The pocket herbaria contain 28 dried reference plants, so-called type specimens, which were used by botanists to scientifically describe newly discovered species.
In 1896, the two Basel-based naturalists Paul Sarasin (1856-1929) and Fritz Sarasin (1859-1942) brought back bulging pocket herbaria from their expedition to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
These included plant species that were still unknown at the time and found nowhere else. A bombing in 1943 sparked a fire that destroyed the Berlin herbarium. As a result, the preserved plants from Sulawesi appeared to be lost.
As part of a digitisation project by the University of Basel and the Swiss Natural History Collections Network (SwissCollNet), experts came across Sarasin’s pocket herbaria “in a dusty box” during an audit of the Basel collections, according to the press release.
In addition, Fritz Sarasin’s other collections from New Caledonia recently came to light. These include a type specimen that was also thought to be lost, the orchid species Thelymitra sarasiniana, which is named after the researchers.
