At the Herbarium in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, we experienced a plant collection that, quite contrary to the Arabidopsis Gen map seen at the INRA, relies not on stored data but on the individual, identifiable plant specimen. The Herbarium consists of plant samples collected from the 18th century until today. All of the specimens collected in the field are painstakingly stored away for further research. This practice leads to an overwhelming quantity of objects in the collection.
In spite of its historical treasures, the Herbarium is no museum. It is rather an active working environment that provides the specimen together with old expedition notes, illustrations and publications, and modern reference works and notebooks. The steadiness of scientific practices used by botany preserves the scientific character of objects even from the far past of the discipline.
The botanists are very well aware of the historicity of their working material. Due to the requirements of active use, old herbarium collections sometimes have to be unbound and newly mounted. The original binding and sheets are kept, to enable further historical research.
Single specimens from the Herbarium can, due to their age or historical prominence, become part of a museum exhibition. The practices applied to these herbarium sheets change completely, as soon as they enter the realm of the museological world. The aesthetical appeal of an object otherwise hidden in a cardboard box is now in the foreground. The sheet and the plant are not longer touched, moved around and actively contextualized in the process of research. The specimen is now treated as something precious that has to be protected from manual use. Public gazes at this formerly scientific exhibition object behind the armored glass.