Around the world herbaria hold records of past botanical fieldwork. Botanists have come back from their travels with preserved plant tissues for centuries. Yet, rather than gathering dust as relics of past botanical expeditions, these collections – from Victorian-era wildflowers to Depression-era crops – are proving essential for modern research questions. In his Tansley Review, Barnabas Daru argues preserved plants, paired with artificial intelligence, could help solve one of biology’s most pressing mysteries: how Earth’s botanical life will weather a warming world.
As climate shifts and cities expand, modern botanists are turning to these historical collections to understand how plants are adapting – or failing to adapt – to our rapidly changing world. Dates on specimens may reveal shifting periods of plant behaviour. But changes need not be obvious to human eyes. Daru says that the value of herbaria could be unlocked, if we look at them through computerised eyes.
Computer Vision combines digital images of plant specimens with machine learning algorithms. It can be systematic, accurate and fast. A project measuring changes in leaf size and shape that could take botanists years of measurement can now be accomplished in days. Being able to track small changes over large samples transforms the plants into a vast database of ecological change, enabling rapid answers to questions. That speed matters, as botanists are up against a deadline.
Habitats are changing or vanishing, through warming, pollution and invasive species, meaning some plants are in critical need of conservation help. But which plants? Currently, scientists lack enough data to assess extinction risk for more than 60% of known plant species. Getting the necessary information through fieldwork is a long and labour-intensive process. Herbarium specimens, some representing plants that no longer exist in the wild, can help fill that gap in knowledge. But it’s not simply that robots will save the word. Baru argues for an approach that combines modern science with the knowledge of peoples who know these habitats best.
Conservation planning and biodiversity management must not only prioritize ecological and evolutionary metrics but also consider the sociocultural dimensions of land stewardship. Indigenous communities and local stewards often hold important knowledge about plant diversity, species distributions, and ecological relationships within their regions. Integrating this knowledge with herbarium data can provide a more holistic approach to conservation planning.
Daru, B.H. (2025) ‘Tracking hidden dimensions of plant biogeography from herbaria’, New Phytologist, doi: 10.1111/nph.70002
Cross-posted to Bluesky & Mastodon.
Image: Canva.
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