Historical Notes – Connell Memorial Herbarium (UNB IH)

Botanical Illustrations in 19th c. Maritimes.

by Susan Belfry

Botany was one of the few socially acceptable scientific activities for Victorian women. As noted in a previous blog article [Four Women Plant Collectors...] some women played a significant role in advancing the knowledge of native plants in 19^th century Canada. They collected plants, learned their names and often pressed and mounted these botanical specimens for their personal herbarium. To help identify a plant and to communicate this knowledge to others, good detailed drawings of the specimen was a common pursuit. And thus botanical illustrations soon became a blend of science and art to show the unique features of a specific plant.

The botanical artists in 19^th century Canada were primarily women and by the early 1800’s painting schools were established to teach women the artistic skills to render native plants as accurately as possible. These illustrations were often drawn from nature and the plants were identified by their scientific name. Some artists would compile their paintings into albums to be viewed and studied by family, friends and a broader non-scientific audience. These albums were very popular in Canada in the 1800’s and likely served as an early form of a plant identification guidebook of local flora.

In this article, I want to highlight three botanical artists from the Maritimes during the Victorian era.

Maria Morris Miller (1810-1875), was an exceptional artist among a group of Maritime ladies who made floral paintings and botanical illustrations of native plants in Nova Scotia. She was a botanical artist, a teacher and the first Nova Scotian woman to be recognized as a professional artist. Her illustrations received international praise at Exhibitions in London and Paris. Throughout her career she created over 90 illustrations of 146 species of flowers from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and eastern Canada.

Actoea Alba & Ruba, Red and White Baneberry. Watercolour by Maria Morris Miller, 1853. The Canadian Encyclopedia.

Pontederia cordata ‘Pickerel Weed’ and Sagittaria variabilis ‘Common Arrowhead’. Watercolour by Maria Morris Miller, 1853. The Canadian Encyclopedia.

“Renowned for their aesthetic quality as well as their botanical accuracy, her works are an important early contribution to the appreciation of the local natural world. By virtue of their subject matter and approach, her botanical illustrations created an avenue of artistic expression particularly accessible to other women artists of the era.” New Brunswick Museum

Maria Morris Miller compiled her botanical illustrations of native plants into albums for local patrons which ultimately led to her 1840 publication of “Wildflowers of Nova Scotia”. In 1866, she published The Wild Flowers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and a year later, she re-issued her first collection as Wild Flowers of British North America. In these publications, scientific notes were provided by Professor George Lawson and Secretaries of Agriculture for Nova Scotia. Her collaboration with scientists supports the view that botanical illustrations are both art and science. Some of her works can be found in Library and Archives Canada (Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana) and in the New Brunswick Museum.

Maria Morris Miller taught drawing and painting to women not only in Nova Scotia but also in Saint John and Fredericton where she operated short-term schools during the 1830’s and from 1850 to 1875.

It is possible that one of her students was Mary Rebecca Wilkinson (1808-1874), a daughter of Loyalists and the wife of John Wilkinson, an architect and engineer in the NB Crown Land Office. She was a Fredericton artist who created a botanical album called “Wildflowers of New Brunswick”.

This album of 28 watercolours of native New Brunswick plants was commissioned in 1868 by the “Ladies of Fredericton” as a gift for Margaret Medley, wife of the bishop of Saint John, NB. The illustrations were inscribed with the scientific and common names for the plant. These beautiful paintings can be found in the UNB Archives & Special Collections.

Sagittaria variabilis var. latifolia. “Arrowhead”. Watercolour by Mary Rebecca Wilkinson, ca. 1868. UNB Archives & Special Collections.

Goodyera pubescens. Watercolour by Mary Rebecca Wilkinson, ca. 1868. UNB Archives & Special Collections.

Another prominent artist in Fredericton, Elizabeth Beckwith Hazen (1840-1935) made over two hundred drawings of native New Brunswick plants during the 1860’s and 1870’s. She was a skilled amateur artist, painting local native wildflowers in oil and watercolours. By the 1870’s she was showing her works in the Provincial Exhibition and receiving much praise.

With the help of Dr. Loring W. Bailey (UNB Professor) her botanical illustrations were inscribed with the full botanical name, the common name and the date.

‘Fireweed’, Epilobium angustifolium, from Nature. Watercolour by Elizabeth Beckwith Hazen, 1867. UNB Archives & Special Collections.

‘Swamp Calla’, Calla palustris. Watercolour by Elizabeth Beckwith Hazen, 1870. UNB Archives & Special Collections.

Elizabeth Beckwith Hazen’s legacy of over 120 paintings of New Brunswick native plants are held in the UNB Archives & Special Collections.

I want to thank Matty Watson in the UNB Archives & Special Collections for allowing me to view the original paintings of Rebecca Wilkinson (28) and Elizabeth Beckwith Hazen (125). To see these botanical illustrations in person, gives a better appreciation of the artwork and the efforts these women undertook to provide an accurate, scientific record of a plant’s structure, form and colour.

