Five programmes recorded on location at definitive collections.
Monday 2 September 2002, 9.30-9.45am
Squashed tomatoes, potatoes and their taxonomic allies are kept in the vast herbarium of the Natural History Museum. Quentin Cooper roots through some of the several thousand specimens and discovers why the collection is a valuable resource for farmers, conservationists and humanity in general.
Quentin Cooper joins Natural History Museum botanist Sandy Knapp among the six million odd plant specimens in the museum's herbarium. Dr Knapp leads a tour of the cabinets and files devoted to tomatoes, potatoes and their close relatives. She explains the value to science and society of all these countless dried, squashed specimens from all over the world, and describes the excitement of discovering a new species - and naming it after her lepidopterist husband Jim).
This is the third programme in a series of five. Each is recorded on location at an unique or definitive collection of some sort (e.g. teeth, plants, ice, recordings of English dialects). With the help of the resident curators and visiting experts, presenter Quentin Cooper explores the highlights (and oddities) within each collection. He discovers each collection's value as resource for answering any number of research questions - from how to treat tooth decay in pandas to what spoken English sounded like in the time of Chaucer.
Listen again to the programme
