities. 144 00:15:19,250 --> 00:15:27,960 Yes, so from our collections, we have had people being able to extract DNA from samples that are well over 300 years old. 145 00:15:27,960 --> 00:15:30,240 It's amazing. 146 00:15:30,240 --> 00:15:37,740 Thank you, so we've had a couple more questions come in and we've got about a minute or so just before we move on to our very exciting next item. 147 00:15:37,740 --> 00:15:42,120 So firstly, there's a question about the parasitic plant. 148 00:15:42,120 --> 00:15:47,850 Did you suggest then that it will develop into a completely different species if the host plant is changed? 149 00:15:47,850 --> 00:15:53,250 And that's amazing. So what kind of causes that transition into a new host species? 150 00:15:53,250 --> 00:16:04,140 So, yes, I'll explain more. So these parasitic plants can sometimes look very similar because they lack, for example, leaves. 151 00:16:04,140 --> 00:16:10,530 So botanists have been deprived of some of the characteristics we might usually use to tease apart species. 152 00:16:10,530 --> 00:16:15,690 So if we imagine you could have two different populations and they look the same, 153 00:16:15,690 --> 00:16:25,260 you might have one that is growing on clovers in a field, you might have another that grows on sea carrots on a sea cliff. 154 00:16:25,260 --> 00:16:34,260 And because of the different ecologies of those two different hosts and the fact that another dimension I didn't mention, 155 00:16:34,260 --> 00:16:42,990 but in some cases they are self-pollinating and that means that there's a lack of genes being exchanged between those populations. 156 00:16:42,990 --> 00:16:47,040 And over a period of evolutionary time, 157 00:16:47,040 --> 00:16:54,660 they become physiologically adapted to those different hosts and different environments and they become genetically differentiated. 158 00:16:54,660 --> 00:17:00,480 And so they're on the path to new species. And I think sometimes we think of species in a very fixed way. 159 00:17:00,480 --> 00:17:05,790 But of course, speciation, the formation of new species, is a process. 160 00:17:05,790 --> 00:17:10,380 And so perhaps what we're looking at here is something that's in that process, 161 00:17:10,380 --> 00:17:14,430 what we call incipient speciation, is on the way to become a new species. 162 00:17:14,430 --> 00:17:17,940 That makes sense. Thank you. And then one practical question. 163 00:17:17,940 --> 00:17:26,090 What procedures are used for transporting plants across borders? 164 00:17:26,090 --> 00:17:31,250 So certainly with the dead material, 165 00:17:31,250 --> 00:17:37,430 there's a lot of rules and regulations about what we can move, 166 00:17:37,430 --> 00:17:45,740 how we can move material, what we can do with it when it arrives, 167 00:17:45,740 --> 00:17:55,370 what sort of sanitary procedures that we have to go through in order to make it safe. 168 00:17:55,370 --> 00:18:00,350 And this type of thing, in fact, probably far, 169 00:18:00,350 --> 00:18:09,280 far more procedures are associated with the way that we move material inside the herbarium collection 170 00:18:09,280 --> 00:18:18,140 and probably also in the Botanic Gardens and the way that people move material between gardens and in, 171 00:18:18,140 --> 00:18:26,330 if you like, in real life. Thank you, we've had a comment just that biodiversity hotspots are not a new concept. 172 00:18:26,330 --> 00:18:32,340 And one of our attendees remembers references to centres of creation being used in the early 1830s. 173 00:18:32,340 --> 00:18:35,730 So I don’t know if that's a very early equivalent. Thank you. 174 00:18:35,730 --> 00:18:41,210 I think we'll move on to our next item, so we'll bring this up on the screen. 175 00:18:41,210 --> 00:18:48,420 And so this is a very beautiful illustration. So, Chris, could you tell us a little bit about this plant and why you've chosen to share it today please? 176 00:18:48,420 --> 00:18:55,670 I can. I think it has a sort of curious beauty to it. 177 00:18:55,670 --> 00:19:04,670 And I'm sure that many of our listeners will, even if they don't know the exact species, they'll recognise the form that this plant takes, 178 00:19:04,670 --> 00:19:10,790 because I'm sure many people be familiar with either some of the native relatives that 179 00:19:10,790 --> 00:19:15,680 grow in our hedgerows or indeed some of the cut flowers that we buy in from florists. 180 00:19:15,680 --> 00:19:23,060 This is a type of Aroid, which is a name that we use to describe plants in the family Araceae or the Arum family, 181 00:19:23,060 --> 00:19:29,120 which is a very large family, plant family, of over three thousand species, particularly in the New World tropics, 182 00:19:29,120 --> 00:19:38,030 but they're found all over the world. And the reason they're very familiar is because they have this distinctive floral structure. 183 00:19:38,030 --> 00:19:43,910 So what we're looking at, all of that purplish bit in the middle that we might be tempted to call a 184 00:19:43,910 --> 00:19:50,990 flower, from a botanical point of view is not quite accurate because that isn't a single flower. 185 00:19:50,990 --> 00:19:58,700 And so I'll break it down into parts. So that slightly spotted purple structure is what we call a spathe. 186 00:19:58,700 --> 00:20:11,030 It's a sort of leafy sheath-like structure. And then the blackish spike poking out is a spadix or spadix and the blackish part is an appendix. 187 00:20:11,030 --> 00:20:18,560 And at the base of it, if you if you look at that part on the right, the true flowers are clustered around the base. 188 00:20:18,560 --> 00:20:27,230 And so if we work our way up from the bottom of that spike-like structure, those creamy little flowers at the bottom, those are the female flowers. 189 00:20:27,230 --> 00:20:35,090 And then there's a ring of sterile ones, which look like spines. Then you've got a purplish band of the male flowers and then some more sterile spines. 190 00:20:35,090 --> 00:20:42,590 So those are the flowers. And you'll notice they're separated, the sexes, but they're also separated in time as well as space. 191 00:20:42,590 --> 00:20:52,400 And I'll explain a bit about what that means. But before I do, I'll say that many of these Aroids smell very unpleasant. 192 00:20:52,400 --> 00:20:57,260 So we tend to think of pollination as flowers that smell lovely and attract bees and 193 00:20:57,260 --> 00:21:03,890 bees get nectar and everyone's happy. Pollination sometimes works a bit differently. 194 00:21:03,890 --> 00:21:15,020 So there's a phenomenon called sapromyophily where flowers mimic something decomposing to attract, for example, flies to pollinate them. 195 00:21:15,020 --> 00:21:21,980 And the flies are duped into thinking that they found something to lay their eggs on, for example, or to feed on. 196 00:21:21,980 --> 00:21:26,060 And they pick up and spread pollen to the plant. But there's no reward for the flies whatsoever. 197 00:21:26,060 --> 00:21:31,260 Now, in this case, this plant, which I realise I haven't told the name of yet, is Arum Dioscoridis. 