Month: February 2024

Source 1-

The Himalayas cover a vast mountain range of over 2,500 miles located in China, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan (Himalayas – an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics). This specific part of the world has been described as “one of the most botanically rich alpine areas in the world” (Martin). The Missouri Botanical Garden had a group of botanists travel to track the change of temperatures among the plants within a 1-1-meter plots and comparing these plants to the same plants from past years. “[The locals] can’t find the plants they normally gather for medicine, incense, or food… because the plants aren’t growing in the same place, aren’t blooming at the same time of year, or are declining in quality” (Martin).

This study done by MOBOT has proven helpful for locals because through this study a threatened wild plant have a sustainable substitute plant found. This substitute plant would be checked by local people and doctors to ensure the cultural value is the same.

This source is important because it shows the rest of the world how real climate change is and to give solid evidence instead of just feelings.

The audience for this source is peoples who are interested in Indigenous knowledge and ethnobotany.

One note I had made from this article is that I found it kind of odd that all of the direct quotes were made from the same person, Robbie Hart. The garden has pushed for the inclusion of outside voices, but when there is an opportunity for those voices and opinions to be included, the only voice that is given is by a white man that appeared to be in charge of the entire process.

Himalayas – an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/himalayas#:~:text=The%20Himalaya%20constitutes%20an%20impressive,abode%20of%20snow%E2%80%9D%20in%20Sanskrit. Accessed 13 Feb. 2024.

Martin, Catherine. “Highs and Lows: How Climate Change Is Impacting People and Plants in the Himalayas.” Missouri Botanical Garden, 8 Dec. 2023, https://discoverandshare.org/2023/12/08/highs-and-lows-how-climate-change-is-impacting-people-and-plants-in-the-himalayas/.

Source 2-

A library located in Vancouver made the decision to change the way that books were categorized in their library. The Xwi7xwa (whei-wha) aims to better reflect Indigenous knowledge peoples instead of from a colonial bias. These librarians of the Xwi7xwa want to get to know visitors on a “physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual level” (Worth). From the standard Dewey Decimal Classification system, Indigenous books are categorized with the folklore and fairytales compared to biblical information which is located in the nonfiction section. The work of the Xwi7xwa librarians has been revolutionary in the Indigenous community for the better.

This source allows the voices of the Indigenous to be heard compared to the previous article that only allowed one voice to be over powerful compared to the voices that needed to be heard.

This source teaches us that the opportunities to put the correct point of views to light helps round the story and take a full grasp of its entirety.

The source’s main claim is that from the first classification of book organization in libraries (Dewey Decimal Classification) “the systems also can’t easily incorporate Native American languages that use non-Roman characters in the spelling of certain words” (Worth).

Worth, Sydney. “This Library Takes an Indigenous Approach to Categorizing Books – YES! Magazine Solutions Journalism.” YES! Magazine, 29 Mar. 2019, https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2019/03/22/decolonize-western-bias-indigenous-library-books.

Sophia Overturf 

CODES 

Dr. Hildebrandt 

February 6^th ,2024 

Last week we went to the Botanical Gardens to visit the archives. During this visit I had the opportunity alongside my cohort to view the plant specimens and records that went with them. Some being from as far back as the late 1800s. Coming to the gardens, I did not know very much about what we were coming to look at. But after visiting I got a bit more of an idea of plant collection and the people collecting them. 

We saw a lot of old plants, specifically Yucca tree and many of the samples coming from the time period of 1870s-1930s. North American plants are more commonly collected since we live in north America, they have a lot of some plants and very little of others due to botanists not wanting to venture further into forests and other places due to fear of being poisoned by the plants. However, some of the plants that they have information on are databased and have their own number with a bar code. There was a lot of bias when it came to the documents, mainly because some of them came from over 100 years ago. As those botanists were mainly old, white, men, who wanted to put their names on anything they could. 

The specimens that we looked at were collected by C.G.Pringle, Jared G. Smith, George Angelman, and Ferdinand Lindheimer(who was one of the first collectors from what is now known as Texas. The purposes for which they were collected were mainly research and other scientific purposes. The people who are being silenced by these researchers are the native people who originally used these plants and the people who helped them collect the specimens. They are silenced because we do not know anything about these people, and they likely weren’t documented so we may never know anything about these people. So, we must learn about them based on these plants and what they are used for. As some are extremely vital to our current medical practices to make medicines. 

