Herbarium Projects
- Sydney Ngcankana as Herbarium Assistant, is busy on the last lap of digitising the complete herbarium into the PRECIS / SANBI database. This is a time-consuming and very finicky work, which needs great concentration and a thorough knowledge of the database and how it works, as well as considerable botanical and taxonomic expertise.
- Sydney also manages the herbarium specimens on an ongoing basis and ensures that the relevant volunteers repair insect infested and damaged specimens.
- The Herbarium hosts frequent demonstrations to schools and Saasveld students as to the functioning of a herbarium, its uses and importance and how to collect and to press specimens etc.
- Sydney fills, names & labels the species display bottles at the entrance to the Moriarty Centre on a regular basis so that visitors can identify plants flowering in the Botanical Garden
- A group of regular volunteers come into the herbarium every Tuesday morning and undertake various tasks. Most Tuesdays we have about 8 volunteers working in the herb sometimes more
- Tasks carried out by these volunteers include:
- Curating and managing the Botanical Library
- Scanning of original art-works donated to the herbarium
- Identifying specimens from vegetation surveys, CREW surveys, the Botanical garden, private individuals etc. by comparison with the quick Guide, main herbarium and scanned & named specimens, as well as searches in the literature, and use of the microscopes
- Identifying herbarium specimens already accessed by comparison with already dated specimens in the herbarium, in the literature, and use of the microscopes.
- Filing and sorting of relevant cuttings of botanical and conservation interest to the area.
- Mounting and labelling new specimens both for the main Herbarium and for the Quick Guide
- Organising talks of botanical or conservation interest which are held in the herbarium lecture room at the Moriarty Centre
- The Lowlands CREW group goes on fairly regular outings to survey various lowland areas for Red Data Threatened species
- Sydney, with Dayne de Wet (Garden Curator) and Yvette van Wijk (Herbarium Curator) carry out vegetation surveys on soon to be developed land for Environmental Impact assessmentEIAS’s, or for private owners wishing to know what species occur on their land. They prepare reports and species list from these surveys.
