Today, we are sharing a recent blog post written by Zakiya McKenzie, Senior Research Associate on the Plants Enslavement and Public History Project. The link to the full blog is at the end of this extract.
In August 2025 I visited the Natural History Museum of Jamaica in downtown Kingston. The public exhibition on Jamaican bats and the library at the museum are worth the visit, but another treasure lies in the herbarium. There I met the Curator for the National Herbarium, botanist Keron Campbell, who shared perspectives on Jamaica’s vulnerable plant archives, ecological change, and overlooked figures in Jamaican botany.
Campbell outlined multiple issues that distinguish tropical herbaria from temperate ones. These problems underline the precarity of plant archives in the Caribbean, and the importance of legislative and institutional support. They include:
- Humidity: Moisture-filled air accelerates the decay of preserved specimens.
- Pests: Insects, particularly the cigarette beetle, can infest and destroy entire collections.
- Infrastructure: Many institutions operate in historic buildings not designed for modern conservation, making climate control a constant struggle.
- Power Outages: The managed process of rotating specimens through freezers to prevent infestation is entirely dependent on a consistent power supply.
- Hurricanes: These events cause recurring damage to infrastructure, storage, and human safety.