198 00:21:31,260 --> 00:21:39,110 And it grows in the eastern Mediterranean. And you find this in Cyprus, Turkey, Rhodes, Syria, Israel, Palestine. 199 00:21:39,110 --> 00:21:44,300 And it smells of manure and it attracts little midges. 200 00:21:44,300 --> 00:21:56,570 The blackish appendix actually heats up to emanate this cow dung-like smell and the little midges, they crawl into that green pouch-like chamber. 201 00:21:56,570 --> 00:22:03,350 And if you were to cut that in half, you'd see that it was a hollow chamber in which the flowers that we just talked about, 202 00:22:03,350 --> 00:22:10,520 they grow in that chamber and these midges become trapped in this floral sort of prison cell, if you will. 203 00:22:10,520 --> 00:22:14,060 And if they visited another Arum before this, 204 00:22:14,060 --> 00:22:20,240 they will they will distribute pollen around those female flowers and half the job is done because it's pollinated. 205 00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:22,590 And then I mentioned a time switch. So what happens 206 00:22:22,590 --> 00:22:28,940 overnight is that the female flowers shut off their receptivity and then the male flowers shed their pollen, 207 00:22:28,940 --> 00:22:35,270 and then these midges are released by withering hairs the following day and they fly off and do the whole thing again. 208 00:22:35,270 --> 00:22:42,460 So that's how it's cross pollinated. And if we pan to the next slide 209 00:22:42,460 --> 00:22:48,170 there are some whopping examples. 210 00:22:48,170 --> 00:22:57,230 So this unusual looking plant, this is called Amorphophallus konjac, and it's really quite enormous, actually. 211 00:22:57,230 --> 00:23:03,890 I'm not sure you can see from the scale on my photo but this was growing in our nursery houses a few months ago here at the Botanic Garden. 212 00:23:03,890 --> 00:23:09,530 And this is one that smells like rotting meat to attract flies. And I promise you, it does. 213 00:23:09,530 --> 00:23:18,380 It's just as well we have face coverings at the moment, I'll tell you! And then on the next slide, there's another one. 214 00:23:18,380 --> 00:23:22,370 So we go on one more. 215 00:23:22,370 --> 00:23:30,290 And that one, yeah. This is Helicodiceros muscivorus, but it's commonly called the dead horse arum, which is a misnomer. 216 00:23:30,290 --> 00:23:34,550 It should be called the dead gull arum, because it smells like dead gulls. 217 00:23:34,550 --> 00:23:40,310 And I'll just finish my answer to this question by saying that we do research, 218 00:23:40,310 --> 00:23:44,510 we carry out research on our living collections with other scientists here at the university. 219 00:23:44,510 --> 00:23:52,730 So we're working with, for example, Professor James McCullough in the Chemistry Department and Luciana Carvalho, his student. 220 00:23:52,730 --> 00:24:02,120 And we've been examining some of the compounds that these structures produce to understand more about the chemistry of these strange odours. 221 00:24:02,120 --> 00:24:10,700 And we found all sorts of unusual things. Dimethyl disulphide, which smells revolting, but also beta-pinene, which has a nice pine-like smell. 222 00:24:10,700 --> 00:24:18,050 There is a whole cocktail of different chemicals in this chemical signature that these plants are producing. 223 00:24:18,050 --> 00:24:25,190 And perhaps on another occasion, in another talk, I can explain a bit more about why we're doing that, but they're fascinating plants. 224 00:24:25,190 --> 00:24:35,390 And actually, sorry if we go back again to the painting, because I think in a moment, 225 00:24:35,390 --> 00:24:40,190 Stephen is going to tell us a bit more about the painting itself, because I think you'll agree 226 00:24:40,190 --> 00:24:47,130 it's very beautiful. And I'll just say that I was pointing out some very minute structures on there. 227 00:24:47,130 --> 00:24:51,800 And I think Stephen's going to tell us a bit more about that. 228 00:24:51,800 --> 00:24:54,290 But what I will say is it belongs to the Flora Graeca. 229 00:24:54,290 --> 00:25:01,120 And it's fair to say, isn't it, Stephen, that this is being described as amongst the most magnificent Floras ever written? 230 00:25:01,120 --> 00:25:04,840 Absolutely. So you're quite right. 231 00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:12,970 This is an image, it's a watercolour, in fact, by Ferdinand Bauer. 232 00:25:12,970 --> 00:25:24,280 So we go back to the prints, though, and I suppose to put that in context, it's useful to think about, well, why was it made? 233 00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:28,540 What was it? What was the purpose of producing this watercolour? 234 00:25:28,540 --> 00:25:34,030 It wasn't there to produce a pretty picture but for scientific purpose. 235 00:25:34,030 --> 00:25:40,540 So and this was part, this was a result of an expedition and it was an expedition that 236 00:25:40,540 --> 00:25:46,270 was planned by one of the Professors of Botany here, John Sibthorp, 237 00:25:46,270 --> 00:25:56,320 who was the third Sherardian Professor. And John’s justification for going on this expedition to the eastern Mediterranean 238 00:25:56,320 --> 00:26:02,500 was that ultimately he wants to be famous. That was basically what he said. 239 00:26:02,500 --> 00:26:10,510 And at that stage, to be famous as a botanist, one way was to go and explore a part of the world that was very poorly known botanically. 240 00:26:10,510 --> 00:26:15,400 He was also interested in the medicinal plants that came from that area, 241 00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:21,880 and in particular the medicinal plants that were contained within a book that was 242 00:26:21,880 --> 00:26:28,510 produced, or a manuscript that was produced, in the first century A.D. called De Materia Medica, 243 00:26:28,510 --> 00:26:33,220 and it was written by Dioscorides, a Greco-Roman physician. 244 00:26:33,220 --> 00:26:37,750 And in fact, that's who this plant is named after. 245 00:26:37,750 --> 00:26:47,800 And that book, that manuscript became a total, if you like, of medicinal knowledge about plants for fifteen hundred years. 246 00:26:47,800 --> 00:26:54,220 And people were discussing and arguing about what plants he was actually referring to. 247 00:26:54,220 --> 00:26:59,350 And there are tomes and tomes about discussions about these plants. 248 00:26:59,350 --> 00:27:04,660 And Sibthorp had the idea that the best way to find these plants is actually to go into the 249 00:27:04,660 --> 00:27:11,410 eastern Mediterranean where Dioscorides worked and to see what he could find. 250 00:27:11,410 --> 00:27:16,300 And this is what he did. So he was based in Vienna 251 00:27:16,300 --> 00:27:25,330 at this stage. He had access to the best extant manuscript Dioscorides that is known. 252 00:27:25,330 --> 00:27:34,300 And it was in the Imperial Library. And he also got copies of all of the illustrations in it. 253 00:27:34,300 --> 00:27:41,260 He also was introduced to an artist and that artist was Ferdinand Bauer and Ferdinand Bauer and 254 00:27:41,260 --> 00:27:46,930 his brother Frans have been described as probably the best botanical artists who ever lived. 