References:

Image of Cornus canadensis, ‘PigeonBerry’, by Maria Morris Miller. Retrieved from Dartmouth Heritage Museum, Halifax.

DiFruscia, Danielle. “Maria Morris Miller”. The Canadian Encyclopedia, 08 September 2023, Historica Canada. https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/maria-morris-miller . Accessed 25 February 2026.

Huneault, Kristina. I’m Not Myself at All: Women, Art, and Subjectivity in Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018. McGill-Queen’s/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History.

New Brunswick Museum. “Maria Morris Miller Atlantic Canadian Artist and Teacher” Accessed 25 February 2026. https://www.nbm-mnb.ca/en/2021/04/22/maria-morris-miller-atlantic-canadian-artist-and-teacher/.

Shteir, Ann B. (ed.). Flora’s Fieldworkers: Women and Botany in Nineteenth-Century Canada. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.

Archival Material:

Elizabeth Beckwith Hazen Fonds, MG H 13a, Item 70 & 83, Box3. UNB Archives & Special Collections.

Mary Rebecca Wilkinson Fonds, MG H 197, Item 11 & 20. UNB Archives & Special Collections.

Maria Morris Miller, Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana, Acc. No. R9266-4118. Library and Archives Canada.

Four Women and Botanical Collections in 19th-Century Canada

by Susan Belfry

A recently published book, “ Flora’s Fieldworkers: Women and Botany in Nineteenth-Century Canada” Ann Shteir (ed.), examines the role women played in plant collection, exploration and the general study of botany in British North America. Although the study of botany was an acceptable activity to women of the 19^th century, it soon became a scientific discipline to be studied at universities and in formal scientific societies. Most archival records, plant lists and published studies were undertaken by men and there were few records of women’s accomplishments. This book brings to light through new archival materials, the important contributions some women made to botanical knowledge in pre-Confederation Canada.

In particular, personal letters show how four women in Canada were collecting plants for William Jackson Hooker, a professor of botany at the University of Glasgow. During the 1820’s and 1830’s they contributed to Hookers’ “Flora Boreali-Americana”, a project to document the plants of British North America, published in 1840.

The four women, all from the colonial elite in Quebec and Newfoundland, are Christian Ramsay (Lady Dalhousie), Anne Mary Perceval, Harriet Sheppard and Mary Brenton. William J. Hooker had commissioned botanical specimens from these women through his connections with the colonial network and personal contacts. He provided specific advice, copies of illustrated plant books and instructions on how to collect and preserve specimens for shipment to him in Glasgow. In his ‘Flora’ book, these women were cited nearly 450 times as sources of information about specific plants collected in Quebec and Newfoundland. Through their elite status in society, these women had the time, ability and ambition to learn about the plants. Here is a brief look at some of their botanical accomplishments.

Christian Ramsay (Lady Dalhousie) – 1786-1839 was the wife of Lord Dalhousie, and had the opportunity to travel throughout the British colony – Halifax, Quebec City and Montreal. She learned plants through books and from field experience working in her estate gardens. Lady Dalhousie was introduced to Hooker in 1825 and for the next three years was sending him plants from the Quebec region. She would collect with family and friends looking for new, rare or different plants than what was known in Britain. Her “approach to nature was empirical and material as she sought to identify, systematically arrange, and catalogue plants she collected”. (Shteir & Cayouette). Hooker cited her 48 times for plants she collected. Some of her specimens are held in the herbaria at Edinburgh and Kew, however, her personal collection of almost 300 specimens from Lower Canada are held in the Herbarium at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, Ontario.

Figure 1.
Ranunculus rhomboideus collected by Lady Dalhousie in Quebec, [?1824]. Courtesy of the herbarium of The Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. E00757483.

Anne Mary Perceval (1790-1876), wife of a colonial administer in Quebec, shared the same botanical interests as Lady Dalhousie and they became friends. Perceval lived on a large estate in Quebec and had the interest, ambition and resources to observe plants. She studied Frederick Pursh’s Flora Americae Septentrionalis and taught botany to her children. Through her connections she corresponded with John Torrey, a botanist in New York, and they exchanged plants and knowledge of plants. It was Torrey who recommended her to Hooker as “a lady of fortune who is an excellent botanist”(Shteir & Cayouette) . By 1825, she and her network of botanical friends were shipping plants to Hooker. She is cited 150 times in Hooker’s ‘Flora’ for plants collected across the Quebec region. Many of her specimens are held in the Darlington Herbarium in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Figure 2.
Platanthera hookeri collected by Anne-Mary Perceval, William Darlington Herbarium – West Chester University, Pennsylvania (DWC), PH00525850.

