Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria Annual Report 2018-19

Field work on a high altitude rock outcrop behind Mt Lewis near the source of Rex Creek. (Photo: Daniel Ohlsen)
CURATING THE STATE BOTANICAL COLLECTION
Ongoing curation of the State Botanical
Collection enabled an additional
29,920 specimen records to be made
accessible through the Australasian
Virtual Herbarium and the Atlas of
Living Australia. A significant proportion
of these records were from the
Global Collection, including historical
specimens. Type specimens continue to
be found, predominantly in the Global
Collection. 1,558 type specimens were
imaged, bringing the total number of
types now accessible on Global Plants
on JSTOR to 28,942. Curation of the
Australian component of the collection
has focused on the return of nondatabased
loan material, with 2,038
specimens being returned. To support
the curation of the State Botanical
Collection, volunteers mounted 13,757
specimens onto archival paper.
Global Collection Project
Historically significant specimens
have been discovered as a result of
the ongoing curation of the Global
Collection. These include specimens
of the tea plant Camellia sinensis var.
sinensis, collected by Robert Fortune
in 1846 from ‘the Black tea Country’
(China) and specimens collected by John
Kirk in 1860 from Mozambique, during
Livingstone’s Zambesi Expedition. With
these discoveries, the National Herbarium
of Victoria joins a short list of overseas
herbaria that hold collections made by
Fortune and Kirk. Specimens of species
known to be threatened or which are
now extinct in the wild were also found
in the Global Collection, including a
specimen of the now extinct St Helena
Olive, Nesiota elliptica. Finding these
specimens highlights the importance of
this collection on a global scale.
Literary and Artistic Works
Drawing from a donation made for
conservation purposes, the Library
sent six Celia Rosser Artworks to the
Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials
Conservation at the University of
Melbourne, to remove adhesive residues
from the works. Fifty thousand library
records were successfully migrated to a
new, open source library management
system called Koha, facilitating effective
indexing of the Library catalogue. A
new plan press was purchased and
well-utilised as part of an ongoing
project intended to better organise the
extensive collection of maps and plans.
Significant donations made to the Library
include a collection of correspondence of
botanical artist Betty Conabere, botanical
watercolours of plants indigenous to the
Dandenong region by Fred Woodman,
and the Henderson Oldfield Archive,
comprising papers relating to the
publication A Greater Prize than Gold:
Augustus Oldfield, 19th century botanical
collector and ethnographer in Australia.
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS BOARD VICTORIA — ANNUAL REPORT 2018–19 39