255 00:27:46,930 --> 00:27:56,500 And they started out on this expedition in March, 1786, 256 00:27:56,500 --> 00:28:10,240 and they basically went from Vienna to Trieste down the spine of Italy through the Straits of Messina. 257 00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:15,730 And then at that point, they entered this world where botanically it was very poorly known. 258 00:28:15,730 --> 00:28:20,470 And so they explored Crete, they went across to the Aegean islands. 259 00:28:20,470 --> 00:28:26,140 They went into Turkey. They over wintered in Constantinople. They came down the Dardanelles. 260 00:28:26,140 --> 00:28:35,500 They then went down to Cyprus, did the first botanical exploration of Cyprus, went back across the Aegean, 261 00:28:35,500 --> 00:28:43,300 and then were collecting plants in Greece as well. 262 00:28:43,300 --> 00:28:50,560 And so they were collecting herbarium specimens. And we have Sibthorp’s 263 00:28:50,560 --> 00:29:00,730 herbarium collections, they were also collecting and antiquities and rocks and animals and all sorts of things. 264 00:29:00,730 --> 00:29:05,470 And Bauer was actually also sketching. 265 00:29:05,470 --> 00:29:09,520 And what you see in front of you now is one of Bauer’s sketches. 266 00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:14,470 We've got hundreds of sheets of Bauer sketches. And he worked, 267 00:29:14,470 --> 00:29:18,610 he only made sketches in the field. He didn't do any painting. 268 00:29:18,610 --> 00:29:25,090 So he made these sketches. And you see they are rather beautiful but you see lots and lots of numbers around them. 269 00:29:25,090 --> 00:29:34,040 Those numbers correspond to colours. And so when they came back in 1787, Bauer started work. 270 00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:46,750 At the end of 1787 Bauer started transforming these sketches, these pencil sketches with their numbers into the watercolours that you've seen. 271 00:29:46,750 --> 00:29:54,070 And he did that transformation actually in Cowley House, which is Sibthorp’s house, 272 00:29:54,070 --> 00:29:59,170 now part of St Hilda's college. 273 00:29:59,170 --> 00:30:03,880 And he did nine hundred and sixty-six of these watercolours. 274 00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:09,160 They're all folio size. They are amazing, 275 00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:24,760 in fact, as watercolours. And he took on average, about one and a quarter days to do each one, a phenomenal rate of work and of quality. 276 00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:37,830 And if we can go back to that, the watercolour image, what you will see is that he has this thing. 277 00:30:37,830 --> 00:30:41,890 Bauer is really good on detail. 278 00:30:41,890 --> 00:30:48,370 So the flowers that Chris was talking about, they have 279 00:30:48,370 --> 00:30:54,280 a huge amount of detail there, and they are absolutely exquisite. 280 00:30:54,280 --> 00:31:02,840 He was less good when it comes to covering large areas of surface with paint. 281 00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:07,210 So he's less good, for example, on the spathe to put the purple spotting. 282 00:31:07,210 --> 00:31:11,410 But when you get down to the absolute detail, it's amazing. 283 00:31:11,410 --> 00:31:26,050 The detail is there. And Sibthorp dies in 1796 and Bauer doesn't work for Sibthorp for very long. 284 00:31:26,050 --> 00:31:29,950 And yet you start to see some of that detail in there. 285 00:31:29,950 --> 00:31:42,220 It's absolutely gorgeous work. And Bauer stops working for Sibthorp in 1792. 286 00:31:42,220 --> 00:31:50,680 They really don't get on with each other. And Sibthorp dies in 1796. 287 00:31:50,680 --> 00:32:00,040 When he dies, he leaves a will. And in that will he wants all of Bauer’s work plus his own notes and 288 00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:07,510 everything to be to be published in this thing that he wants to call the Flora Graeca. 289 00:32:07,510 --> 00:32:18,010 It becomes a nightmare, essentially, for the editors, because Sibthorp is, and what we can see here is just some of those images, 290 00:32:18,010 --> 00:32:25,180 some of the additional watercolours, bits of the watercolours that Bauer was producing. 291 00:32:25,180 --> 00:32:32,080 So the executors of the will hand on to the editor 292 00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:36,160 nine hundred and sixty-six of these unlabelled watercolours. 293 00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:44,620 You've got hundreds of pages of sketches. You've got thousands of herbarium specimens all unlabelled. 294 00:32:44,620 --> 00:32:51,910 You've got Sibthorp’s diaries, and Sibthorp’s handwriting is awful. 295 00:32:51,910 --> 00:33:02,200 To try and translate and produce this thing to become the Flora Graeca and eventually the Flora Graeca is published. 296 00:33:02,200 --> 00:33:12,640 And the images are published in sets of 50 between 1860 and 1840, a really huge project. 297 00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:21,400 And if you have wanted to buy a copy of the Flora Graeca in a complete set in 1840, 298 00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:26,770 you would have paid about six hundred and twenty pounds. 299 00:33:26,770 --> 00:33:31,750 To put that in context, the average wage at that period was thirty-nine pounds a year. 300 00:33:31,750 --> 00:33:39,190 It was enormously expensive and in fact only twenty-five copies of it were produced. 301 00:33:39,190 --> 00:33:48,900 Sibthorp wanted to be famous and he wanted to be famous for his science In fact, 302 00:33:48,900 --> 00:33:56,490 what happens is because the volume took so long to produce, it was so expensive, 303 00:33:56,490 --> 00:34:02,610 there were so few copies, it becomes, in fact, almost a work of art. 304 00:34:02,610 --> 00:34:07,590 It becomes and it's Bauer who becomes famous associated with the Flora Graeca. 305 00:34:07,590 --> 00:34:12,900 It’s not really Sibthorp and the science that was conducted, 306 00:34:12,900 --> 00:34:21,360 but that doesn't detract from the sheer quality of these images. 307 00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:26,730 And when you see a published copy of the Flora Graeca, 308 00:34:26,730 --> 00:34:35,340 A published copy of the Flora Graeca is the absolute pinnacle of natural history illustration in the UK publishing at the time. 309 00:34:35,340 --> 00:34:43,530 But it's still doesn't have the same quality as when you compare it against the original 310 00:34:43,530 --> 00:34:51,700 watercolours. We are just extremely lucky to have the original watercolours for these images. 311 00:34:51,700 --> 00:34:56,710 And then the Flora Graeca is on display in Roots and Seeds, so if people want to see it, it is well worth looking at. 312 00:34:56,710 --> 00:35:04,120 Then I think we were going to talk about the living collection of plants at the Gardens Stephen 313 00:35:04,120 --> 00:35:06,460 Yeah. So, yeah. 314 00:35:06,460 --> 00:35:15,460 So one of the things obviously that I didn't mention with Sibthorp was that it wasn't just the dried material that he was collecting. 