Dr Iain Darbyshire
Although he
frequently conducts plant surveys in remote parts of Africa,
he recently discovered a new
species inside one of Kew’s glasshouses while on a lunchtime stroll. He talks to
Natalie Hoare about the difficulties of travelling with specimens, the importance of
the great Victorian explorers’ records and the etiquette of naming new species.
After graduating from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, I did a PhD in palaeogeography and palaeoecology, working in Kenya and Ethiopia. It’s where my interest in East African plants started. Palaeogeography uses a variety of methods to reconstruct the historical environment, including changes in climate, land use and vegetation over time, using evidence you can find in stratified lake sediments, for example.
I mainly work in the herbarium, which is where we keep pressed, dried specimens, mainly for plant taxonomy, but we also increasingly work on conservation and documenting regional diversity. I work in the Africa section, especially the drier parts. The work I do in the field ranges from collecting plant specimens for my own research into particular plant groups to doing an inventory of an area that is due to be protected or disturbed in some way to make sure that we’re not losing rare species.
In the tropics, we often just don’t have data on plant distributions, on localities – so little is known of plants. In terms of research, I tend to document all the plant diversity within a region. I’ve been working on the flora of tropical East Africa, which covers Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, for example, documenting all the species from a particularly diverse family there (the Acanthaceae, or shrimp plant, family).
Often, we just have historical information from the herbarium specimens. Some of those were collected 150 years ago by explorers such as David Livingstone and Charles Darwin. We still use their specimens, but things have changed a great deal since then in terms of habitats, so another part of my role is to carry out surveys in the field in order to understand the current picture on the ground.
I’ve done a fair bit of travelling – to Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana, Uganda – it’s definitely one of the pros of the job. I’ve been quite lucky and avoided any trouble, but there is always a risk.
To conduct an inventory in the field, we use vegetation-plot or transect surveys, where you record all the plant species within a randomly sampled area, covering each different habitat within your site. We also do a more general overview survey, collecting material that’s in flower or fruit. Because many plant groups are so diverse, it’s often very difficult to actually know which species you’re looking at, so we need to collect specimens and identify them back in the herbarium by comparing them to the reference collection.
We may collect 1,000 or more specimens on a two-week expedition. Collecting and travelling with plant specimens requires a great deal of paperwork. We have to follow strict guidelines, which vary from country to country, but we always make sure that we work in collaboration with a local partner.
I’ve been credited with discovering a new plant species at Kew. I was just wandering through one of the tropical glasshouses one day and went to a part of the collections that I hadn’t visited before. I came across this plant and thought, ‘this looks like something that I work on’, and realised that it was from Tanzania and that it was something completely new.
We get in accessions of live plants from around the world, and sometimes they’re not immediately identified. People might put on a provisional identification, but then they might get planted out in the gardens without a full name. It turned out that the historical herbarium specimens of that species weren’t identified correctly, so I was able to match them up.
That species [Isoglossa variegata] was described and published last year, so that was quite nice.
It isn’t named after me as it would be considered rather arrogant to do so, but it does have my name after it. When a plant species is described, it will have a genus, a species and an author. I was the author of that species. There are certain places in the world where you are almost guaranteed to find a new plant species if you’re a trained botanist, but to find one in Kew Gardens was a real surprise.
For more information, visit www.kew.org
Curriculum vitae
1976 Born in Preston, Lancashire
1997 Graduated with a BSc in geography from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
2001 Gained a PhD in palaeogeography (graduated 2002)
2001–02 Trained as an accountant in London
2002–04 Assistant botanist, Africa Wet Tropics, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
2004–07 Trainee botanist, Africa Drylands, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
2007–present Senior botanist, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
2009 New species published in Kew Bulletin
After graduating from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, I did a PhD in palaeogeography and palaeoecology, working in Kenya and Ethiopia. It’s where my interest in East African plants started. Palaeogeography uses a variety of methods to reconstruct the historical environment, including changes in climate, land use and vegetation over time, using evidence you can find in stratified lake sediments, for example.
I mainly work in the herbarium, which is where we keep pressed, dried specimens, mainly for plant taxonomy, but we also increasingly work on conservation and documenting regional diversity. I work in the Africa section, especially the drier parts. The work I do in the field ranges from collecting plant specimens for my own research into particular plant groups to doing an inventory of an area that is due to be protected or disturbed in some way to make sure that we’re not losing rare species.
In the tropics, we often just don’t have data on plant distributions, on localities – so little is known of plants. In terms of research, I tend to document all the plant diversity within a region. I’ve been working on the flora of tropical East Africa, which covers Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, for example, documenting all the species from a particularly diverse family there (the Acanthaceae, or shrimp plant, family).
Often, we just have historical information from the herbarium specimens. Some of those were collected 150 years ago by explorers such as David Livingstone and Charles Darwin. We still use their specimens, but things have changed a great deal since then in terms of habitats, so another part of my role is to carry out surveys in the field in order to understand the current picture on the ground.
I’ve done a fair bit of travelling – to Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana, Uganda – it’s definitely one of the pros of the job. I’ve been quite lucky and avoided any trouble, but there is always a risk.
To conduct an inventory in the field, we use vegetation-plot or transect surveys, where you record all the plant species within a randomly sampled area, covering each different habitat within your site. We also do a more general overview survey, collecting material that’s in flower or fruit. Because many plant groups are so diverse, it’s often very difficult to actually know which species you’re looking at, so we need to collect specimens and identify them back in the herbarium by comparing them to the reference collection.
We may collect 1,000 or more specimens on a two-week expedition. Collecting and travelling with plant specimens requires a great deal of paperwork. We have to follow strict guidelines, which vary from country to country, but we always make sure that we work in collaboration with a local partner.
I’ve been credited with discovering a new plant species at Kew. I was just wandering through one of the tropical glasshouses one day and went to a part of the collections that I hadn’t visited before. I came across this plant and thought, ‘this looks like something that I work on’, and realised that it was from Tanzania and that it was something completely new.
We get in accessions of live plants from around the world, and sometimes they’re not immediately identified. People might put on a provisional identification, but then they might get planted out in the gardens without a full name. It turned out that the historical herbarium specimens of that species weren’t identified correctly, so I was able to match them up.
That species [Isoglossa variegata] was described and published last year, so that was quite nice.
It isn’t named after me as it would be considered rather arrogant to do so, but it does have my name after it. When a plant species is described, it will have a genus, a species and an author. I was the author of that species. There are certain places in the world where you are almost guaranteed to find a new plant species if you’re a trained botanist, but to find one in Kew Gardens was a real surprise.
For more information, visit www.kew.org
Curriculum vitae
1976 Born in Preston, Lancashire
1997 Graduated with a BSc in geography from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
2001 Gained a PhD in palaeogeography (graduated 2002)
2001–02 Trained as an accountant in London
2002–04 Assistant botanist, Africa Wet Tropics, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
2004–07 Trainee botanist, Africa Drylands, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
2007–present Senior botanist, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
2009 New species published in Kew Bulletin