Harriet Sheppard (1786-1858) was one of those botanical friends of Ramsay and Perceval who was also an avid collector of plants and natural history specimens. Along with her husband they were avid naturalists and members of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. She was sending Hooker wildflowers, shrubs, orchids, grasses, ferns, marine plants and lichens. She is cited in 144 entries of plants in ‘Flora Boreale-Americana’. There is less archival material available because a fire in their estate destroyed her personal herbaria and plant lists. Some of her plant specimens are held in in the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Figure 3.
Pterospora andromeda, collected by Harriet Sheppard in Quebec, Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, K006107257.

Mary Brenton (1791-1884) was from an elite family in Rhode Island that settled in Halifax. Her father was a lawyer and served as a judge and civil servant in Nova Scotia and eventually Newfoundland. Mary never married and always lived with her parents. Through elite social connections, she knew the Governor Thomas Cochrane, himself a botanical enthusiast, and it was he who introduced Mary to William J. Hooker. Mary became Hooker’s principal collector in Newfoundland and Labrador and from 1830 to 1838 she shipped plants to him. Her father was a travelling judge around the ports of Newfoundland and Mary could accompany him and collect plants from coastal bogs and fens. She is cited in the Flora 102 times for ferns, sedges, grasses. She found some plants that were new to Hooker and he named the gentian, Halenia brentoniana in her honour.

Figure 4.
Mary Brenton’s specimen of Halenia brentoniana, Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, K000854355.

These four women stood out as botanists collecting plants in Lower Canada and Newfoundland for William J. Hooker’s project, Flora Boreali-Americana. They also collected plants for their own herbaria as did other women featured in this book, such as Catherine Parr Trail, Alice Hollingworth and Isabella McIntosh. Botanical albums and botanical art is covered in one essay which enlightened me to two women botanical artists in New Brunswick in the 1870’s. (More on this in another article.) I recommend this book for anyone interested in women botanists in Canada. The bibliography is also extensive and led me to the article by Shteir and Cayouette and also down many different pathways.

References:

Shteir, Ann B. (ed.). Flora’s Fieldworkers: Women and Botany in Nineteenth-Century Canada. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.

Shteir, Ann B., and Jacques Cayouette. “Collecting with ‘botanical friends’: Four Women in Colonial Quebec and Newfoundland” Scientia Canadensis 41, no.1 (2019): 1-30.

Rev. James Fowler, NB Botanist

by Dr. B. Schneider

As volunteers in the Connell Memorial Herbarium, we often handle herbarium sheets that have been filed for many, many years. Recently a sheet, showing a plant collected by Rev. James Fowler, initiated a conversation which led to the question of how many New Brunswick specimens did Fowler submit to the Royal Botanic Gardens Herbarium at Kew, United Kingdom? The following is the result of that query.

Rev. James Fowler was an early New Brunswick botanist. He was born in 1829 at Bartibog, NB, and died in Kingston, Ontario in 1923. He attended university in Halifax where he was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1857. A serious bout of laryngitis forced him to leave the ministry and after he recovered he became a teacher and eventually became Science Master at the Provincial Normal School. Throughout his life he seriously pursued his avocation, the study of natural history. He was a botanist of distinction and set a goal to collect all the plants of New Brunswick. This led him to communicate with other botanists and exchange specimens enhancing his collections. One of his significant contributions to NB botany was his list of NB plants from 1878 and 1880. This list has been used by other leading botanists ever since.

Fowler was generous with his large personal plant collections. For example, he sent 1000 specimens to the NB Museum. In the early 1900s he did a thorough study of the plants around St. Andrews, NB, and found many foreign plants. He became famous for his collection of a Knotweed which was named after him. This honour was given to him by botanist B. L. Robinson of the Gray Herbarium at Harvard, naming the plant Polygonum fowleri, Fowler’s Knotweed. This plant grows along sea beaches and sandy coastal marshes. Our herbarium has specimens collected from the Acadian Peninsula, Kent County, along the Fundy coast and from the Fundy islands.

Fowler did his early collecting in Kent County around Bass River and Richibucto and later concentrated on the St. John River valley. Fowler became familiar with the flora of much of NB and noticed a greater number of Arctic plants here than would be expected at this latitude. His explanation for this unfortunately was not correct but the explanation (the plants being protected in niches after the retreat of the ice sheet and the presence of cold currents along the Fundy coast, long winters and fog) was made using all the information he had at the time.

Although Fowler pursued botany in New Brunswick, a remote area at the time, he stayed in close touch with the leading botanists. He was in close touch with the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, with Asa Gray of Harvard, and occasionally attended high level meetings like the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Society of Canada. He visited such places as Oxford, Cambridge and Paris. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Canada in 1891.

In 1880, Asa Gray recommended Rev. James Fowler for a position at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He became professor of natural history there and unfortunately took his large collection of New Brunswick plants with him. It is not known how many plants were in this lot. At that time we not only lost one of our greatest botanists but a substantial number of collected NB plants. Fowler achieved a lot botanically for the province and we were very fortunate that he worked here for many years. He is buried at Cataraqui Cemetery at Queen’s University. The university named their large herbarium, Fowler Herbarium, after him. It currently contains 140,000 specimens.

