Seaweed Herbarium

With the aid of precision tools such as porcupine quills, harvesters would delicately arrange samples in wreaths or bouquets, sometimes even creating landscapes. 

As winter subsides and spring arrives, our coastal beaches reveal their bounty. Seaweed along our shores, often overstepped or tossed aside, offers a beautiful vision if we choose to see, and we can look to the past to find the way.  

Middle class women living in the mid to late 1800s (ostracized from more formal scientific inquiry because of their gender) exercised their naturalist   natural history and scientific observation during seaside vacation retreats.

Wearing men’s boots and wading knee deep into the sea, women harvested seaweed to press and present in herbariums. Once harvested the plants were placed in jars or buckets of seawater to retain their moisture until it was time to mount them. These bound books mimicked scrapbooks but instead of ephemera from dances or fairs and festivals, the books contained plants.  This object from our collection highlights seaweed exclusively and celebrates the intricate form of these plants. 

Plants that we might pass by on the sand become objects worthy of our attention when compiled carefully in the pages of a book.  Whether presented as delicate compositions or as straightforward mounts which allowed the natural form of the plant to dominate the page, these books compel us to slow down and smell the seaweed.  

Cover and select pages from "Ocean Gems" from the Amesbury Public Library Local History Collection.