Chicago Botanic Garden
Plant Documentation
Plan & Policy
July 2012
18
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Key Attributes of the Present Documentation System 2
Collection and Management of Data 3
Maps 5
Labels 5
Plant Database 6
Herbarium Vouchers 6
Digital Images 7
DNA 7
Weather Station 8
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) 8
Carbon Sequestration 8
Plant Records Leadership 9
Library 9
Vision 10
Collection, Maintenance, and Distribution of Information 10
Nursery Evaluations 10
RFID (Radio Frequency ID) Tags 10
Maps 11
Labels 11
Funding 11
Future Technology Upgrades 11
Database Upgrades 12
Website Database Upgrade 12
Weather Station 13
Library 13
Conclusion 14
Appendices
1. Utilization of Living Plant Documentation Resources 15
2. Benchmarking with Major Botanic Gardens and Arboreta 16
3. Permanent and Temporary Labels, Accession Tags 17
4. Chicago Botanic Garden Data 18
5. Plant Database 19
Glossary 20
18
Introduction
In 1989 the Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy published by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) defined a botanic garden as:
... a garden containing scientifically ordered and maintained collections of plants, documented and well labeled, and open to the public for the purposes of recreation, education and research.
Documented collections of objects (in this case, plants) exemplify a museum. The Wright Report, a landmark study of museums in Great Britain, emphasizes the importance of documentation by stating:
In order to be able to interpret and communicate knowledge effectively, a museum must first have detailed and accurate information about the objects in its collection. Museums can provide an efficient service only if their information resources are readily available and if their records are revised as a continuing process.
Alberta Sebolt George in Museum Education Anthology noted:
Museums, like every other institution in our society, thrive to the degree that they make their resources available to the public. An important part of the mission of museums rests in developing strategies to increase access to their unique resources for a broad audience.
The documentation of plants and the environment in which they grow is a basic and necessary tool. These records are used by staff, scientists, educators and the general public. They provide a detailed history of the scientific name, source, location(s), conservation value, and other attributes of the plants within the Garden’s collections.
Records outlive the individual plants they document and, in some instances, outlive the very taxa themselves. Accurate records form a scientific legacy of great importance.
Key Attributes of the
Present Documentation System
Although all museums maintain collection records, the task is particularly challenging for institutions with living collections, especially botanic gardens in which collection inventories change far more swiftly than many other types of museums.
Plant records at the Chicago Botanic Garden are maintained by the Living Plant Documentation department. In addition to gathering and maintaining data, this department is also responsible for the creation of various types of labels, the mapping of the collections, collection of herbarium vouchers, DNA samples, and digital images. Garden staff and other audiences utilize these records, maps, labels, vouchers, samples, and images in a number of ways (Appendix 1). The Living Plant Documentation department, not unlike all Garden departments, has limited staff and resources available. Appendix 2 benchmarks the resources dedicated to recording data, mapping, and labeling plant collections by leading American botanic gardens and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Botanic Garden has recognized the importance of documented plant collections and ranks at the top in staff dedicated to living plant collections documentation. The staff has consistently increased in number to meet the demands of an expanding collection and greater demands by the public for correctly labeled plants. What is important is to compare the number of staff to the number of accessions that must be curated (accessioned, labeled, and mapped, etc.). The institutions that have fewer accessions per documentation staff are the Arnold Arboretum and the Morton Arboretum.
The Garden is investing significant resources towards updating the various plant databases throughout the Garden. This investment continues to result in significant improvements in the way data is captured, stored, and shared within the institution. The data related to a plant can move within the system from department to department and location to location without being re-entered into the system, saving time and resulting in fewer errors. As a result, the Garden is now considered to be among the leading botanic gardens and arboreta with respect to documentation of plant collections within North America. The display label production is partially outsourced, freeing up time for the documentation staff. The Garden also contracts out for verification of plants to outside botanists who are experts in the plant groups being verified.
The Chicago Botanic Garden has developed one of the top plant documentation systems in North American public gardens. Unfortunately, botanic gardens, essentially living museums of plants, do not lead the museum community in documentation of collections. Few of the Botanic Garden’s plant collections have been verified.
Every discipline develops a vernacular language to precisely describe concepts and botanic gardens are no exception. The most important concepts related to documentation of botanic garden collections, the terms used to describe them, and a brief description of how they are applied can be found in the Glossary at the end of this document.
The Garden’s plant records are maintained within a computer database referred to as Recorder. The database includes fields of data for each accession that reference:
· a unique accession number
· identification (scientific name and common names)
· authority (the person who published the scientific name)
· scientific reference confirming the accuracy of the taxon name
· provenance or source information about when and from where the plant(s) entered the collection
· location of the plants within the collection by garden, planting bed, and x/y coordinates
· growth habit (tree, shrub, perennial, vine, groundcover, bulb, succulent, annual)
· number of plants received and/or still alive
· information about the plant(s)’ transfer to other locations
· health
· size (height, trunk diameter at breast height, width of canopy)
· conservation status (rare, threatened, endangered)
· use of the plant for food or medicine; poisonous properties
· causes of plant removal/death (where applicable)
· ornamental characteristics
It is the responsibility of the Living Plant Documentation department to create accession tags and display labels for all plants in the collection (Appendix 3). Display labels for the use of visitors typically include: scientific name, plant family name, common name, and native range. Accession tags are another type of label used by Horticulture and Curatorial staff to maintain the collections. These labels typically include: accession number, source, scientific name, and plant number.