Rev. James Fowler submitted 516 specimens to the Connell Memorial Herbarium from the years 1866 to 1908. Most of those submissions were of plants collected from New Brunswick. In the years from approximately 1904 to 1908, the specimens were collected from the province of Quebec. One specimen which is listed as ‘unknown collection date’ lists ‘event date’ as 1865 (accession number 3095). Most of the specimens collected in 1866 were from New Brunswick. Specimens were submitted in 1866 from Richibucto, Bass River, Rothesay, Eel River, Baie Verte, Belledune and Point La Nim. A few specimens have the source listed as ‘probably Bass River’. At least 7 specimens collected in 1866 are listed as from New Brunswick but show no location.

A good example of one of his specimens is accession number 2223, Amelanchier laevis Wieg. , Smooth Shadbush, collected from Bass River, Kent County, northeast of Smiths Corner. Attached is a digital version of the herbarium sheet and an enlargement of the label.

These images show the beauty of the Smooth Shadbush specimen and the script on the attached tag may be that of Rev. James Fowler.

Fowler submitted 67 specimens to the Royal Botanic Gardens Herbarium at Kew but only one is from New Brunswick. The date of submission of that plant is unknown but it was identified as Salix pyrifolia which today is known as Salix purpurea L. See the herbarium sheet below and an enlargement of the specimen label.

It is interesting to think that that plant was sent to the United Kingdom in the 1800s or early 1900s and still exists today as a historical record from New Brunswick. Rev. James Fowler contributed greatly to New Brunswick botany including raising us to the global consciousness. Thanks go to Richard Fournier for his help in searching the Kew Herbarium files for this record.

References

Connell Memorial Herbarium. unbherbarium.lib.unb.ca/page/connell-memorial-herbarium.

Kew Herbarium Catalogue. apps.kew.org.

Young, C. Mary. Nature’s Bounty. UNB Libraries, University of New Brunswick. 2015.

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James Robb’s UNB Vascular Plant Collections Revisited

by Rick Fournier

This article follows Jillian Richard’s 2018 post about James Robb (Richard, 2018).

James Robb left Scotland and arrived in Fredericton by steamboat from Saint John (Young, 2015). He was hired in September 1837 to teach Chemistry and Natural History at King’s College in Fredericton (UNB archives and special collections, 2017). He realized that he needed teaching specimens and soon embarked on gathering expeditions.

He collected botanical specimens near King’s College and around Fredericton in May, June, and early July of 1838. He also collected by canoe above Fredericton (Mouth of Keswick River and adjacent islands) with the help of a Maliseet guide (Young, 2015). He was also able use the carriage road to Saint John in New Maryland and Fredericton Junction to further his collections.

In mid-July 1838, he embarked by canoe and on foot on a collecting tour of the province. Along with a Maliseet guide he canoed up the Saint John River to the mouth of the Grande Rivière in today’s Madawaska county. This had been a trade portage to the Restigouche River for millennia by the Maliseet and Micmac nations. The collection trip is depicted in Mary Young’s book (Young, 2015: map 2 page 188).

He returned to Fredericton with a dozen botanical specimens and a good knowledge of the physiography and geology of New Brunswick, all notions that he would teach to his students.

James Robb spent the next 6 years collecting botanical specimens mostly in the vicinity of Fredericton. He occasionally collected in Saint John and Dorchester. He does not appear to have exchanged specimens, except a single collection (Accession no. 2165) by Mrs Parker (Mrs. Neville Parker, née Elisabeth Wyer) of St. Andrews. By 1848 he had amassed over 600 botanical specimens, after which he followed other pursuits. His botanical collections are the first for the province of New Brunswick and the UNB Connell Memorial Herbarium appears to be the sole repository of all of his specimens collected in New Brunswick.

His last specimen collection was Black Snakeroot (Sanicula marilandica L.) in June 1858, in Red Rapids, near Tobique, in Victoria County. (Accession #2603 CMH)

He would pass away prematurely 3 years later (Bailey, AG. 1976) (Bailey, LW. 1898).

In keeping with the previous note (Belfry, 2023), James Robb’s writing style is quite distinctive and is easily identified on botanical notes. He was writing with a steel pen that you dip in a bottle of ink. This is evident on high magnification where the edges of letters are ragged. His writing has a constant 25 to 30 degree right hand slant. As well, many of his letters are exaggerated upward and downward. This has permitted the identification of specimens that had been unknown as to the collector.

James Robb’s Botanical Note on Voucher Accession #55800 (UNB-CMH)

Bibliography:

Bailey, Alfred G. 1976. Robb, James. Dictionary of Canadian Biography IX. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 665 – 667. Also at: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/robb_james_9E.html

Bailey, Loring Woart. 1898. Dr. James Robb – First Professor of Chemistry and Natural History in Kings College, Fredericton – A Sketch of his Life and Labours. Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick (BNHSNB) Volume 16, Article 1, pp 1 – 15.

