The Louvre and the Mona Lisa, the Uffizi and the Primavera, the Neues Museum and the bust of Nefertiti… Each museum proudly and publicly exhibits its gems, worldwide renowned masterpieces whose fame is forever linked to an institution's name! As far as herbaria are concerned, such treasures are much more intimate, not to say buried, and mainly include relatively well-preserved dried plants, stuck for eternity on a sheet of paper. Some specimens directly refer to the description of new species and are of invaluable importance for botanists, while others have been sampled by famous naturalists and may provide precious information for historians and biographers. The Hess herbarium in Zurich is one such hidden jewel that combines scientific prominence, historical significance and aestheticism.
Hans Ernst Hess, born April 10th, 1920, in Rubingen, started his career in botany in the 1950s, before being appointed Curator (1965) and promoted to Full Professor of Special Botany at ETH Zurich (1974). In his young years, Hess made significant plant collections encompassing not only Swiss species but also African Strophanthus, an important medicinal genus with a rich cardiac glycoside content (1950; Ciba mission in Central Africa), and many plants from Angola where he spent one year with his wife, assembling no more than 6,000 specimens for botanical purposes (1951-52). Overall, this private Angolan collection likely constitutes one of the most important floristic accounts for a country whose access has later been problematic for years due to civil war. Unfortunately, this botanical treasure remained long hidden and untouched, unknown to all but a few specialists.
By the eve of 2016, however, Dr. Guggisberg (Curator ETH Zurich) and Dr. Nyffeler (Curator University of Zurich) were able to start an ambitious project financed by ETH Library & Archive that aims, in the long run, at digitizing the whole collection of the United Herbaria of Zurich, a first utmost priority being given to Hess' specimens. This choice was not only based on evident historical and scientific reasons, but included artistic grounds as well. Indeed, most samples are so nicely preserved that each of them could be seen as an invaluable masterpiece, patiently waiting to unravel its intrinsic beauty.