Even though sometimes we do not have much information about these plants or the people who originally used them. Even with the people being silenced, we can still try to understand the significance of the plants. We still need to try to understand the whole picture and the stakeholders that are associated with it. Since we are the ones coming up with solutions, I think that visiting the achieves is a starting point for the big picture and gives us more opportunities to explore in the future 

Dr. Hildebrandt

CODE 122

Reflection #2

January 5^th, 2024,

The Gardens- Plant Specimens

During the previous week, my cohort and I had the opportunity to visit the gardens, where we explored the archives housing a collection of aged plant specimens that were carefully gathered throughout the early and late 19th century. Going into this, we had a little knowledge of the plant’s specimens but not a whole lot. This trip did, however, contribute to better our knowledge on plant extraction and what things were kind of missing in the older plant specimens that we were looking at.

In the specific plant specimens, we were looking at they all had one kind of common feature; that feature is the that they were very vague and not very descriptive on where it was extracted from and really the natives’ people’s use of that plant. Though the newer specimens did have more information on them, they still did not know a whole lot.  Even though we are now in the 21^st century you can still see a lot of bias coming from botanists from back in the day. Because in the 19^th century the only botanist there was, was rich in power white men, so obviously some were named after those botanists and colonists, like Carl Linnaeus, and with the information read about last week we know that names have deep meanings and affect people in different ways because the past has shaped our present. Despite the apparent quietness and stillness, the voices of those whose native plants were extracted resonate very loudly, highlighting the deep impact of their displacement.

In essence, their silence speaks volumes, resonating with profound significance. Another standout issue of the plant specimens and the herbarium is that it is not getting the funding it needs to make the changes it needs. Though it’s possible that the changes that are required to be made might cut the stakeholders in half because of what we have to say. Given the inherent complexity of our examinations, we find ourselves still in pursuit of answers and the resolution of mysteries. Though, I am inclined to believe that our current direction indicates progress and alignment with the path towards resolution.

Our field trip to the Missouri Botanical Garden Archive was very informative. We learned so much new information about plant cataloging, and gained a better understanding as to what goes on behind the scenes at the garden. The documents were different than I had imagined. They are on normal pieces of paper and the plants are held on to the paper using tape, glue and even dental floss. Additionally, most, if not all, have barcodes on them which may lead the viewer to the Tropicos database. Each plant contains a text that may include different things. For example, it can give a description or not depending on who found the species, and additionally the area, family, genes, and locality. The catalogs are not comprehensive, they are simply snapshots of that specific time according to that botanist. If that botanist chooses to have a description with their plant, they may interview a local to figure out the uses and other details about the plant. However, this can show biases because they only show one point of view of the interviewee. This means that the overall voices of the culture may be silenced. This results in the botanist having the loudest voices within the catalogs because they have the total freedom and power to pick and choose details that they think need to be with the plant. We can relate this information to our research team because the cultures involve some indigenous knowledge (or lack thereof). We can use these catalogs as building blocks in order to fill in gaps with future information. With all the information we learned during our visit, I believe that in order to fill in the culture aspect of the plants, the botanists need to interview multiple different people within the culture, in order to represent it respectively and fully. In conclusion, our time at MOBOT was very helpful and informative in relation to our theme within our research team.

Below is an image of a plant pressing we examined. It shows a plant pressing which demonstrates my point about how each plant has descriptions. Additionally, it shows how the plants are held on with glue and dental floss.

Kasey Tipton

This past week, our research teams had the opportunity to visit the gardens and explore the archives. My team specifically got to see and begin to analyze various plant specimens. Although I was not very knowledgeable about plants specifically, the specimens provided quite a bit of useful information. I was hoping for

Troy Shaffer

Dr. Hildebrandt

CODES122

7 February 2024

MOBOT Lab Write-Up

The renowned Missouri Botanical Gardens is in St. Louis and has a large collection of plant specimens from all over the world. Our recent visit of the Missouri Botanical Gardens (MOBOT) was to look into the archives in search of plant specimens that could give us indigenous knowledge. We were not very successful.

At MOBOT, each plant specimen is stored in a folder, it has a tangible part of the plant and information about the plant. The information includes the botanist’s name responsible for the discovery, when and where the plant was discovered, the plant’s common uses, scientific and common names, and more that I am probably missing. However, we noticed that there is an absence of indigenous knowledge in these plant specimens.

Unfortunately, these plant specimens only have a singular perspective. Victoria, our herbarium assistant, called these a snapshot of the plant frozen in time, with only the viewpoint of one person. In our observations, Indigenous knowledge and voices were absent and silenced from the herbarium. To unsilence these voices would not be difficult. All we need is botanists to provide more effort, instead of just doing their traditional research strategies.  By engaging with and seeking collaboration with indigenous communities during their research trips, botanists could bridge the gap, and finally have a more inclusive representation of knowledge within the herbarium. The Missouri Botanical Garden has the potential to not only preserve plant specimens but also give voices to communities from which these plants originate, which would only lead to the herbarium being a better resource for people around the world.