Belfry, Susan. 2023. Can you read this botanical note? Posted November 17, 2023 on: https://unbherbarium.wordpress.com/.

Richard, Jillian, 2018. Collectors Stories: James Robb (1815 – 1861). Posted February 28, 2018 on: https://unbherbarium.wordpress.com/tag/collectors/.

UNB Archives and Special Collections. 2017. James Robb. At https://unbhistory.lib.unb.ca/James_Robb.

Young, C. Mary. 2015. Nature’s Bounty: Four Centuries of Plant Exploration in New Brunswick. At https://naturesbounty.lib.unb.ca/.

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Text and map: Rick Fournier Images: Connell Memorial Herbarium

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Can you read this botanical note?

It may take some time to figure out the letters but if you were born after 1996, chances are you would find this very difficult.

By 2010, cursive writing was dropped from the school curriculum in the US and the elementary schools in Ontario and Quebec no longer taught handwriting.¹ It may seem the ability to read and write cursive handwriting is no longer needed in today’s society, but let me suggest two reasons why it is still important.

One reason is that the inability to read cursive puts you at a disadvantage when studying handwritten documents. This includes your grandmother’s letters. Another pair of eyes or text recognition software may be able to ‘translate’ the text, however this can create a screen between you and the original document. The nuances of handwritten notes are unique and can offer a special connection with the author, through the paper and ink used on that day. If you are using computer software to transcribe the text you may lose this connection with the past. Reading cursive is a recognized skill and if you need a review on this craft, one can find university websites providing tutorials, tools and techniques in cursive writing for history and archival researchers.²

Another reason to know cursive is to discover the beauty in handwritten documents, notes and letters. There is an elegance to the flow of letters joined together without lifting the pen. Everyone has their distinctive style; the slope of the letters, the flourishes of the curlicues and the steadiness of the pen drawn across the paper. Our signatures reflect who we are.

This brings me to the specimen labels found on vouchers in the Connell Memorial Herbarium. I volunteer in the herbarium and am digitizing the plant specimens with a flatbed scanner. As I place each herbarium sheet on the scanner, I look at the plant and the label. Finding a handwritten label is a wonderful sight and is much more interesting to read than a computer/type-written one. From these casual observations it seems the care taken in writing the botanical labels is often reflected in the care given to preparing the mounted specimen.

Over time, I have become acquainted with the early NB collectors whose specimens are in our herbarium. I can recognize their handwriting and their unique signatures. A lovely description of the beauty of these botanical notes can be found in Helen Humphreys’ book, Field Study: Meditations on a Year at the Herbarium:

“the labels are revealing of many things – the location details of the plant, the priorities of the collector, the story of a particular moment – but sometimes there is an accidental wording that lifts the label more towards poetry.” Helen Humphreys ³

See for yourself. Take a look at the following botanical labels from the CMH collection and tell me if you recognize these New Brunswick plant collectors by their handwriting?

Please send me your answers and any comments you wish to make: susan.belfry@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading, Susan

Text: Susan Belfry. Images: Connell Memorial Herbarium

References

1. https://www.todaysparent.com/family/cursive-writing-in-schools/. https://ucalgary.ca/news/why-cursive-handwriting-needs-make-school-comeback.

2. https://guides.library.cornell.edu/immersionarchive/transcribe;

3. Humphreys, Helen. 2021. Field Study: Meditations of a Year at the Herbarium. Toronto: ECW Press.

Digitization and Imagery of Herbarium Specimens

‘Until recently, the world’s herbarium specimens were under lock and key and accessible to only a small number of scientific specialists, but digitization of herbaria is now a global enterprise, and specimen data and images are emerging in digital form from herbaria around the world.’ ¹
P. Soltis, Amer. J. Of Botany, 2017

Currently, it is estimated there are 3,100 active herbaria worldwide, in which a total of 390 million botanical specimens are permanently housed.² Digitization of herbarium specimens began around 1999 and has spread to most of the world’s institutions and university herbaria. Initially, the digital data gave the plant’s name, date, location and collector but now it is becoming the norm to also present an image of the specimen in high resolution.

There have been many improvements in the methods for imaging specimens and the speed with which electronic records are created. For example, the Paris Herbarium now has more than 5.4 million digitized specimens. Most of the large herbaria in the world have made similar progress on digitizing their complete plant collection. At first, these digital collections were served by their institutional websites, however, now many herbaria contribute their digital records to data aggregators such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)³. The availability of digital data from large aggregators for use in biodiversity research, ecology and conservation has grown exponentially in the past two decades.

