1. THE PLANTS IN THE GLASS DISPLAY CASE ARE VERY OLD.
Narrow strips of white tape keep the pressed
leaves and fragile stems in place on large, thick
sheets of paper. In the bottom left-hand corner of
each page, small handwritten identification labels
state where the plants were found, who picked
them, and when.
One specimen, a little yellow flower, was collected
in 1904. The oldest, a round burgundy leafed plant
— Rubus chamaemorus L. — was picked on August
15, 1884. It is 130 years old.
September/October 2014 above & beyond 31
Plant Legacies from a Rock Hound
A r c t i c B o t a n y
By Season Osborne
Bell collected this Rubus chamaemorus L.,
commonly known as a cloudberry, from
four different locations along
Hudson Strait in 1884. CAN 70090,
© Canadian Museum of Nature

2. The plants, displayed as part of the Arctic Festival at the Museum of Nature in
Ottawa, are part of the museum’s National Herbarium. The Herbarium’s collection of
more than 1.2 million specimens of plants includes over 100,000 Arctic specimens of
vascular plants, such as flowers, ferns and shrubs, as well as moss, lichens and algae.
Some of these were collected by 19th century explorers. They are so perfectly preserved
that anyone would guess they were picked only a few years ago.
The Rubus chamaemorus L., more commonly known as ‘cloudberry,’ was collected
by Dr. Robert Bell, a member of the first Canadian expedition to the Sub arctic. The
1884 Hudson’s Bay Expedition was the first in a three-year study to assess the feasibility
of shipping Prairie wheat across Hudson Bay, through Hudson Strait to the Atlantic
Ocean, and on to European markets. Prairie farmers hoped that by sailing through
Hudson waters to the Atlantic they could avoid paying the Canadian Pacific Railway’s
high shipping tariffs on the line they monopolized. A Hudson Bay route was physically
shorter, and the three-year study would determine if it would be more economical.
Bell was one of the proponents of a Hudson Bay route. He was on the expedition
in the capacity of ship’s surgeon. Bell was actually a geologist with the Geological Survey
of Canada. He had gained a lot of prestige and respect in geological circles, carrying
out extensive explorations of the northern sections of Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba
in the 1870s and 1880s. He had taken a medical degree to be prepared for any mishap
in the field.As the expedition did not have space for a geologist, though, Bell guaranteed
his passage as doctor. However, the onboard historian noted that Bell’s medical supplies
were buried deep in the hold where they were difficult to get at.
As part of the three-year assessment, five observation posts were erected along
Hudson Strait and three men were left at each post for a year. Their job was to study
conditions of the Strait, its temperature, barometric pressure, weather, ice, and tides.
The three men who were left at the posts in 1884 would be picked up and replaced the
next summer of 1885 by three new men who would continue to take observations.
On September 12, 1884, the sailing steamship Neptune dropped anchor in a bay
off rocky Digges Island, at the southern entrance to Hudson Bay from Hudson Strait.
An expedition party rowed ashore with a load of lumber. They were there to erect
32 arcticjournal.ca September/October 2014
Port Laperrière Observation Station on Digges Island at the entrance to Hudson Bay, shortly after it was built on August 29, 1884. Bell made a number of collections of small plants
and lichens on rocky Digges Island. Robert Bell, © Library and Archives Canada, C-086359
Bell collected this Armeria vulgaris willd on his 1897 geological
expedition to the Amadjuak region of southern Baffin Island.
CAN 91902, © Canadian Museum of Nature

3. He evidently was diligent in collecting plants from both
sides of Hudson Strait, but incorrectly named the place he
collected them from.
Referring to his geo-referencing work,Wise says,“I have
always been a puzzle fan, and finding some of the collection
sites is indeed a puzzle.” Location of the Luzula’s collection
site is another puzzle now solved.
Jennifer Doubt, Curator of Botany at the Canadian
Museum of Nature, says that Wise has revolutionized geo-
referencing at the National Herbarium,finding more than just
the geographical coordinates of where plants are collected.
“He not only figures out the latitude and longitude for the
places named on specimen labels, but he also determines a
radius within which the plants were most likely collected.
And he documents where he got the information, so that
other people can decide if they agree with him or not,” says
Doubt.“He talks to historians and people at heritage centres
Observation Station Number 5,promptly named Port Laperrière after Arthur Laperrière,
the 24-year-old station observer.
Some of the men explored the island while carpenters raised the frame of the building
the observers would occupy for the next two years. Five polar bears were spotted and
the dory was dispatched to the ship to alert the men onboard.A hunt ensued with 15 men,
nine with rifles. Three of the great white bears were shot, and the men debated who
should get custody of the skins. Dr. Robert Bell, who hadn’t even been part of the hunt,
acquired one of the skins under the auspices of science.