315 00:35:15,460 --> 00:35:21,730 He was also collecting seed material to bring back to the Gardens and what he wanted to do with the Gardens, 316 00:35:21,730 --> 00:35:29,140 which, of course, was to grow some of this material. And he grows a little bit of this material, but it doesn't really survive very long. 317 00:35:29,140 --> 00:35:37,990 But I think, Chris, that Gardens are going to have a better go at it. 318 00:35:37,990 --> 00:35:44,890 Stephen, so I'm sure many of our listeners will be familiar with this part of the Botanic Gardens. 319 00:35:44,890 --> 00:35:51,070 This is in our lower garden. The photograph we're looking at to the moment is, is the Rock Garden. 320 00:35:51,070 --> 00:35:56,620 And the Rock Garden was first constructed in the 1920s. 321 00:35:56,620 --> 00:36:07,210 And it's been redesigned a number of times. And it had quite an eclectic collection of plants growing in it a couple of years ago. 322 00:36:07,210 --> 00:36:14,050 And what we've been busy doing and the team here in the last couple of years particularly, 323 00:36:14,050 --> 00:36:27,530 is reconfiguring the rock garden and replanting it with a Mediterranean-themed flora inspired by the very work that Stephen has just been talking about. 324 00:36:27,530 --> 00:36:33,250 And what we really wanted to do here was to create a living representation of the Flora 325 00:36:33,250 --> 00:36:39,580 Graeca, to bring some of this literally to life, in a way, for our visitors. 326 00:36:39,580 --> 00:36:49,120 And so what we've done is we've planted the rock garden out with new plants inspired by those that are featured and illustrated in the Flora Graeca. 327 00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:55,570 And this gives people an opportunity to walk through it. And there's a there's a geographical theme as well. 328 00:36:55,570 --> 00:37:05,140 So we've loosely divided the areas of the Rock Garden into, for example, mainland Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and Crete. 329 00:37:05,140 --> 00:37:09,430 And it really was quite beautiful, actually, this summer. 330 00:37:09,430 --> 00:37:13,250 So what you're looking at there is a photograph of some tulips from Crete. 331 00:37:13,250 --> 00:37:19,360 That's Tulipa saxatilis. Stephen, does that particular species feature in the Flora Graeca? 332 00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:23,860 No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. OK, so not the best example for me to highlight. 333 00:37:23,860 --> 00:37:30,490 But it is actually from that part of the world. And it's a beautiful living collection. 334 00:37:30,490 --> 00:37:38,620 And it's also a very sensory experience, I think, because there's something about the Mediterranean flora that you can hear it. 335 00:37:38,620 --> 00:37:43,120 It buzzes with crickets on a warm day. 336 00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:47,710 You can smell it. Certainly there are lots of aromatic oils that volatilise under the sun. 337 00:37:47,710 --> 00:37:51,400 And particularly we've got some gum cistus and things like that. 338 00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:58,180 You can really smell it. And it's sort of bespangled with splashes of yellow and purple at the relevant time of year. 339 00:37:58,180 --> 00:38:05,290 So it's a small part of the garden, but it's one that the team have worked very hard on and we're very proud of. 340 00:38:05,290 --> 00:38:11,610 And I do recommend for people to come and see it and experience it. 341 00:38:11,610 --> 00:38:18,000 Thank you. I think we've got a close-up of that beautiful tulip so that we can look at that and we'll take another few moments 342 00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:25,530 for questions now, so we've got an attendee asking about whether they're any good mobile applications you can 343 00:38:25,530 --> 00:38:30,390 recommend to identify plants when you're going around the Botanic Garden or anywhere, 344 00:38:30,390 --> 00:38:34,450 really, if there's any good plant identification apps that you know of. 345 00:38:34,450 --> 00:38:41,290 I'm afraid I can't at all because I don't use them. 346 00:38:41,290 --> 00:38:48,900 But what I can say is that I am prepared to admit that I was sceptical about them. 347 00:38:48,900 --> 00:38:56,760 But a couple of times when I've been giving a tour or showing people, they've sort of in a light-hearted way tested me against the app. 348 00:38:56,760 --> 00:39:00,990 And I've never known for the app to be wrong. 349 00:39:00,990 --> 00:39:09,600 So, I think depending on what it is you're looking at and how complicated, I believe they can be quite effective. 350 00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:15,780 Actually, I'm afraid I've never used one and I suspect without speaking for Stephen that he hasn't either. 351 00:39:15,780 --> 00:39:24,140 So I'm not sure we’re best placed to advise that one. No, I guess you didn't need to, but it's good to know that they're accurate. 352 00:39:24,140 --> 00:39:30,450 And we've had a question about tangentially about the Herbarium and the Flora Graeca, 353 00:39:30,450 --> 00:39:38,370 about the kind of paper that they're made of and how expensive it would be to produce and with the materials that they are made of. 354 00:39:38,370 --> 00:39:42,870 And then as a secondary question. Were the watercolour paints plant-based? 355 00:39:42,870 --> 00:39:47,400 So what was the actual paint made out of as well as the paper? 356 00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:54,900 They are really, really interesting questions. So starting with the something with the Bobart paper. 357 00:39:54,900 --> 00:40:05,220 So most of the paper gone into producing the Bobart paper is either French or Dutch in origin. 358 00:40:05,220 --> 00:40:13,560 And it's very high-quality paper. It's a rag-based paper and it would have been very expensive. 359 00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:22,380 So there's a huge financial investment in that volume at the time. 360 00:40:22,380 --> 00:40:31,490 And of course, from the point of view today, it's beautiful paper because it's essentially acid-free, which is a problem 361 00:40:31,490 --> 00:40:40,350 we have later on with some of the papers that we used. The papers end up eating away at the specimens and everything. 362 00:40:40,350 --> 00:40:44,010 But we don't have that problem with the Bobart collection. 363 00:40:44,010 --> 00:40:55,260 The papers that were used in the Flora Graeca are in fact Whatman papers. 364 00:40:55,260 --> 00:41:07,740 And again, it's really interesting looking at the watermark dates for the paper against the publication date. 365 00:41:07,740 --> 00:41:17,070 And what we can see when we do that analysis is in fact that that there must in very early stages have been a problem with 366 00:41:17,070 --> 00:41:28,020 the run because there's a whole load of the images that are in fact on paper that post-dates the publication date. 367 00:41:28,020 --> 00:41:30,030 So they must have been replaced. 