Canada is a participant of the GBIF and contributes data from various networks. One such network, Canadensys, (Université de Montréal Biodiversity Centre) is a Canada-wide effort to make the biodiversity information held in biological collections accessible to everyone.⁴ This network includes 19 herbaria and five botanical gardens in Canada. It maintains a comprehensive list of all vascular plants in Canada and provides up-to-date accepted scientific names and their common French and English names.

In New Brunswick, digitized vascular plant records are available online from two institutions. The Connell Memorial Herbarium (CMH) holds about 48,379 records of NB plants and the New Brunswick Museum holds around 22,131 records.

Historically, specimens and their accession numbers were recorded by hand into ledgers or notebooks. After 1995, the specimen data was entered into a spreadsheet (searchable) program. The hand-written ledgers contain up to 52,000 records of plants collected and stored at the University of New Brunswick. Can you imagine searching through 52,000 entries in handwritten notebooks to find a specific specimen?

Page 1 of the Accession Number Record Book, UNB Herbarium

From page 1 of UNB’s first Record Book, it is obvious that the data collected with each specimen was scant. Many herbarium vouchers from the 19th century have minimal accompanying data – usually the plant name, its location, the year and maybe the collector’s name. One herbarium label, from 1844 (see below) describes the specimen’s locality as “wet ground near Fredericton”.

Today, herbarium specimens are collected with much more detailed data – including geographical locations (latitude and longitude) to the 5th decimal place. In comparison to the 1844 label above, the data for a plant collected in 2018 is described in more detail and entered into query computer programs (SQL) to enable searches in all fields. An example of the online information available for a one specimen of Festuca suberticillata is below.

By 2017, all plant specimen data in the Connell Memorial Herbarium were uploaded to the UNB Library Online format. Soon to follow was the acquisition of a flatbed scanner to digitize the specimen voucher as a high-resolution image to accompany the specimen’s data. This work is ongoing with the help of volunteers. Once the collection has been digitized and reviewed, the Connell Memorial Herbarium plans to share its data with Canadensys.

The digitization of data from centuries of plant collections and the collective size of aggregated botanical data are creating new and unknown opportunities in research involving systematics, ecology, conservation and global change . All forms of data, whether it be information in the labels or data extracted from images, is now open and accessible to researchers from around the world.

References:

1. Soltis, PM. Digitization of herbaria enables novel research. Amer. J. of Botany 104(9):1281-1284, 2017.

2. Index Herbariorum, https://sweetgum.nybg.org/science/ih/

3. Global Biodiversity Information Facility, https://www.gbif.org/

4. Canadensys, https://www.canadensys.net/

5. James, S. A., P. S. Soltis, L. Belbin, A. D. Chapman, G. Nelson, D. L. Paul, and M. Collins. 2018. Herbarium data: Global biodiversity and societal botanical needs for novel research. Applications in Plant Sciences 6(2): e1024. doi:10.1002/aps3.1024

Text: Richard Fournier and Susan Belfry.

Images: “Vascan.” Canadensys, data.canadensys.net/vascan/search?lang=en. Accessed 10 Aug. 2023 and Connell Memorial Herbarium.

Collector’s Stories: David McLeod

This month we want to celebrate the significant contributions David McLeod has made to botanical studies in New Brunswick. The Connell Memorial Herbarium holds 823 specimens collected by David.

He is a superb botanist with an encyclopedic mind but that is not all. Since all things in the natural world fascinate him, he has an extensive collection of plant specimens, insects and arachnids and a truck-load of books on nature. He also is a very knowledgeable birder with a long list of “lifers”. David is an outstanding teacher and whenever one is on a field trip with him, you want to stand close to hear what he has to say.

David holds long-time memberships in many local and Canadian/US natural history organizations and clubs. He has been a member of the New Brunswick Botany Club since its inception in 1999.

Dave at the Dolan Woodlands Nature Preserve (NTNB). Photo Credit: Peter Gadd

David was born and raised in southwestern Ontario, to a family of natural history enthusiasts. His grandfather, J.R. McLeod was president of the McIlwraith Naturalists’ Club in the early 1920’s and his father, Robert McLeod, took him on many naturalist club outings.

He studied engineering and the sciences at the University of Western Ontario and graduated with a degree in Chemistry in 1967. In the following year, he received his Ontario Teacher’s Certificate from the London Teachers’ College. David taught school for seven years and as he became more interested in outdoor education, he left the formal classroom to join the YMCA’s Outdoor Centre as a co-ordinator of their educational programmes. For the next 20 years (1980- 1998) he worked as a biologist, botanist and ecological consultant for various governmental and non-governmental organisations. It should be noted that during his time working in Ontario, he also spent some summer months in the early 80’s botanizing around Alnwick Parish, Northumberland County, NB. In the Connell Memorial Herbarium there are over 250 specimens he collected during 1979 to 1982 in Alnwick Parish.