Bell had been otherwise occupied on Digges Island during the hunt. He had been
collecting specimens and had gingerly uprooted a short plant with large,round,crenulated
reddish leaves — a cloudberry. Back at the ship, he would dry the plants he’d gathered
between thick layers of blotting paper and felt in a botanical press provided for just
this purpose. Later, when he returned to Ottawa, the specimens would be identified
and catalogued at the National Herbarium, then part of the Geological Survey of
Canada’s natural history museum. The zoological and botanical specimens he collected
would be examples of the abundant natural resources of Canada’s most northern lands.
Bell accompanied the three Hudson Bay and Strait expeditions in the summers of
1884, 1885 and 1886 as ship’s surgeon. On a fourth government expedition to Hudson
Strait in 1897, he was officially recognized in the capacity of geologist, and with a team
of four was dropped off on southern Baffin Island to explore the northern side of the
Strait, particularly Amadjuak Fiord. Another team, led by fellow geologist Albert Peter
Low, was dropped off on the south side of the Strait to make geological studies there.
Fast-forward to 2014, Paul Wise at the National Herbarium is looking for the exact
location of where a Luzula was collected by “R. Bell in 1897.” Bell had noted on the
plant’s accompanying label that the collection site was,“Prince George’s Sound, Hudson
Straits.”Wise cannot find Prince George’s Sound on any contemporary map. Even using
“the usually dependable Mr. Google produced not a single hit,” he says.
Paul Wise is geo-referencing specimens for the Herbarium. He tries to determine
from the information on the labels attached to each plant’s sheet exactly where the
plant was collected.
He is stumped with Bell’s Luzula,a long reedy plant known commonly as a wood-rush.
A 1911 map, however, shows a King George’s Sound on the south side of Hudson
Strait. Commander William Wakeham’s published 1897 report on the Expedition to
Hudson Bay and Cumberland Gulf in the Steamship “Diana,” details that between July
16 and 18 the expedition landed at King George’s Sound where Albert Low and his
party disembarked to carry out their geological explorations on the south side of
the Strait. There was obviously time over those three days for Bell to also go ashore.
September/October 2014 above & beyond 33
A contemporary image of Armeria vulgaris willd, commonly
known as thrift, which grows in abundance in the Arctic.
Jennifer Doubt, © Canadian Museum of Nature
Plants laid out on a 12 x 17 inch sheet in the field, ready to be pressed.
Roger Bull, © Canadian Museum of Nature
Geologist Robert Bell became assistant director in 1877 of the
Geological Survey of Canada. He was appointed acting director of the
Survey from 1901 to 1906, then held the position of chief geologist
until he resigned from the survey in 1908. © Natural Resources Canada,
Courtesy of the Geological Survey of Canada, kgs-2369BB

4. all over the place. Sometimes he’ll talk to the mayor of some small town if he is looking
for the name of a landmark or road. If Paul can’t find it through regular sources, he’ll
ferret it out.”
In 1903-04, Bell’s associate Albert Low commanded a Dominion Government
expedition, which over wintered in northwestern Hudson Bay before exploring islands
in the High Eastern Arctic. Dr. Lorris Borden, the ship’s surgeon, who doubled as the
botanist/zoologist on the expedition, collected a clump of yellow flowers from Beechey
Island on August 15, 1904. Draba bellii is noted on the label as the specimen that
Borden collected.
The flowers were identified as the same species of plant that Bell had collected from
Mansfield (now Mansel) Island, Hudson Bay, in the 1880s. The type specimen collected
by Bell was sent to Theo Holm, the Danish-American expert in Arctic botany, for
identification. Holm named it Draba bellii after its collector. All new species must be
published in order to be ‘official,’ so Holm published details about the new specimen
in the Journal of Botanical Taxonomy and Geobotany in 1907.
“Since that time, however, botanists have determined that Draba bellii isn’t
sufficiently distinct to warrant separate species status, so it is now included in the
species Draba corymbosa,” says Doubt.
Like Bell, Borden had no real interest in plants, but he picked a variety of what he
found and brought them back for identification by the head botanist in Ottawa.
The incredible thing is that the plants that Borden and Bell gathered are still part
of the National Herbarium’s collection. The method they used to press and preserve
them is still used to preserve plants today. They dried plants in 12 by 17 inch presses
similar to the ones currently used by botanists. The top and bottom of plant presses
are thin sheets of wood. Between the wood are layers of corrugated cardboard. In Bell’s
time, the layers were made of felt and blotting paper. After they are picked, plants
are gingerly laid out between sheets of cardboard. One specimen can be pressed or
hundreds, depending on how many layers of cardboard are added. These layers are
tightly held together by straps.