368 00:41:30,030 --> 00:41:37,830 And in fact, if we look at the accounts and we do have the accounts, really, sadly, we can see that sort of being slipped into the accounts, 369 00:41:37,830 --> 00:41:46,560 that replacement. The paper that was used for the sketches of Bauer’s are different 370 00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:50,580 again. He was picking up paper as he went around. 371 00:41:50,580 --> 00:41:56,970 And so you can actually track where they were when they were picking up blocks of paper. 372 00:41:56,970 --> 00:42:03,180 So they essentially picked up blocks of paper, if I remember rightly, from five different sources. 373 00:42:03,180 --> 00:42:10,940 So an Italian source, a Greek source, and then there's also, if I remember rightly, two Turkish 374 00:42:10,940 --> 00:42:23,780 as well. And the other question was about the paint, were they plant-based? Well, some of them, some of them were. 375 00:42:23,780 --> 00:42:29,630 One of the things that we found by doing research in collaboration with the Bodleian 376 00:42:29,630 --> 00:42:35,630 is that we've been able to work out essentially the pallet that Bauer was using. 377 00:42:35,630 --> 00:42:37,850 And that pallet is tiny. 378 00:42:37,850 --> 00:42:46,760 He had about eight or nine pigments that he was using in order to create the full spectrum of colours that he was using. 379 00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:54,620 And in the case of the plants, it’s about 300-odd different colours that he's creating. 380 00:42:54,620 --> 00:43:01,490 But most of those pigments are, in fact, they're not plant-based. 381 00:43:01,490 --> 00:43:11,690 One of the blues that he's using is indigo, which is, of course, is plant-based. 382 00:43:11,690 --> 00:43:15,860 But that's about it. Thank you very much. 383 00:43:15,860 --> 00:43:21,700 So I think we'll move on now to our final item, so we're going to show a photograph. 384 00:43:21,700 --> 00:43:27,520 And Stephen, could you tell us about this rather curious looking building and what was it built for? 385 00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:35,830 Right. And so this is a photograph that was taken in the late 19th, probably very early 20th century. 386 00:43:35,830 --> 00:43:44,740 We don't know exactly. But what it is, it's the second incarnation of the Lily House and any of you that know the Botanic Gardens, 387 00:43:44,740 --> 00:43:54,070 I'm sure will know the Lily House and this concrete pond that's in the middle of the building. 388 00:43:54,070 --> 00:44:03,550 And the Lily House was constructed in the very early 1850s and it was constructed for one purpose. 389 00:44:03,550 --> 00:44:08,830 And that purpose was to grow, in fact, 390 00:44:08,830 --> 00:44:20,710 the great show-off lily of the period which was the Amazon water lily and the Amazon water lily was this thing that was being discovered 391 00:44:20,710 --> 00:44:30,520 at the beginning of the 19th century in North and South America and had become this thing that people wanted to grow in the big gardens, 392 00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:44,110 wanted to grow in the UK. And the race was won, in fact, by Joseph Paxton at Chatsworth in 1849 when he got it to come to flower successfully. 393 00:44:44,110 --> 00:44:50,590 And it caused a sensation and Daubeny saw this and he wanted to grow it in Oxford. 394 00:44:50,590 --> 00:44:58,000 And in order to grow it, he had to reconfigure the Gardens and they had to be able to construct glass houses 395 00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:02,920 and they had to be able to maintain water at a constant temperature. To do that 396 00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:08,370 he constructed this concrete pond and 397 00:45:08,370 --> 00:45:19,710 initially, he started off by growing only the Amazon water lily, and he charged people to come and see it in his glasshouse, 398 00:45:19,710 --> 00:45:25,320 and if you made the conversions, it's roughly about the same cost of getting into the Gardens today. 399 00:45:25,320 --> 00:45:35,760 And people complained about it, but he soon stopped growing it because he decided, in fact, that it was a waste of space. 400 00:45:35,760 --> 00:45:42,150 There's this plant with these enormous leaves, metre-wide leaves. 401 00:45:42,150 --> 00:45:46,320 I’m sure Chris is going to talk a little more about them in a moment. 402 00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:54,000 And they were covering the surface of this and he decided that what he wanted to do was to actually grow a greater diversity of water lilies. 403 00:45:54,000 --> 00:46:05,280 So we have here a very large diversity of water lilies being grown, probably, in fact, a much greater diversity than is growing today in the Gardens. 404 00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:14,720 But other aspects of the planting, look rather familiar, but the 405 00:46:14,720 --> 00:46:23,420 water lily, the pond itself proved to be a bit of a problem for Daubeny. Got his plant growing beautifully, 406 00:46:23,420 --> 00:46:28,130 great sensation, but given the location of the pond, 407 00:46:28,130 --> 00:46:35,120 it was continually subsiding and he was pouring large amounts of money to underpin the foundations of this. 408 00:46:35,120 --> 00:46:42,980 And in fact, he ended up using his own money to underpin the foundations of this pond to stop it slipping into the river. 409 00:46:42,980 --> 00:46:49,610 And but at least it stopped doing that, that day. 410 00:46:49,610 --> 00:46:56,390 So that's what the building that we see in front of us. 411 00:46:56,390 --> 00:47:02,240 Fantastic, thank you. So. Yes. Chris, could you tell us a little bit more about the plants that are grown in the glasshouses today? 412 00:47:02,240 --> 00:47:05,900 So what are they used for and why are they important? 413 00:47:05,900 --> 00:47:13,940 I can and before I do, I'd love to actually highlight that in some respects it's not so different. 414 00:47:13,940 --> 00:47:24,380 I can recognise plants in this very photograph that Stephen and I know grow in that same pond and around it today. 415 00:47:24,380 --> 00:47:33,410 So just on the left for the first time since, actually, I think I can discern Nelumbo nucifera, it looks to me, 416 00:47:33,410 --> 00:47:41,060 which is the sacred lotus. We've got Nymphaea water lilies filling the pool itself, which we still grow today. 417 00:47:41,060 --> 00:47:45,860 And this papyrus, which grows about three metres from where it is now, 418 00:47:45,860 --> 00:47:54,690 around the same pond and bananas and gingers and various other things in this photograph, which you can find growing in this exact location. 419 00:47:54,690 --> 00:48:01,010 So it's really wonderful, actually, to be looking at this photograph. 