Dave at Spednic Lake. Photo Credit: Clay Merrithew

After retiring in the late 1990’s he moved from Ontario with his wife, Ena (McKnight) to New Jersey, New Brunswick and took up residence in the McKnight homestead. At this time he became an assistant to Hal Hinds, Botany instructor and curator of the UNB Herbarium, to work on the revision for the 2^nd edition of the “Flora of New Brunswick”. He checked for current taxonomic and nomenclatural changes to scientific names, reformulating identification keys and proof-reading the text. Since then and to the present day, David has continued to work on botanical surveys and inventories for many local Miramichi organisations. In particular, he worked with Clay Merrithew (current volunteer with the herbarium) compiling botanical inventories in the French Fort Cove Nature Park for the City of Miramichi and on Beaubear’s Island for Parks Canada. More than 500 plant specimens from these surveys are in the Herbarium, and they can be found online in our database. Thank you David!

“ I spent three floristic seasons doing field work with Dave. He is a meticulous botanist with an all-encompassing knowledge of vascular plants. Despite the impediment of right-side weakness caused by a stroke, Dave had the iron will to spend long hours examining and collecting specimens in the field day after day.”
Clay Merrithew

Text: Clay Merrithew and Susan Belfry. Photos: Peter Gadd, Clay Merrithew.

Volunteer Profile: Dr. C. Mary Young

C. Mary Young in the Connell Memorial Herbarium

The success of the Connell Memorial Herbarium is due to many people who have donated their time and expertise. However, one person stands out: Mary Young is the herbarium’s most longstanding volunteer. Since 1975 she has spent countless hours in mounting, identifying and archiving plant specimens for the collection.

Born and educated in England, she has a B.Sc in zoology and botany and a PhD from London University. She met her future husband (Dr. Murray Young) in London and after some years, they settled in Fredericton where he taught history at UNB. They raised a family of three children in a beautiful home with a large garden filled with vegetables and native plants.

Mary concentrated on identifying plants in the herbarium’s special collections such as Dr. Taylor’s Arctic Study (1944), Dr. Wein’s Yukon and NWT Study (1972) and several other collections from Nova Scotia and PEI. For more on the challenging work with the Taylor Collection please see the previous Blog, posted June 29, 2016. She played an active role in the establishment of the Nature Trust of New Brunswick (an organization dedicated to the conservation of critical natural areas), serving as secretary, president, and past-president. With her interest in plant distribution and diversity, the conservation of plants was also of great importance. For her dedication to conservation and her role in the Connell Memorial Herbarium, Mary was recognized by an Honorary D.Sc. from UNB in 2016.

As a veteran of the herbarium, Mary knows a lot about its history and she wrote an excellent account in the booklet, “The Connell Memorial Herbarium, University of New Brunswick 1838-1985”. This document is reproduced on the CMH website under About/ History of the CMH.

Her interest in the historical aspect of the collection led her to research and write of our province’s early naturalists and botanists. Her book, “Nature’s Bounty: Four Centuries of Plant Exploration in New Brunswick” was published in 2015 by the UNB Library. The electronic version of this text is freely available from UNB: https://naturesbounty.lib.unb.ca/

Both of these publications have been illustrated with Mary’s botanical sketches and paintings. As an artist, self-taught, she has sharpened her observational skills in botany by drawing the native plants of New Brunswick.

As I write this, Mary still lives in her home surrounded by her lovely garden of perennials and native ferns. Equipped with a microscope, a dissecting kit, plant keys and access to online databases, Mary continues her work on plant identification from her home. She is currently identifying and annotating some sedges from the collection and is grateful for the online digital database and high-resolution images of the collection that help in the identification of New Brunswick plants.

“This collection becomes more and more valuable as the data is available to anyone over the internet.”
_{Mary Young, email communication}

Her thoughts on those giving their time as ‘Friends of the Herbarium’ reflect her appreciation for the many people who keep all the data, photos and specimens together:

“I think they are a remarkably dedicated group of people. It does not seem to matter whether it is field work, collecting specimens, or some routine lab job, they do it with alacrity and dedication.”
_{Mary Young, email communication}

* The Connell Memorial Herbarium holds 205 specimens collected by C. Mary Young.

References/Sources:

Young, C. Mary. The Connell Memorial Herbarium, University of New Brunswick 1838-1985, University of New Brunswick, 1986.

Young, C. Mary. Nature’s Bounty: Four Centuries of Plant Exploration in New Brunswick. UNB Libraries, University of New Brunswick, 2015.

C.M. Young (personal communication, November 19, 2022)

Text: Susan Belfry. Illustrations: C. Mary Young. Photo: Roger Smith.

Collector’s Stories: Katharine M. Connell (1899-1973)

Dr. Katharine M. Connell (née Jarvis) was born in Toronto in 1899, one of five children to Edward W. Jarvis and Kate Agnes Harris. Mr. Jarvis worked with the Bank of Montreal and moved his family around Ontario and the Maritimes. In 1921, Katharine received a BA (Chemistry) from UNB and a PhD in 1928, at the University of Michigan.

