The Story of the Tulip That Went Wild: Tracing the History of Introduction of Tulipa Sylvestris in Sixteenth-Century Europe

Tulipa sylvestris, commonly called the “wild tulip”, was introduced from the Mediterranean to northern Europe in the sixteenth century and became widely naturalized. Research has focused on tulips that came from the Orient, but the introduction path of this native European, early ornamental tulip is unclear, and so is its taxonomic status: three subspecies are provisionally accepted, sometimes treated as species. Here we elucidate the history of introduction of T. sylvestris and discuss its taxonomy based on our historical findings. The first bulbs came from Bologna (northern Italy) and Montpellier (southern France) in the 1550s-1570s. Several renown botanists were involved in their introduction, namely Gessner, Wieland, Aldrovandi, De Lobel, Clusius, and Dodoens. There were various introduction routes, including one from Spain which was apparently unsuccessful. The strong sixteenth-century Flemish botanical network facilitated the introduction and naturalization of T. sylvestris across Europe. Based on the latest tulip taxonomy, the diploid subspecies australis is native in the Mediterranean, and the tetraploid sylvestris is naturalized over Europe, but our historical findings show that both sylvestris and australis were introduced. This underlines the need to reconsider the taxonomic status of T. sylvestris, highlighting the importance of botanical history in understanding the complex taxonomy of naturalized cultivated plants.

Herbarium of Botanical Garden of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice – a part of the botanical history of the region of eastern Slovakia

In 1884, Seed Station (Vetőmagvizsgáló Állomás) as a state institution of Hungary was established in Košice. On its ground probably the second institutional herbarium in this region was established. It gathered collections of wild and introduced plants from the vicinity of Košice and eastern Slovakia (Carpathian and Pannonian bioregions), including exsiccates of the collectors like A. Degen, L. de Thaisz and later M. Deyl. This herbarium later got into the administration of the Košice branch of the Central Agricultural Inspection and Testing Institute (Ústřední kontrolní a zkušební ústav zemědělský, ÚKZUZ) with the main office in Prague. In 1950, the Botanical Garden of the University of Agricultural and Forest Engineering (Vysoká škola poľnohospodárskeho a lesníckeho inžinierstva, VŠPLI) was established in Košice. Plant documentation material from the region of eastern Slovakia began to be concentrated there and another institutional herbarium, which was later taken over by the Slovak Academy of Sciences, was established. In 1960, the Botanical Garden in Košice was taken over by the Pedagogical Institute (Pedagogický inštitút), and the rather large herbarium was then reduced to 3,415 herbarium specimens. In the years 1958-1960, however, it was enriched by 9,539 herbarium specimens of the Košice branch of ÚKZUZ, which passed the herbarium from the years 1897 – 1943 to the botanical garden. In 1964, the botanical garden became a part of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University (UPJŠ). At that time, the herbarium included 16,000 herbarium specimens of seed plants. For many years, the herbarium had only provisional rooms for its storage. In the early 1990s, a part of the building of the Botanical Garden was rebuilt and herbarium depositary and study room were formed. Later an electronic database has been created and in recent years the herbarium specimens have also been digitized. In September 2020 the herbarium included about 55,000 specimens, of which more than 34,500 were registered in local database and some of them (more than 9,000) are digitized.

Good and Bad Plants in Merovingian Francia

This chapter shows that human–plant interactions between 500 and 750 in the Frankish area were just as dynamic as such relationships had been in earlier epochs in the same regions. It suggests that Merovingian botanical history, the changes and continuities in crop regimes and weed populations, as well as people’s evaluation of the goodness or badness of plants, both reflected and drove changes in rural settlement, production, and culture. To demonstrate plants’ influential contribution, the chapter analyzes not only written sources from the period, but it also investigates the archaeobotanical traces of certain plants. Juxtaposing the two kinds of sources reveals some incongruities but confirms the centrality of the botanical world in Merovingian Francia.

The Changing Uses of Herbarium Data in an Era of Global Change: An Overview Using Automated Content Analysis

Widespread specimen digitization has greatly enhanced the use of herbarium data in scientific research. Publications using herbarium data have increased exponentially over the last century. Here, we review changing uses of herbaria through time with a computational text analysis of 13,702 articles from 1923 to 2017 that quantitatively complements traditional review approaches. Although maintaining its core contribution to taxonomic knowledge, herbarium use has diversified from a few dominant research topics a century ago (e.g., taxonomic notes, botanical history, local observations), with many topics only recently emerging (e.g., biodiversity informatics, global change biology, DNA analyses). Specimens are now appreciated as temporally and spatially extensive sources of genotypic, phenotypic, and biogeographic data. Specimens are increasingly used in ways that influence our ability to steward future biodiversity. As we enter the Anthropocene, herbaria have likewise entered a new era with enhanced scientific, educational, and societal relevance.