420 00:48:01,010 --> 00:48:08,840 Your question, Helen, was about what we grow today and sort of linked to the answer to the first question I gave. 421 00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:19,190 We grow plants from all around the world for conservation teaching purposes, but also for research purposes as well. 422 00:48:19,190 --> 00:48:26,720 And is it the next, what's the next photograph, the next dramatic image of the year? 423 00:48:26,720 --> 00:48:31,760 So we've got build up to that. There we go. I couldn't remember when it was coming. 424 00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:42,470 So this this is the underside of the giant Amazonian water lily that Stephen was referring to. 425 00:48:42,470 --> 00:48:52,340 And it has an archetypal beauty. And so much so that the night that I can say that when our horticulturist take these leaves out, 426 00:48:52,340 --> 00:48:57,770 which is quite regularly during the growing season, because they fill the pool so quickly that we have to remove them. 427 00:48:57,770 --> 00:49:09,110 And when we do and we flip them over, I've had visitors gasp at the beauty of the underside because they don't expect it to look quite like this. 428 00:49:09,110 --> 00:49:20,240 It's a wonderful structure. Yesterday we had a seminar in the garden and I put one in a paddling pool to show people the weight that they can 429 00:49:20,240 --> 00:49:28,490 hold because people will possibly have seen or read that these giant leaves can sustain the weight of a small child. 430 00:49:28,490 --> 00:49:36,320 And I think people think in an era of manipulated digital imagery that it's not true. 431 00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:46,460 But I can promise you that it is, because people's toddlers from the Botanic Garden have been sat on these leaves, and yesterday to prove the point, 432 00:49:46,460 --> 00:49:51,080 using a rather small leaf, but by these standards, it was about a metre across. 433 00:49:51,080 --> 00:50:00,920 And we put in the paddling pool and I put one kilogram bags of sugar on it and we reached six and comfortably because that's all I had, 434 00:50:00,920 --> 00:50:03,800 because I didn't want to clear out the local Sainsbury's of people’s sugar. 435 00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:08,750 But I'm sure that we could at least get up to seven and a half, seven and a half or eight, 436 00:50:08,750 --> 00:50:13,490 which we've done before, which is the weight of two newborn babies. And that's on a relatively small leaf. 437 00:50:13,490 --> 00:50:22,100 So these are incredibly strong. And your question, Helen, was how are these plants used today? 438 00:50:22,100 --> 00:50:30,140 And I work, in an area of my research, which is quite new to me, actually is interdisciplinary. 439 00:50:30,140 --> 00:50:36,380 And I work with, what that means is I work with scientists from other disciplines, in this case physicists. 440 00:50:36,380 --> 00:50:41,120 And I've shown some physicist friends of mine around the Botanic Garden. 441 00:50:41,120 --> 00:50:45,020 And they asked me, how does this leaf work as they'll ask me with so many plants 442 00:50:45,020 --> 00:50:49,700 And I told them what I knew, which wasn't a lot. And I said, I'm sure people understand more. 443 00:50:49,700 --> 00:50:56,450 And to my astonishment, very little have been done on these to understand how and why these leaves grow so large. 444 00:50:56,450 --> 00:51:06,230 And so we set out to tackle answering that very question, using mathematical modelling and experiments to understand the load bearing capacity. 445 00:51:06,230 --> 00:51:13,160 And what I can say is that this giant structure is an economy of material. 446 00:51:13,160 --> 00:51:17,580 It's a very small amount of biomass for very large amount of surface area. 447 00:51:17,580 --> 00:51:24,360 And so what we think is happening here is that this water lily that grows in rapidly drying pools around the Amazon. 448 00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:29,100 It doesn't necessarily go in the Amazon proper. It's in areas which are seasonally drying. 449 00:51:29,100 --> 00:51:39,810 It has to grow very quickly. Hence we take leaves out to give it room and it occupies the complete area of the water and out-competes the other 450 00:51:39,810 --> 00:51:46,370 plants to maximise it’s surface area for photosynthesis at a low cost because it’s a small amount of biomass. 451 00:51:46,370 --> 00:51:51,330 So, and this has potential applications where you might want to cover a large 452 00:51:51,330 --> 00:51:56,940 surface area with a small amount of material, floating solar panel for example. 453 00:51:56,940 --> 00:52:00,920 And have I got time, Helen, to show you one more plant? 454 00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:07,140 Of course, if you've got a live specimen, that would be brilliant. Yeah, a really beautiful one, actually. 455 00:52:07,140 --> 00:52:15,870 I just wanted to show you, and I'm sure some will be familiar with this, it's a Nepenthes pitcher plant. 456 00:52:15,870 --> 00:52:21,390 It is a carnivore. So this is a leafy trap. 457 00:52:21,390 --> 00:52:27,660 So this is a modified leaf, from an evolutionary point of view, that has become fused. 458 00:52:27,660 --> 00:52:35,130 It's evolved from something similar to a sundew, we think, if our listeners are familiar with those, and again, 459 00:52:35,130 --> 00:52:42,030 we've worked to, we've examined this structure more closely, I think you could see that it's got ridges on it. 460 00:52:42,030 --> 00:52:51,690 It's got quite a rough surface. This surface is super hydrophilic, so water sits on it. 461 00:52:51,690 --> 00:52:55,500 It forms a lubricating film and insects aquaplane off it 462 00:52:55,500 --> 00:53:00,150 down into the trap where they are caught and supply the plant with nitrogen. 463 00:53:00,150 --> 00:53:04,950 And we wanted to examine in a little more detail how this structure works. 464 00:53:04,950 --> 00:53:14,970 And so we, with my colleagues, they created soft polymer replicas of this surface and did some fancy mathematical modelling. 465 00:53:14,970 --> 00:53:20,460 And we also examined insects and foreign droplets, i.e. oils travelling on the surface. 466 00:53:20,460 --> 00:53:21,420 And together, 467 00:53:21,420 --> 00:53:31,000 this body of work showed that things move on this surface in a way that is a lot more controlled and a lot less arbitrary than you might suppose. 468 00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:37,320 So even at shallow angles, you can control with, with very fine precision how something moves along these railings. 469 00:53:37,320 --> 00:53:47,010 I think it is analogous to whatever they call those strips that if you do tenpin bowling, keep the ball going in in the same direction. 470 00:53:47,010 --> 00:53:51,900 I was never very good at that. But it's a bit like those. 471 00:53:51,900 --> 00:53:52,830 So it drives things in. 472 00:53:52,830 --> 00:53:59,100 And so from an evolutionary biology point of view, that's fascinating because it suggests that insects don't just randomly slide off. 473 00:53:59,100 --> 00:54:04,470 They’re driven in a controlled way into the trap. From an applied point of view 474 00:54:04,470 --> 00:54:08,370 this has applications in, for example, microfluidic technology. 