Seeds of a new culture

Last month the dried plant collection of the Auroville Herbarium moved to a new dedicated building in the Botanical Gardens. Funded by SAIIER, inaugurated this March, slowed down a bit by corona, its establishment marks a new phase in the work of preserving and classifying our indigenous flora. The new structure is also the base for the virtual herbarium, and for the Botanical Gardens’ new Centre for Plant Conservation, working to protect endangered local species.

Collecting TDEF seeds

The Herbarium started in 1994 when Walter Gastmans from Shakti received funding from the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions for the original building, as well as seed-finding excursions. Walter had started collecting plants after his arrival in Auroville in 1978. Early on, he met Dr Meher-Homji from the French Institute, Pondicherry, who introduced him to the TDEF (Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest), and who pointed out that with hardly one percent of the TDEF left, “you can’t go closer to extinction”. Walter then started identifying plants everywhere he went, and Paul Blanchflower and Jaap den Hollander soon joined him in investigating the flora of the local area. 

Walter recalls, “When we came here there was only one palm tree in Shakti community on 32 acres. We felt this should be remedied as soon as possible. Most of Auroville has red laterite soil, but here we have very good top soil, because it used to be fields and the land drains here”. They started their own nursery raising TDEF species, and Shakti produced an ‘Auroville Index Seminum’ catalogue of seeds which they sent to other herbariums worldwide. Of all improbable places, they had a very busy seed exchange with the Hortus Botanicus Centralis Sibiricus, Novosibirsk. 

“Strangely on our first ever collection excursion in Puttupet, on 5 April 1994, we found Derris ovalifolia, mentioned in botanical literature as ‘very rare, probably extinct’. It turns out this was an over statement as it was more common,” Walter remembers. After that they started the Herbarium. “We mainly collected from sacred groves, which are the only places you can see undisturbed forests”.

They began with weekly outings but stopped when the Government of India banned foreigners doing so, and their seed collection slowed. Walter recalls that the initial idea was to “collect only TDEF, but we soon had to drop that as in Auroville there are many exotic species”. Additionally, the botany students of Madras Christian College offered samples, and the French Institute, Pondicherry and Father Mathew from Tiruchapalli would give duplicates of their collections. 

Most of the plant collection is from the Indian mainland, but a significant amount also comes from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as Walter was asked to survey the islands a couple of times by the ANET (Andaman and Nicobar Ecological Team). 

In 2010 Walter’s collection was officially accredited as a Herbarium by Kew Gardens, and named ‘AURO’. Walter is currently busy checking with Kew regarding changes in species names, a constant problem as botanical families often split or are unified.

The Herbarium office is still located in Shakti with Walter as the curator, while the dried plant specimens and some of the library have moved to the Botanical Gardens. In time, everything will move to the Botanical Gardens to be part of the new Plant Conservation Centre. It will consist of of the physical herbarium of dried plant species, a plant preparation laboratory, a library and office space, and a new digitisation facility to produce high-quality images for the virtual herbarium website. 

The dried plant collection is kept in a climate-controlled room to stop the growth of mould fungus, and to keep the specimens in optimum condition. Every three to six months the plants go through a freeze cycle to control insect infestations. When new plant specimens are accepted into the herbarium, they are pressed and dried, then mounted by stitching on to high quality paper, to both protect the samples and to make them easy to view for research purposes.

Holotypes

When a plant species is first described by science and classified, a dried plant specimen collected at that time must be lodged in a herbarium for future comparison and research.  Called a ‘holotype’, the Auroville Herbarium has five in its collection: four from the Andamans and one from Gingee. Overall, there are 14,954 plant specimens in the Herbarium, including 3,500 unique species from over 298 families. Neil Meikleham, the resident plant scientist, says “the Auroville Herbarium is a valuable scientific collection of bioregional plants”, and hopes that Masters, PhD students and botanists will come to study there. 

This move reflects the latest phase of Auroville’s ecological work. If the first phase of the early days was to plant whatever could grow, in the second phase the early greenworkers began planting what they had seen in the local sacred groves and forests where they obtained seeds. This new phase builds on this early work by developing an understanding of the complete forest ecosystem, introducing plants that are rare or endangered, and supporting plants that have struggled in recent years through replenishing genetic stock.

The Herbarium has four endangered and rare specimens from the local fort town of Gingee, whose inaccessible rocky hillocks have protected these species over the years. One of these trees, Drypetes porteri, originally collected in 2001 by Paul, is classified by the IUCN red list as an endangered species. The Botanical Gardens is working with Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) on an official Species Recovery Plan for this tree, which includes collecting seeds, surveying to find out how many trees are still growing in the wild, planting populations in the Auroville forests to create a genetic backup (ex situ), and, in partnership with the Tamil Nadu Forest Department, planting reinforcement populations in local forest reserves where they originally grew. 

This is part of a worldwide movement to protect plants identified as vulnerable or endangered. The day of our interview Neil and Paul had just spoken to the Global Tree Campaign, which is working to assess the conservation status of every tree in the world. The full report is expected in May 2021, but early results indicate that between 20% to 40% of all tree species are threatened or endangered. The Botanical Gardens conservation team, in partnership with BGCI and the Global Tree Campaign, is now planning comprehensive programmes to protect the endangered plant species of the Auroville bioregion. Neil notes that “without identifying what we already have, we can’t save the trees”.  To support this work, the Auroville TDEF website has been recently updated. This site lists the sacred groves and reserve forests in the local area, and details most of the TDEF species found there. 

The virtual Herbarium

The Herbarium also has an online presence. The Pitchandikulam Forest Virtual Herbarium was started in 2014, and in 2020 it was transferred to the Auroville Botanical Gardens, and renamed the Auroville Virtual Herbarium to reflect this broader collaboration. This online site is, in the words of Neil, “probably one of the best virtual herbariums in the world, which can be credited to the original work of Joss’s team at Pitchandikulam Forest.” The Auroville site documents all aspects of the plant cycle in full colour. Currently over 180 plants are comprehensively described, using various nomenclatures, plant descriptions, and details on reforestation and conservation status. The Botanical Gardens will continue to add new species to this site, with a particular focus on species that are endangered or rare.  

The new dried plant specimen house is not just a new home for indigenous plant specimens, but a contemporary ark for the TDEF, establishing a culture of preservation, conserving locally endangered trees, and acting as a a resource for our endemic flora to flourish anew.