ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Dried Algae as Mobile and Multilayered Objects: The Algal Herbarium of Achille Forti (1878–1937)

• In Event: Plant Humanities 2 - Rethinking Scientific Collections: Herbaria and Exsiccata

English Abstract

Herbaria are interdisciplinary objects. Originally assembled to collect and preserve specimens of plants, algae, mosses, ferns, and more—primarily for taxonomic purposes—they have, over time, acquired and continue to acquire new meanings. Through the lens of the Plant Humanities and the History of Science, today exsiccata collections can be situated within different knowledge frameworks, highlighting plant–human relationships and the mobility of materials across space and time. This talk presents the algal herbarium of the Italian botanist Achille Forti (1878–1937) as a case study that offers significant insights for the history of science as well as for other disciplines. Forti’s herbarium is a rich, complex, and multilayered historical collection of algae preserved at the Botanical Museum of the University of Padua. It consists of 107 folders and approximately 43,000 specimens of marine and freshwater algae, dated between 1823 and 1936 and originating from all over the world. The specimens were collected by Forti and his colleagues, also during various contemporary scientific expeditions, or were obtained from other herbaria. Using a collection-based approach integrated with other sources—Forti’s publications, correspondence, and additional archival and printed materials—this talk aims to reconstruct the history and uses of the algal herbarium and the circulation of its specimens; to shed light on the scholarly networks and scientific and political expeditions connected to the collection; and, finally, to consider the herbarium as an archive of information on biodiversity, enabling a fruitful interdisciplinary comparison between past and present.

Author

• Claudia Addabbo, University of Padova