475 00:54:08,370 --> 00:54:13,650 So any technology in which you might want to move small amounts of fluid around with precision, 476 00:54:13,650 --> 00:54:20,240 for example, in an inkjet printer or something like that. So there's a lot to learn from these plants. 477 00:54:20,240 --> 00:54:22,980 Thank you so much. And we're coming towards the end. 478 00:54:22,980 --> 00:54:30,750 So I just wonder if we could finish with both of you telling us a little bit about the relevance and importance of plant collections, 479 00:54:30,750 --> 00:54:36,940 both held in Herbaria and in Botanic Gardens today. So then, Stephen, if you want to start us off. 480 00:54:36,940 --> 00:54:43,940 Yeah. So I 481 00:54:43,940 --> 00:54:48,210 started with a quote from an academic at the beginning of the 18th century who 482 00:54:48,210 --> 00:54:53,700 described the collection I look at as a gathering of the refuse of nature, 483 00:54:53,700 --> 00:55:08,320 and that was Joseph Addison and of course one superficial view of that is just you've got this huge pile of dried plants and what use is it? 484 00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:15,600 Well, importantly, as I've said earlier, you've got information associated with that. 485 00:55:15,600 --> 00:55:22,410 You've got data associated with that. You've got a fundamental level where and when something was collected. 486 00:55:22,410 --> 00:55:32,100 And so, if you like, a herbarium and it's not just us, but it's this an international network of collections at two thousand five hundred worldwide. 487 00:55:32,100 --> 00:55:39,120 We all talk to each other. There's a sort of database that allows us to move back in time. 488 00:55:39,120 --> 00:55:45,270 And that's a really important way of thinking about how you might use this collection. 489 00:55:45,270 --> 00:55:54,300 So it's not just the collection that is traditionally associated with plant biologists, plant taxonomists to name and describes things. 490 00:55:54,300 --> 00:56:00,840 There's a whole range of different people who are now starting to use the collections and think about how to use the collections. 491 00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:09,000 So in the collections in Oxford, we've got geologists, we've got archaeologists, we've got engineers, we've got philosophers. 492 00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:14,090 We've got 493 00:56:14,090 --> 00:56:24,200 English academics, we've got historians, obviously zoologist and plant biologists all using these collections in all sorts of different ways. 494 00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:32,300 And the limit really on the use of the collections is well, obviously the sorts of material we have. 495 00:56:32,300 --> 00:56:41,090 But in many ways, it's the imagination of the individuals who are thinking about using these collections for 496 00:56:41,090 --> 00:56:47,780 in fact, both teaching research and public engagement, because as you've seen, 497 00:56:47,780 --> 00:56:55,920 some of these objects are really an incredibly engaging as a physical object. 498 00:56:55,920 --> 00:57:05,300 And I hope that's one of the things that comes across in the exhibition is how engaging these objects are in terms of public engagement. 499 00:57:05,300 --> 00:57:11,110 But they are an active teaching and research resource as well. 500 00:57:11,110 --> 00:57:17,120 Thank you, and Chris if you want to add to that. Now, so wonderful answer, 501 00:57:17,120 --> 00:57:28,460 and I suppose I'll just say that from the living plants point of view, of the four hundred thousand or so vascular plants, that the different types of 502 00:57:28,460 --> 00:57:33,940 plants that grow on our planet, there are like a living library for scientists to explore. 503 00:57:33,940 --> 00:57:37,280 And one of the wonderful things about Botanic Gardens is that we grow quite 504 00:57:37,280 --> 00:57:41,870 a diverse assortment of those from across groups and around the world. 505 00:57:41,870 --> 00:57:48,440 And one of the things I've enjoyed about this discussion and that I hope that it's 506 00:57:48,440 --> 00:57:54,800 come across is that the strong bond between living collections and the dried, or pressed, 507 00:57:54,800 --> 00:58:03,170 the dead collections in the herbaria. And that's important as we describe new species. 508 00:58:03,170 --> 00:58:08,150 We're quite reliant on herbarium specimens to inform that process. 509 00:58:08,150 --> 00:58:11,450 And that's important from the point of view of conservation as well, 510 00:58:11,450 --> 00:58:16,220 because at a time that new species are still being scientifically named all the time, 511 00:58:16,220 --> 00:58:21,920 others are edging towards extinction and losing the fight against the threats that they face. 512 00:58:21,920 --> 00:58:30,290 And so I think there's an urgency for botanists to quantify and understand what's there so that we can conserve adequately. 513 00:58:30,290 --> 00:58:34,670 And you need herbarium collections to do that. 514 00:58:34,670 --> 00:58:41,950 And I think also for collections, whether living or dried, building on Stephen's point there, 515 00:58:41,950 --> 00:58:50,630 to engage people and to bring plants into focus. I think we have a harder time doing that than animal biologists. 516 00:58:50,630 --> 00:58:57,710 Generally people, particularly young people, we know they identify more with animals. 517 00:58:57,710 --> 00:59:05,670 And perhaps because we all have a sort of anthropocentric zoo-centric view of the world because we are animals. 518 00:59:05,670 --> 00:59:14,600 And so I think we need to think of plants as something other than a pretty backdrop against which animals exist. 519 00:59:14,600 --> 00:59:24,380 And so I'm interested, as Stephen is, in finding ways that we can inspire and engage people with plants, plant science, plant biology, 520 00:59:24,380 --> 00:59:35,120 so that we can start to foster a greater care and awareness of the importance of plants, because we need to as a human population. 521 00:59:35,120 --> 00:59:41,150 Thank you both very much. I certainly think today would have inspired and engaged our attendees to spread the word about this 522 00:59:41,150 --> 00:59:44,750 because I think, as you say, it's very, very important. Thank you. 523 00:59:44,750 --> 00:59:51,080 We've got about, if people are happy to hold on for a minute or two, we've got a couple of questions still waiting. 524 00:59:51,080 --> 00:59:54,110 And if anyone has one to add, do just pop into the Q&A now 525 00:59:54,110 --> 01:00:00,130 But the two questions we've got relate to the specimens that you were talking about, Chris, from the water lily house. 526 01:00:00,130 --> 01:00:05,720 So the first was about what would be the evolutionary advantage of being able to hold as 527 01:00:05,720 --> 01:00:10,240 much weight as an Amazonian water lily can, why would these plants have evolved in that way? 528 01:00:10,240 --> 01:00:14,060 Yeah, great, great question. I like that a lot. 529 01:00:14,060 --> 01:00:17,750 And we thought about that very question, too. 530 01:00:17,750 --> 01:00:26,260 So I think from an indirect point of view that the structure is also linked intrinsically to its size. 531 01:00:26,260 --> 01:00:30,350 So in order to grow that big, you have to be strong. 