This is a plant sample that we looked at first. We used this as our example to look at everything that these show and tell us.

On the visit to MOBOT, we got to take a little more information about African American knowledge but it still felt a little lackluster. The only African American specimens we got to look at were George Washington Carver’s. This truly shows that there is still potential and opportunity for improvement for more information in the garden. While talking to the staff they seemed to also have a lack of knowledge of some of the African specimens and lack thereof, which was very disappointing especially when this is part of what they are trained to do research on. It was nice to hear about some of the plants having medicinal properties and other great uses. It truly shows that learning about the plants from other cultures can help us in modern medicine and other great uses.  The worker also shared how rare some of these specimens were which shows how important they are. Imagine if we had more African and African American knowledge about these plants. In a lot of the African cultures, we were told that these plants had a lot of spiritual meaning as well. A major thing to note is that a lot of the specimens didn’t have their common name or usages which definitely shows the lack of knowledge the staff has on these specimens.

Native Americans have the most powerfully resonant quiet. Ashley gave our group an explanation of how these Native Americans would have concealed villages inside the Florida swap. To keep people out of their town, they would place these prickly bushes outside. As a result, nobody who tried to find these secret settlements ran the risk of getting wounded because only the locals knew how to get around these plans. We learned from Native Americans that they constantly adapt to their environment and devise new means of doing so. One method we might educate people about how amazing Native Americans are would be to write a book or create a website detailing how they used inventive strategies to combat white people.

This trip to the Garden informed a few parts of our research team’s goal but not in as depth as we would have preferred. In the archival traces worksheet, a concept called “instances of possibility” is mentioned which basically translates to possessing potential. I found that there was an ample amount of room for possibility and potential after reviewing some of the documents. While listening to the employee of the garden describe the details of the specimens, we found that there were not many details at all that would answer our questions explicitly. So instead, we chose to not make evaluations based on what information we had but rather the lack thereof and how this unavailability further informs our search for African American knowledge in the garden. The specimens did have a few common themes such as being used for medicinal purposes. There was even a specimen containing red seeds used as spiritual protection by a specific culture of people. I noticed that the creators of the specimens were mostly the same although this was intentional as the archivist sorted through the archives to tailor to our group’s needs, I thought it was important to note. The worker who went through the specimens with our team mentioned to us how rare it is that the common names and usages of the plants were rarely included in the archives. This does carry that theme of “silencing,” but I am not sure how we would begin to effectively address this in our research teams. The workers in the garden seem to struggle to attain this information and they are trained in this. If the lack of information is the root issue and we either cannot attain it or it is really difficult to, it is not apparent to me how we will get over this hurdle.  

The Missouri Botanical Gardens (MOBOT) allowed the CODES cohort to take a deep dive into their herbarium archive to fully understand the biases that may be present in the specimens that are in MOBOT’s herbarium.

            These plant specimens that are some seven million in MOBOT’s herbarium all possess the following: barcode, list of location, genus name, species name, local name, and accessioning number (is a special code to look up a specific plant withing the Tropicos database)

            In my group within the research team we were given plant specimens mostly from Central and South America, as those regions of the world typically are helped by the local people(s) of that region to help the botanist(s) when they travel to South America to help with the language barrier and the insight knowledge these local botanists would have on the plants located in their own region. There was nothing in particular that stood out about the way the plants were presented within the folder.

            The loudest voices within the collection of these Indigenous plants would be the botanist that collected the plant originally. The bias the original botanists possesses can become prevalent within the description of the plant and/or additional notes that might not appear on the databased information that is available on Tropicos.

            There were no voices that had been silenced within the plant description itself solely based on the fact that local botanists assist with any plant that is collected in that local botanist’s area of expertise. The document tags only take a snapshot into the time that the plant was sampled, and it doesn’t show all sides of the story. It’s not like there was a livestream to witness the full interaction of the plant collection. Since the whole moment can’t be processed into words on a plant data collection sheet, this gives examples of a problem of what others might think about the original collector’s opinions.

            Following the guest lecture from Dr. Tisha Brooks in CODE 123, the thought process of what to do with the information we received from our garden partners only opens my mind to what all could be done with the few gaps that are present in the specimens. What we found in our archive dive can be the starting building blocks for our further research.