Te Papa’s collection of pressed, dried plant specimens includes samples of native and exotic species collected in New Zealand and other parts of the world. Many of the foreign specimens currently in the collection were brought into New Zealand in the late 1870s to be used as reference material and to assist with the identification of exotic species and to compare with the native species being discovered.

About 28000 specimens were purchased from the British Museum by the first director of Te Papa’s predecessor, the Colonial Museum, Sir James Hector. This collection, known as the Thompson-Baker Herbarium, included samples of mosses, liverworts, marine algae, ferns and other plants. To date, only a small part of this large collection has been adequately curated and many of the specimens are still stored between the same paper sheets or newspaper pages they were placed in by their collectors or previous owners.

During the last three months Joyce Colussi-Mas has been working at Te Papa as a volunteer helping with the curation of the orchid specimens in the Thompson-Baker Herbarium. Joyce has carefully mounted over 500 specimens of European orchids on acid-free card, protected by a flimsy (thin paper sheet) and placed any loose labels, with information such as scientific name, place and date of collection, collector, into small cellophane envelopes and attached them to the card. Jonathan Frericks, MSc student at Victoria University of Wellington, also helped to mount some of these orchids.

The collection includes terrestrial orchids collected in countries such as France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Russia. Some of the labels are written in Latin, German or French. Luckily, Joyce’s first language is French and all those notes from orchids collected in France or Belgium are being translated into English.

Collection records of c.100 specimens have been examined so far and it seems most of these orchids were collected between the late 1770s and 1870s. Until now, one of the oldest orchid specimens we have found was collected on 16 July 1768. This orchid specimen is about 244 years old.

After studying the labels of each specimen we will know what species and how many different species of orchids are in the Thompson-Baker Herbarium, where and when these orchids were collected, and who the main collectors were. We already know that J. G. Baker, one of the owners of this collection, was a curator at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (UK) and contacting this institution will be our next step to find out more about the origin and stories behind these orchids.