532 01:00:30,350 --> 01:00:35,900 And the reason you'd want to grow that big is to maximise your surface area for photosynthesis and keep other plants out. 533 01:00:35,900 --> 01:00:44,060 So I think that's probably first and foremost. I think there's perhaps a secondary point to make around wading birds, for example. 534 01:00:44,060 --> 01:00:49,910 So we thought about what is the habitat that this extraordinary plant grows in and it has to cope with wading birds, 535 01:00:49,910 --> 01:00:54,750 but it also has to cope with flash flooding. And water is heavy. 536 01:00:54,750 --> 01:00:59,870 What you can't see from this photograph is that there's a raised rim around the leaf and at one point 537 01:00:59,870 --> 01:01:05,240 there's a sort of slit in it that we call a sinus and that allows rapid drainage of the leaf as well. 538 01:01:05,240 --> 01:01:16,610 So it's an extraordinary sort of multipurpose leaf that works and functions in an astonishing way. 539 01:01:16,610 --> 01:01:24,320 Very, very interesting question. Thank you. Thank you. And then the second question relates to the last plant that you held up for us, 540 01:01:24,320 --> 01:01:31,640 and I'm probably going to pronounce this wrong, but does a Nepenthes release enzymes inside the pitcher to digest the flies? 541 01:01:31,640 --> 01:01:39,530 If yes. what is it? Yeah, you know, I, I get asked this question a fair amount. 542 01:01:39,530 --> 01:01:47,720 I wonder if the person asked me is a biologist from a different discipline because often they are. The answer is yes. 543 01:01:47,720 --> 01:01:56,400 And so this is a newly opened one. This one's been open quite a while and 544 01:01:56,400 --> 01:02:05,660 I can probably actually, just there are some digestive juices that you might see pouring out into the Botanic Garden Library. 545 01:02:05,660 --> 01:02:13,100 Yes, they contain digestive enzymes which break down the insects that they catch to an extent, 546 01:02:13,100 --> 01:02:18,800 particularly to release nitrogen, to a lesser extent probably phosphorous to feed the plants. 547 01:02:18,800 --> 01:02:23,810 The suite of enzymes is enormous. 548 01:02:23,810 --> 01:02:35,810 So I'm not a plant biochemist. I can tell you that there are chitinases, for example, that break down the hard chitin parts of insect exoskeletons. 549 01:02:35,810 --> 01:02:44,600 There's a whole range of enzymes. And actually with Renea Antonet, the Department of Plant Sciences, 550 01:02:44,600 --> 01:02:51,980 we actually sought to try and understand a bit more about those enzymes and what they are and how they work. 551 01:02:51,980 --> 01:02:55,670 But it was quite difficult, actually, to do. 552 01:02:55,670 --> 01:03:02,750 And so we didn't perhaps get the results that we wanted in that project, but we were interested in that. 553 01:03:02,750 --> 01:03:11,570 So, yes, we can think of it as acting a little bit like a plant stomach in a way. 554 01:03:11,570 --> 01:03:13,250 Brilliant, thank you. 555 01:03:13,250 --> 01:03:23,180 And one's just come in. Would the larger surface area of the water lilies also help to reduce evaporation if the water it’s growing in might dry up. 556 01:03:23,180 --> 01:03:30,500 So could it have been adapted to cope with less water? 557 01:03:30,500 --> 01:03:36,380 Yes and no. So if the water dries up, the plants will die. 558 01:03:36,380 --> 01:03:41,270 So it's a no, it can't cope with that at all, actually. 559 01:03:41,270 --> 01:03:47,220 But in a sense, the way I see it, the reason I say yes or no is because that is actually part of the cycle of the plant. 560 01:03:47,220 --> 01:03:52,280 So it doesn't grow in nature as a long-lived perennial. 561 01:03:52,280 --> 01:03:57,440 It actually has a short life history, which is perhaps surprising when you look at it. 562 01:03:57,440 --> 01:04:05,510 It grows very, very rapidly. And then the habitat it grows in often will dry seasonally and then the plant dies and then the whole thing starts again. 563 01:04:05,510 --> 01:04:08,940 And actually that's how we grow it here incidentally because we can't sustain the 564 01:04:08,940 --> 01:04:13,850 light levels that it needs to throw out those enormous leaves all the time. 565 01:04:13,850 --> 01:04:20,130 So we grow it as an annual here at the Botanic Garden. Thank you. 566 01:04:20,130 --> 01:04:27,560 And then we had a question, do you maintain seed banks for threatened species at the Botanic Garden? 567 01:04:27,560 --> 01:04:41,480 Yes, we do hold seeds and we don't have an extensive seed bank and we don't have the facilities to keep large amounts of seeds, 568 01:04:41,480 --> 01:04:46,100 so it's not something I'd say we do, we do well. We do keep seed particularly linked to, 569 01:04:46,100 --> 01:04:51,140 so, for example, that plant that I showed you earlier. We’ll be collecting seed of that and we'll be sticking it in the 570 01:04:51,140 --> 01:04:56,480 fridge and we'll be making sure that we keep it on a rotation so that we can keep on regrowing it. 571 01:04:56,480 --> 01:05:06,200 So we do we do hold seeds. But what we tend to actually do is work with partners who have the facilities to be able to do it really well. 572 01:05:06,200 --> 01:05:12,650 And so, for example, for some of the projects that Stephen and Ben Jones, the operator and others and I work on, 573 01:05:12,650 --> 01:05:16,190 we might collect seeds from a given plant and we deposit those seeds in the 574 01:05:16,190 --> 01:05:23,440 Millennium Seed Bank with the partners with whom we work and work in that way. 575 01:05:23,440 --> 01:05:28,960 Good question. Thank you very much. So I think we're going to unfortunately have to end then due to time. 576 01:05:28,960 --> 01:05:36,340 But thank you very much to everyone for joining us today. And it's been a real pleasure to connect with friends of the Bodleian from all over the world. 577 01:05:36,340 --> 01:05:42,310 We've had people from all over different countries today and kind of share your enthusiasm with them. 578 01:05:42,310 --> 01:05:47,590 Thank you so much to Stephen Harris and Chris Thorogood and the behind the scenes technical team as well, Karen, 579 01:05:47,590 --> 01:05:53,560 Rebecca, and Neil. Please do look out, everyone, for an email with a link to the recording of the session. 580 01:05:53,560 --> 01:05:58,420 And please take a moment to fill out the questionnaire when that link comes through to you. 581 01:05:58,420 --> 01:06:05,110 And it's also in the emails that you had for booking. Do sign up to the Bodleian newsletter to find out more about upcoming events. 582 01:06:05,110 --> 01:06:09,610 And do you come and see the Roots to Seeds exhibition and visit at the Botanic Garden and Arboretum 583 01:06:09,610 --> 01:06:13,930 if you haven't already done so, and you're able to. And we hope to see you all again soon. 584 01:06:13,930 --> 01:06:26,174 So thank you very much. And have a good evening. Thank you.