COLLECTION AND MANAGEMENT OF DATA
Attribute data (information keyed into the database) documents the characteristics of each accession such as scientific name, source, flower color, etc., associated with each accession. This data is typically displayed in spreadsheet or report format. Multiple users (four Living Plant Documentation staff, up to 85 volunteers) can simultaneously enter, edit, and view data. Over 1,000 fields are available in this database to record information related to the scientific name of each plant, scientific references that validate the name of each plant, information about where the Garden obtained the plant, characteristics of the natural areas from which the wild collected propagules were obtained, names of gardens in which the plants can be found, and a history documenting the number of plants initially received, their movements to different locations, and causes of death or removal from the collections. Living Plant Documentation staff are working with computer programmers to complete the update of the databases to Microsoft Sequel from Access 97. With the completion of the second phase of theupdate at the middle of 2012, Living Plant Documentation staff will be able to enter and edit accession records in a new Sequel release of CBGRecorder and all Garden staff will have 'read only' abilities to access the data. With the completion of phase 3 (the last phase) in 2012, the curators will be able to record data specific to theirgrant reporting needsand all Garden staff will have anability tocreate and print reports.
Accuracy of data is a concern for botanic gardens because living collections are so dynamic. One of the biggest problems in Plant Collections has been getting accurate information on new plants that are accessioned and planted out into the gardens, or plants that are moved or removed. Management in the Garden Operations area has taken measures to stress to staff the importance of timely recording of data and has put reports and procedures into place that monitor the results of record reporting in the Garden Operations area. This has pinpointed certain areas in the Garden and certain staff where difficulties were occurring. Sometimes, even the coding of certain removal procedures caused problems for getting a handle on what was really happening out in the Garden and in the Plant Production area. Annual reports which show how many plants have died/been removed by garden area have also improved the care and attention to plants in the Garden. Twice a year, a summary of the growth of the collection is provided to staff and senior management (Appendix 4) that reflects the current state of the Collections after recent accessions and de-accessions have been tallied. Curators and the Director of the Garden receive a simplified excel spreadsheet reflecting monthly Collections changes to enable them to respond to trends in a more timely manner.
In a series of surveys conducted in 2000-2003, the Living Plant Documentation staff documented a number of problems with the way information was collected and transmitted in the Garden. Studies compared the number of new taxa accessioned against the number of plants invoiced and received. Another survey investigated the number of plants shown on inventory reports versus the actual number of plants physically in each garden. The results of these surveys suggested disparity between records and the actual plant collection and that a number of plants were missing from the records.
Efforts to improve accuracy of data through automation of key aspects of the information transfer process have been completed and have been successful. Computer records dating from 1991 have been migrated from dBase to Microsoft Access and Sequel. These upgrades have incorporated software advances while addressing the need to supply accurate and timely information to a growing number of recipients. Plant Requisition System (PRS) has been migrated from Microsoft Access to Sequel with enhanced features to manage the input of plant requests, their approval and generation of purchase orders. The enhanced features include a ‘Receiving Module’ and a Plant Validation Screen to ensure that names are scientifically accurate before they are shared with other databases. This software has significantly improved the number of new plants that are accessioned through the creation of a ‘check-list’ of items to be accessioned for each Horticulture staff member and is unique to Chicago Botanic Garden.
The Receiving Module for the Plant Requisition System was created to reconcile differences between purchase orders and the received plants. Differences in taxon ordered versus taxon received, catalog price versus received price, quantity ordered versus quantity received, and transportation costs (at best, transportation costs are vendor estimates) reflect the dynamic status of the nursery stock available at any one time and the continuing efforts of staff to obtain the best plants at the best price. A Receiving Module documents the plants that are actually received.
PRS shares the purchase order information with databases in Living Plant Documentation, Ornamental Plant Evaluation, and Plant Production. Upon issuance of a purchase order, the information is shared electronically with the Production database (and the Evaluation databases, once they are updated to Sequel). Upon receipt of plants in the PRS Receiving Module, the data is electronically shared with the Recorder database. A Labeling database was completed in 2012 in Sequel, permitting PRS and annual plant order information from the Production database to be collated and formatted for submittal to the label contractor.
MAPS
The mapping process is an important aspect of collection management. Maps document the exact locations of accessioned plants in the Garden, and serve as an important safety net when display labels and accession tags are inadvertently removed.
Accurate inventories are critical to the mapping process. As of 2009, most garden maps have been updated within the last seven years. Beginning in 2010, a goal of mapping all of the Garden once every five years was adopted but a review of progress in 2012 required a revision to every 6 years.
Data for the Garden’s maps is collected with surveying equipment that uses laser beams to accurately record the locations and change in elevation of plants. The data is electronically downloaded into the mapping software. Programming was completed in 2012 to transfer the field-collected data from the mapping software to the records database.
The department utilizes a state-of-the-art proprietary mapping application developed by Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) that creates maps that are difficult to share with non-specialists in cartography (map making). To overcome this obstacle, procedures have been developed and trialed to save these maps in a Personal Data File format (pdf) on the Local Area Network. This approach improves on the current practice of
saving the maps as Word documents and provides greater flexibility to view, print and annotate maps using inexpensive desktop applications.
LABELS
In any museum, an accessioned object (at CBG these are plants) without a label identifying what the object is fails a critical mission to “instruct and inform” visitors. Plant labels document the scientific name, common name, plant family and native range and are created for the use of visitors, instructors, students, staff and volunteers.
An average of four thousand permanent and five thousand seasonal display labels are ordered annually. Labels are created and delivered to horticulture staff and, in some cases, installed by the Labeling Technician. Label requests are submitted by Horticulture staff, instructors, curators, and a team of departmental volunteers dedicated to maintaining a well-labeled collection. 2011 was declared the ‘year of labels’ and the goal of increasing the number of labels available to horticulture staff by 25% was exceeded.