Visit to the University of Dundee to look at D'Arcy Thompson's collection of teaching models in the Zoology Museum, and botanical wall charts at the university Herbarium.
Huge thanks to Matthew Jarron, Museum Curator for his insightful tours, sharing his expertise of the collections, and generously facilitating meetings with colleagues in the Plant Sciences and English departments.
Across the collection there's an overall homogeneity of size - each 'thing' scaled up to domestic proportions, designed to sit on a desk or shelf in the lab, or to be held in the hand and rotated? An equivalent today: the 3d modelling videos that rotate on the screen. This youtube video of the Reproductive Cycle of Flower Plants, contains a nice example, about 2 mins in.Model-makers from the collection include: Edward Gerrard & Sons, c. 1850 - 1967, London and
Vaclav Fric, Czech naturalist, 1839 - 1916, Prague. Most are fabricated in plaster, unlike the Auzoux papier mache models, or older wax models.
Herbarium Collections, University of Dundee
The collection includes a large number of beautifully illustrated series of botanical wallcharts, depticting plant systematics.
Below are a few examples, some of which were created by Dr Arnold Dodel-Port, of the University of Zurich, between 1878 - 1883.
A complete set of digitised images of the
Dodel-Port Atlas can be seen on the Memory of the Netherlands website.
Further wall charts in the University of Dundee collection can be viewed on their website at http://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/exhibitions/teaching/, including the von Shroeder wallcharts, c. 1884 - 1907, which show the latest chemical industrial processes with which Germany at that time led the world.
Patrick Geddes - Thinking Machines
Matthew tells me about Patrick Geddes, polymathic Scottish planner and botanist. Geddes was the first Professor of Botany at the University and initiated the herbarium collection. Many of the teaching charts in the collection were used by him. Plant structures and systems inspired his thinking and are influential in his approach to town planning.
In October 2015, the University and Geddes Institute held The City is a Thinking Machine, an exhibition and series of events evaluating the relevance of Geddes' thinking for contemporary practice: 'The city thinks us. We think ourselves by
thinking the city. The Scottish polymathic planner and botanist, Sir
Patrick Geddes, was able to articulate conceptual frameworks – what he called
‘thinking machines’ – for understanding the evolution of cities and democratic
social organisations'.
Apparently Patrick Geddes and William Morris met (and fell out) at the 1888 Arts & Crafts conference in Edinburgh, and through Geddes, Morris is linked to D'Arcy Thompson, though there is no record that the two men met.
There are notable connections in the thinking of Morris and Geddes, the latter of which is often quoted: 'Think global, act local' and 'By leaves we live'; and who was concerned about losing connection to the seasons through industry, looking instead to nature to inspire town planning where cities are growing organisms.
For more on Patrick Geddes:
Geddes, Cities in Evolution, 1915
Matthew Jarron, The Artist, the Thinker: John Duncan & Patrick Geddes in Dundee
Conversation with Claire Halpin, Head of Plant Sciences about 'green factories'/'field factories' - the manipulation of plants (eg. starch) for different products. The use of coal (compacted fossilised plants) in Victorian industry, which has contributed to climate change, and how now we are looking to plants to fix the problem, creating carbon-neutral bio-fuel.
Claire describes lignin to me - the hardening compound in plants, that creates the woody shells of seeds. In cellulose, the long fibres are coated by lignin to form the analogous equivalent of steel rods in concrete.
I attend the 2016 Distinguished Lecture by Jane Langdale, Professor of Plant Development at University of Oxford, regarding the C4 Rice Project.
Victorian Sci-Fi featuring plants:
H G Wells, The Time Machine
H. G. Wells, First Men in the Moon, 1901 (accelerated plant growth)
Georges Melies, Le Voyage dans la Lune, 1902
Edward Page Mitchell, The Balloon Tree, 1883 (intelligent plants)
Camille Flannarion, Lumen, c. 1860's (sentient trees)
Oliver Gaycken, Devices of Curiosity: Early Cinema and Popular Science, 2014
Brian Aldiss, Hothouse, 1962
With thanks to Dr Keith Williams, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Dundee, for the recommendations.
