Early collections
The first botanical specimens collected in Vanuatu date to 1774, made during Captain James Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific. During this voyage, he mapped the archipelago and called it “the New Hebrides”, the name by which it would be known for another two centuries. His crew included the father-and-son team of botanists, Johann Reinhold Forster and Georg Forster, who collected Vanuatu’s first herbarium specimens, from the islands of Malekula and Tanna, but since the New Hebrides (and the entire area of Oceania) lacked herbaria, their specimens would be shipped back to Europe.
From the mid-19th to mid-20th century, a number of plant collections were made during other exploratory voyages to the New Hebrides, as well as through the efforts of various traders and missionaries. But in each case, specimens would be shipped back to European (and eventually Australian and American) herbaria.
First specimens left in the archipelago; early reference collection
It was not until 1971, when a team of 25 botanists, participating in the Royal Society and Percy Sladen Expedition to the New Hebrides, collected specimens for which a set of duplicates (approximately 2,500 sheets) would be left in the New Hebrides. As yet, there was still no herbarium to curate them, but when Sheila Gowers arrived from Britain in 1974, working with the New Hebrides Condominium’s Department of Agriculture (through the UK’s “International Service” program), she created a reference collection based on the specimens left by the Royal Society’s expedition team (along with ~200 of her own specimens). This reference collection formed the nucleus from which today’s Vanuatu National Herbarium would eventually develop.
Development of a proper herbarium
Ethnopharmacognocist Pierre Cabalion (ORSTOM) collected extensively in Vanuatu from 1977 until the mid-1980s. His work would transform Gowers’ reference collection into an operational herbarium, during which time, the specimens were transferred to the Port Vila office of ORSTOM (now IRD), a French overseas research organization. In 1980, the New Hebrides achieved its independence from Great Britain and France, choosing the name “Vanuatu” for the newly independent country. During that same year, Cabalion hired Chanel Sam, a native of Malekula, to serve as his assistant. Six years later, in 1986, ORSTOM would turn the herbarium collection over to the Government of Vanuatu.
In 1988, Jocelyne (Jos) Wheatley arrived in Vanuatu, serving as Forest Botanist through the British service organization Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). Wheatley collected extensively, but did not deposit his collections at the ORSTOM herbarium, instead keeping his collections in the Forestry Department (which had been recently been segregated from the Department of Agriculture). Specimens collected by Forestry’s Resource Mapping Unit (RMU) were also kept with those of Wheatley. Thus, during this time, there were two herbarium collections in Port Vila.
Cassandra Clunies-Ross replaced Wheatley as VSO-sponsored Forest Botanist in 1991, but her tenure in Vanuatu and her life were cut short in a tragic plane crash in north-west Santo. The following year (1992), Patricia Curry started a four-year term as VSO Forest Botanist. Curry integrated the collections of Wheatley and the RMU team (from the Forestry Department) and the collections that had been maintained at Tagabe by Agriculture and ORSTOM, combining them at the downtown Forestry offices. She had custom-built herbarium cabinets made, and also merged data from the two collections (which had been stored in incompatible databases) into a single Excel spreadsheet.
In 1996, ecologist Helen Corrigan took up her post as the next (and final) British VSO Forest Botanist. A year later, she would hire Philemon Ala as Chanel Sam’s assistant. With Corrigan’s departure in 1998, Chanel Sam was charged with direct oversight of the herbarium that he had been working with since 1980. The collection was forced to move back to Tagabe in 2001, due to severe earthquake that affected the downtown Forestry building. The rest of the Forestry team followed this move to Tagabe in 2003, but to a different building (the nearby former dormitory that had served the Vila-based agricultural college, which by then had moved to Santo). The herbarium would remain physically separated from the Forestry Department for another 13 years.
A new home for the collections
In 2011, Laurence Ramon would join the herbarium as a volunteer for a period of six years. Among many other accomplishments, she would help raise funds to build an extension of the Forestry building at Tagabe to allow the Herbarium to be physically attached to the Department, and to purchase a set of archival-standard herbarium cabinets. The new facility was dedicated in August 2014. Ramon was also able to transfer the collections data from Curry’s Excel spreadsheet into a proper database (designed using Pl@ntNote software).
The Plants mo Pipol blong Vanuatu program began in 2013. This is a collaboration among the Vanuatu Department of Forestry (including the National Herbarium), the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta, the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), and other partners. The program began in 2013, and has supported improvements to the herbarium since that time. After supplying and enhancing basic equipment (e.g., press frames and straps, blotters and corrugates, pole clippers, and plant dryers), the program was able to raise funds to expand and renovate the specimen preparations room in early 2016. In 2021, NYBG partners were able to raise funds to send additional specimen cabinets to PVNH, increasing storage capacity by one-third. Additional improvements to the collections and preparations rooms came from the Vanuatu Government in 2021–2023, at which time an Herbarium Archive and Library was initiated.
A name is formally adopted
For most of its history, Vanuatu’s herbarium lacked a formal name, variously being called the “Forestry Herbarium” and the “Port Vila Herbarium”, among other names. The pre-Independence code assigned by Index Herbariorum to the collection was “PVNH”, which represented “Port Vila, New Hebrides” (this is evidenced by the attempt to use a new code, PVV for “Port Vila, Vanuatu”, just after Independence). For purposes of continuity (e.g., in scientific literature), Index Herbariorum codes are rarely changed, and it seems that no formal request for such a change was ever made. After Independence, PVV was eventually dropped and PVNH continued to be used, often interpreted as “Port Vila National Herbarium”. Given that the collection serves the entire country (and not just Port Vila), that it is the only herbarium in Vanuatu, and that it is administered as part of a government department, “Vanuatu National Herbarium” was chosen as the formal name in 2017, but retaining the original code of PVNH.
Recent advancements
Chanel Sam, who served as Herbarium Curator and Senior Officer for Botany in the Department of Forestry, retired his post in 2017, completing 37 years of service to building up the collections at PVNH. Since that time, he has used his considerable talents to help with various field expeditions, plant identifications, and other important services, while otherwise enjoying his retirement. Philemon Ala served in the position of Assistant Curator until his untimely death in December 2019.
Around this same time, Presley Dovo had been named Senior Officer for Botany and Conservation within the Forestry Department, uniting herbarium work to his earlier position as country coordinator for Vanuatu’s first GEF-funded conservation project. Through the Plants mo Pipol program, two additional staff members have been trained to take up important positions as Herbarium Curator (Thomas Doro) and Assistant Curator (James Ure). Through Dovo’s leadership, the Vanuatu National Herbarium has continued to expand, and the Herbarium continues partner with NYBG and other Plants mo Pipol collaborators to develop new avenues of research and conservation to help document and preserve Vanuatu’s precious plant diversity.
(The preceding is derived and adapted from: Plunkett et al., “An history of botanical exploration in Vanuatu”, in prep.).