34 arcticjournal.ca September/October 2014
Men aboard the Neptune on the first Dominion Government expedition to Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay in 1884. Robert Bell is front left with the big beard.
Robert Bell, © Library and Archives Canada, C-O52196
The Luzula collected by Robert Bell.This is the plant that Paul Wise at
the National Herbarium is actively seeking geo-references for its exact
location. CAN 12184, © Canadian Museum of Nature

5. Once mounted, the specimens are scanned at 600 dpi,
creating a 250 MB image each time, which captures every
minute detail of the plant.
“Everything from the Arctic — Nunavut, Northwest
Territories and Yukon — gets scanned and is entered in the
computer database, as well as any specimens that get sent
to other herbaria,”says Beaulieu-Bouchard.Arctic specimens
receive high priority for scanning because they are integral
to the Arctic Flora of Canada and Alaska project, an
international collaboration led by scientists at the Canadian
Museum of Nature. “We keep multiple copies,” says
Beaulieu-Bouchard.“We have the big master copy and then
we create copies for different purposes, such as lower
resolution versions for the web.”
As well, a specimen database was created in the 1990’s;
however, with over a million specimens to enter, it will take
years to record all the information. Plus, the collection is
ever expanding, as botanists continue to collect new plants
from various regions of Canada, including the Arctic.
Botanistsandresearcherscollaboratewithotherresearchers
globally. They usually collect duplicates of plants when they
are in the field,andthese duplicates are often shared withother
herbaria around the world. So, the National Herbarium has
a number of specimens in its collection that were donated.
The earliestArctic plants in the collection are fromWilliam
Edward Parry’s 1821-22 expedition that over wintered in
Fury and Hecla Strait near Igloolik.Parry’s niece had inherited
theseplantsandherdescendantsdonatedthemtotheNational
Herbarium of Canada in the late 19thcentury.TheHerbarium
also has specimens collected by Franklin and by parties
searching for him, as well as American Lt.Adolphus Greely’s
expedition to Ellesmere, which came to grief on Pim Island
in 1884.
Doubt says there is no record of how the Greely specimens
came to be part of the collection. A system to rigorously
keep track of who collected which plants, when, and where,
or who donated them wasn’t put in place until much later.
So the origin of many of the older specimens is a mystery.
Paul Wise’s geo-referencing of many of these is
contributing to the knowledge of where the plants were
collected.
Reflecting on Bell’s collection of specimens, Doubt says,
“We checked for algae from the Hudson Bay expeditions.
But there wasn’t any. “You’d think they would’ve hauled it
out when they were collecting land specimens.”She adds,“I
don’t know if they were sent somewhere else, but we don’t
seem to have any algae collected for the Canadian Arctic
from that period.”
This is surprising considering that Bell was very thorough
in his collections, even going to the extent of dragging the
bottom of Hudson Strait to dredge up molluscs and shellfish.
However, for a geologist, his botanical legacy is impressive.
What he collected over a century ago is still considered an
important addition to the knowledge of flora of Canada’s
North.
Season Osborne has a passion forArctic history,and is the author
of In the Shadow of the Pole: An Early History of Arctic
Expeditions,1871-1912.ShelivesandwritesinOttawa,Ontario.
“The moisture is pressed out of the plants into the felt, blotting paper, or nowadays
into the cardboard,” says, Botany Technician Micheline Beaulieu-Bouchard.
This low-tech method is very effective, and has been the system used to preserve
plants for hundreds of years, says Beaulieu-Bouchard. However, other aspects of
collecting specimens have changed greatly. GPS is now used in the field to get exact
latitude and longitude coordinates to accurately establish the location where plants are
collected. The majority of plant specimens now are also sampled for DNA to further
the botanical knowledge of them.Advances in technology make it increasingly possible
to sample the DNA of the older plants, such as those collected by Bell and others on
the early Canadian expeditions. This concept of analyzing plants in this way would
have been unfathomable to the men who collected them a century ago.
September/October 2014 above & beyond 35
Plant presses at a field site are raised up so that the Arctic breeze can blow through the layers of
cardboard and dry the plants. Once the plants have been dried, they can literally last for centuries.
Roger Bull, © Canadian Museum of Nature
Paul Wise geo-referencing older Arctic plants at the National Herbarium at the Museum of Nature to
establish latitude and longitude, and more precise details about where they were collected.
Jennifer Doubt, © Canadian Museum of Nature