Lost and then found, the second herbarium of William Wise

Lost; then found ~ the second herbarium* of William Wise.

If you visit the museum at Lawrence House, you will see the Launceston Herbarium on display; this is an album* of pressed wild plants & flowers collected during the nineteenth century by a local chemist, William Wise who was a notable botanist. Town mayor and supporter of many local institutions, he lived a long & busy life and a year or two before he died he presented H. Spenser Toy, then headmaster of Launceston College, with his second herbarium.
This was re-discovered by a pupil, Brian Sheen, in 1959 when the boarding house attics were being cleared. He wrote an essay about the herbarium and listed many of the rare plants it contained. About twenty years ago, Sarah McDonnell was shown two of the volumes and we have since discovered that in 1986, county botanists listed the contents but noted that some volumes were missing.
Nothing more was heard until this summer when some of the storerooms were being cleared for new offices and Sarah became concerned that the herbarium might be lost. In early September we began to search in earnest and discovered the whole nine volumes, safely taped up in cardboard boxes.
The Botanical Cornwall Group (BCG) was informed; two of their botanists visited the College and were overjoyed, not only to find the whole collection intact and in relatively good condition but also to discover notes made by their colleagues in the 1980’s. This is both local and scientific history dating from 1833 to the 1920’s, not only of a changing landscape, but also of the plants that have remained constant and can still be found growing exactly where William Wise recorded them over a hundred years ago.

During half-term, members from BCG & Launceston Area Wildlife Group (LAPWG) will transcribe and photograph the whole collection. The albums will be carefully re-packed into labelled archive boxes and placed in safe storage at the College but the herbarium pages will find a new ‘virtual’ life on the Herbaria at home web-site alongside William Wise’s other collection.
Jen Bousfield, Launceston College Library Manager