She married Mr. Connell, a forest ecologist, (Yale, U of T) and eventually they settled near his family home in Woodstock, New Brunswick. They had four children. ¹

In 1967, to mark Canada’s Centennial year, Dr. Katharine Connell decided to make a collection of the plants of Carleton County. She collected approximately one thousand plants, which were pressed and mounted with detailed documentation on herbarium sheets.²

Needing some assistance with collecting the plants, Jane Hadley (née Speer) spent two summers helping Dr. Connell collect and press plants.

“We collected plants in the afternoon and then went to her house for pressing. Areas with potential for plants were scouted out beforehand and she would bring a basket and a camera. The entire plant was collected and if she thought it was a rare plant – she would only take photographs. The plants were carefully laid out between newspaper and blotting sheets along with their identification cards and dried in plant presses. We mounted the specimens on the dining room table. She was very intelligent and always learning new things. She was patient, kind and wanted to share her knowledge of plants with others.“ ³

Katharine donated her plant collection to the UNB Herbarium in 1972. She died in 1973 and the UNB Herbarium was renamed the Connell Memorial Herbarium in 1976. A dedication plaque and a photograph of Katharine are located outside Room 17, Bailey Hall, UNB. The plaque inscription reads:

The University of New Brunswick Connell Memorial Herbarium. Dr. Katharine M. Connell, BA, MA, PhD. 1899-1973.

Dr. Connell’s collection of the plants of Carleton County, New Brunswick were housed in this herbarium by her family as a permanent tribute to an outstanding mother, educator and botanist. The University of New Brunswick Herbarium was renamed in her honor on this date October 13, 1976.

* The Connell Memorial Herbarium holds 794 specimens collected by Katharine M. Connell.

By C. Susan Belfry, 2022

Notes:

¹ Verbal communication with Dr. Lucy Dyer (daughter) and Dr. Mark Connell (son), Aug-Sept, 2022.

^2. Young, C. Mary. The Connell Memorial Herbarium, 1838-1985. Fredericton: University of New Brunswick, 1986.

³ Verbal communication with Jane Hadley, Sept. 2022

Collector’s Stories: George Upham Hay (1843-1913)

George Upham Hay, about 1910, © New Brunswick Museum

George Upham Hay was born in Norton Parish, New Brunswick on June 18^th, 1843 to William Hay and Eliza Fahy. Hay’s father started out as a shoemaker and later became a farmer in Norton Parish. Hay went to local schools before becoming an apprentice in the printing trade. He worked alongside his brother for the St. Croix Herald, during a time of tension because of the American Civil War. This press was looted by a mob in December 1861. In the next month, Hay moved to Saint John to attend the Normal School and by 1867 he obtained his first-class teaching licence.

An article by James Fowler in the Stewart’s Quarterly in 1870 was titled, “Plea for the study of natural history,” and this may have peaked Hay’s interest in the subject. In the following year, Hay attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York where he took courses in languages and botany. For a few years he worked as a reporter and night editor for the Saint John Daily News. In 1876, he returned to teaching and married Frances Annetta Hartt in Saint John, New Brunswick. By 1880, Hay was one of the leading members of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick. He was chair of its committee on botany for over 33 years, developed an herbarium and compiled catalogues of New Brunswick plants. Hay was also interested in marine algae and fungi. Hay taught until 1897, after which he focused on educational writing. He was president of prominent Canadian organizations: the Natural History Society of New Brunswick (1896-9), the Royal Society of Canada (1903-4), the Botanical Club of Canada (1904-6). He passed away in Saint John, New Brunswick on April 23^rd, 1913 from heart failure.

“The Restigouche – with Notes Especially on its Flora” by G.U. Hay.
*Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick,* 1906.

Written Works

He wrote many articles and books concerning botany, plants and history. Hay compiled a series of articles such as “Canadian History Readings,” but he also wrote textbooks of the histories of Canada and New Brunswick for school curriculum. Examples are, A History of New Brunswick: For Use in Public Schools. 1903 and Public School History of Canada, 1908.

As well as land plants, Hay published books on algae, “Marine Algae of New Brunswick,” and “Marine Algae of the Maritime Provinces.”

He wrote articles titled “Notes of a Wild Garden,” and “The Restigouche – with Notes Especially on its Flora.” for the Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick and “John Goldie, Botanist” for the Royal Society of Canada.

By Jillian Richard, UNB 2017

* The Connell Memorial Herbarium holds 3 specimens collected by G. U. Hay and the New Brunswick Museum holds approximately 1,460 specimens.

Bibliography:

Stephen R. Clayden, “HAY, GEORGE UPHAM,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed July 31, 2017. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/hay_george_upham_14E.html.

New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia https://nble.lib.unb.ca/browse/h/george-upham-hay