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Plant Talk

Inside The New York Botanical Garden

Amy Weiss

Morning Eye Candy: Camera to Camera

Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on August 11 2013, by Matt Newman

People often ask me if we take visitor-submitted photographs, and without fail, I can’t talk up our NYBG Flickr group enough. Traveling visitors, local residents, and even a few Garden staffers—like the Herbarium’s Amy Weiss—contribute dozens of photos each week to this community. Novice shutterbug or veteran photographer, we encourage you all to join up.

Amy Weiss

Phlox paniculata ‘David’ — Photo by Amy Weiss

Unearthing History in the Herbarium

Posted in Around the Garden, Behind the Scenes, Learning Experiences on March 27 2012, by Amy Weiss

Amy Weiss works in The New York Botanical Garden’s Herbarium, cataloging and preserving plant specimens from around the world.

Part of my job in the Herbarium of the NYBG is processing plant collections researchers have stored over the years. In general, we only mount plants that have been identified to species. That process can be quick if there is currently a specialist–we send the person a duplicate of a plant collection, and they send us the plant’s name once it has been identified. However, identifying plants to specific species can take much longer if there is no one currently specializing in a certain family or genus.

Herbaria are important because they are the depositories of such historical collections, and with our care they will still be around when a specialist is available. Once identified, we mount the plant specimen for New York, and distribute any duplicates to other herbaria around the world. The collections gathered by NYBG scientists that are still waiting for identification reside in our cold room in the meantime, where they will occasionally remain for decades before the right specialist becomes available.

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