A collection of herbarium specimens is a plant treasure of twofold beauty: intrinsic, the fruit of the fascinating adventure of the plant, its evolution, its multiple adaptations or its diverse properties, and that of its harvester, whether scientist, enthusiast, traveller or simply curious; extrinsic, through the splendour of the specimen, the care taken by the collector and its enhancement by the curator.
It is this odyssey through space and time, through myth and science, that Alessia Guggisberg and myself propose to the reader who is not fortunate enough to visit a herbarium, in this case the collections of Zurich, with the motto: one sample, one story. With almost 2.5 million preserved specimens of vascular plants, we could have delivered several thousand anecdotes! In the end, we have selected just fifty...
