Newsletter

Notes from Au Sable

Practicing Economic Botany
By Benjamin Van Ee

From Sept. 6 to Dec. 11, 1998, I was sponsored by Au Sable to be an intern at the Centre for Economic Botany of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England. The purpose of the Centre is to research useful and potentially useful plants.

The building that houses the Centre is named after Kew's most famous economic botanist, Sir Joseph Banks. It also houses more than 75,000 botanical artifacts, from Banks' favorite chair to every imaginable essential oil. Right away, I felt at home here because the building is much like Earth Hall at Au Sable in Michigan. It is covered with plants of economic importance from around the world, all of which are labeled.

Most of my work consisted of restoring and curating ethnobotanical archives in the Economic Botany Library. I also spent a large part of my time making an index of the 263 families and 2,350 genera in the Centre's seed collection. Although tedious, this was very rewarding work because it figuratively unlocked what is perhaps one of the 10 largest seed collections in the world. The plan is to eventually extend the index to the species level and make it accessible via the Internet. The rest of my work time was spent on computer updating the Centre's web page and entering data for various projects.

The experience was very informative and worthwhile. My time was much enhanced by the friendliness and helpfulness of the Centre staff, some of whom I plan to stay in touch with. I learned a lot about the work of a major botanical garden and herbarium, as well as many practical aspects of curating collections. The extent of the 6 million-plus species herbarium was simply amazing. The time was also very valuable for making connections in the field of professional botany and scientific research in general. Living in London was very exciting, yet challenging to do on a tight budget.

Since returning from England, Benjamin Van Ee has been working for Au Sable as International Program Assistant, making some of the arrangements for the programs in India and Africa this summer. He also is taking the environmental education internship at Au Sable for the fourth time. Two other students originally from Au Sable, Lisa Tebben (also sponsored by Au Sable) and Christi Sobel, were Kew Interns at the same time as Benjamin.

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