Some old chocolate and flowers...

 Still have any chocolate or roses from Valentine’s day last month?  The herbarium has both, but from nearly 200 years ago. 

Above: ​Specimen of the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) from Jacob Wolle’s herbarium, collected in Jamaica around 1840.  Some of the herbarium’s oldest specimens come from Jamaica.  Why?  Jacob Wolle was a botanist and the grandfather of William Holland, one of the first directors of the Carnegie Museum (from 1901-1922). Holland was born in Jamaica, where his father was a Moravian missionary. The CM herbarium has 2,514 specimens from Wolle’s collection, dating as far back as 1819.

Below: Wild field rose (Rosa arvensis) collected in England in 1820.