: Plants & Animals

Pierre Belon - L’histoire de la nature des oyseaux (1555)

In 1953 Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales received the donation of a significant collection of over 300 natural history books, early and modern, from Dr Willoughby Gardner of Deganwy, north Wales. Dr Gardner was born in Cheshire in 1860, but ill health forced him to take early retirement. He went to live in Deganwy in the early 1900s, where he was able to dedicate his time to pursuing his interests, which spanned archaeology, entomology and numismatics.

Because of these interests, he had a close relationship with the Museum, for example, he did a great deal of work on surveying hill forts in Wales, and a number of finds from those digs were donated to the Archaeology department. And a few years before his death he donated his collection of British Aculeate Hymenoptera to the Zoology department.

However his donation of a substantial library of early natural history books, ranging from the 15th to the 18th centuries was by far his most generous bequest, and contains a number of rare treasures, especially those from the 16th century.

Books from this period illustrate the widespread and confident use of printing since the invention of the movable type printing press in 1450 by Gutenberg revolutionised the industry. The innovation spread from Germany throughout the rest of Europe, and by 1500 the number of printer’s workshops had dramatically increased, and they had refined their processes enough to produce books in ever greater quantities. This allowed for an increased exchange of information and ideas that resulted in significant advances in the fields of natural history during the 16th century.

Herbals

While early subjects for printing tended toward reprints of works from classical antiquity, by the mid-16th century a much wider range of subjects were covered. Very popular at this time were herbals, guides to plants that primarily focused on their properties as medicinal aids. The plants were listed, along with full descriptions and details as to what illnesses they could cure. They were often written by leading physicians and were aimed at the layman rather than the scholar.

The descriptions would often include illustrations of the plants, known as woodcuts. A woodcut is a form of relief printing that takes its name from the method of creation, a block of wood is carved away to reveal a raised design. This is inserted into the printing form alongside the text, inked up and printed as one. Afterwards the illustrations can be coloured by hand if required, although a book with coloured illustrations would have been much more expensive.

The collection of herbals from the 16th century in the Willoughby Gardner collection covers many of the leading publications of the time, including works by Otto Brunfels, Leonhard Fuchs, and Hieronymous Bock, often known as the

The Herbarum vivae eicones of Otto Brunfels was influential in that its drawings were primarily taken from life rather than copied from existing works, as was the standard practice of the time. They were also rendered as lifelike as possible instead of the more stylised designs which had been more common in German herbals. First published in 1530, the copy held in the Willoughby Gardner collection is a later volume from 1532.

In 1539 Hieronymus Bock published a herbal in his native language, German, which was later translated into Latin and made more widely available. Willoughby Gardner had a copy of the Latin translation, called De stirpium maxime, published in 1552, with hand coloured illustrations. What makes his copy special, is that at some point someone has gone through and written the English names for some of the plants next to the illustrations.

De historia stirpium by Leonhard Fuchs was published in 1542, the copy held in the Willoughby Gardner collection also has coloured illustrations, although sadly is incomplete as a section of pages from the middle of the book are missing.

Also included in the collection is A niewe herball, or historie of plantes by Rembert Dodoens, an English translation of 1578 taken from an earlier French edition. Originally published in Flemish in 1554, with the French version soon after, many of the illustrations were based on those of Fuchs, although the text was original.

Leonhard Fuchs - De historia stirpium (1542)

Conrad Gesner - Historiae animalium (1551-58)

Zoology

As well as the herbals, there are a number of other significant books in the collection dating from the mid-16th century, although these focus more on the field of zoology. Works in this area include;

• Edward Wotton’s De differentiis animalium libri decem from 1552, a bibliography of the work of classical authors, he was considered to be the first naturalist to make a systematic study of natural history.
• Guillaume Rondelet’s Libri de piscibus marinis, from 1554. Rondelet was a physician and professor based at the University of Montpelier in the south of France. Libri de piscibus marinis is his most famous work, and covers the full range of aquatic animals as scholars of this period made no distinction between fish and sea mammals. The book was a standard reference for students for nearly a century afterwards.
• Pierre Belon’s L’histoire de la nature des oyseaux from 1555. Belon was a French explorer, naturalist, writer and diplomat who had been in a position to travel extensively throughout Europe and often recorded the wildlife he encountered in situ. Like many others of the Renaissance period, he studied and wrote on a range of topics including ornithology, botany, comparative anatomy, architecture and Egyptology.
• And, multiple copies of Conrad Gesner’s Historiae animalium a five volume work, the first four volumes covering quadrupeds, birds and fish was produced in 1551–1558, while the fifth volume on snakes was issued posthumously in 1587. It was Gesner’s intention that his great encyclopaedia should record all of known life both real and mythological, which is why sea monsters, manticores and unicorns are also covered!

Gesner was a doctor and professor in Zurich, and unlike Belon he was not in a position to travel as much, relying instead on submissions from friends and colleagues across Europe. First hand observation was not always possible, and because Gesner had decided to include everything written on the animals he featured, he wasn’t always able to guarantee the accuracy of the information. But as he explained himself he:

“[thought] it best to record everything that he has been able to meet with, in order that future specialists in the various branches of natural history should have everything placed before them and draw their own conclusions in each case”.

An adult Ghost Slug, about 7cms long.

The Ghost Slug's blade-like teeth, each about half a millimetre long. These are much longer and sharper than those of herbivorous species.

Close-up of the Ghost Slug's head. The eyes, if present, would normally be at the tips of the two upper (longer) tentacles.

Verified Ghost Slug records received until Autumn 2013.

The bizarre Ghost Slug made headlines in 2008 when described as a new species from a Cardiff garden. When the first specimens were found, very little was known about this animal. The story since then connects our collections and specialist expertise with sharp-eyed members of the British public, recording networks, other taxonomists in Europe, and the media to show how a picture is emerging.

The species

Emphasizing its spooky nature, we gave the species the scientific name Selenochlamys ysbryda, based on the Welsh word ysbryd, meaning a ghost or spirit. The common name “Ghost Slug” soon became popular. Identifying it with the obscure genus Selenochlamys was a specialist task and required dissection of several specimens including our holotype. (Incidentally, Selenochlamys already combines the Greek words for a cloak, and Selene, goddess of the moon, but “Moon-Cloaked Ghost Slug” sounded a little too melodramatic.)

The Ghost Slug is strange in many ways. It is extremely elusive, living up to a metre deep in soil, only rarely visiting the surface. It seldom occurs in large numbers. This makes it an unusually difficult slug to look for, especially in other people’s gardens or other places that cannot be dug up.

It is also very distinctive. After having examined one, most agree that it is unmistakeable in future (haunting, perhaps?). The slug is ghostly white, and almost eyeless. It does not eat plants, but kills and eats earthworms, whose burrows it can enter with its extremely extensible body. This differs from that of most other slugs in having the breathing hole right at the tail, and in retracting like the finger of a glove, appearing to suck its own head inside-out. Unlike some British slugs, it can be identified with certainty from a good photograph. The photos here show some similar species often confused with it.

This combination of being elusive and distinctive makes the species perfect for a public recording project. We needed to know more, not just out of curiosity, but because the species might pose a threat to earthworm populations. It appeared to have been introduced from overseas, i.e. to be an alien or non-native species, whose spread might cause concern. We thank the then Countryside Council for Wales (now part of Natural Resources Wales) for funding early survey work and information dissemination in 2009, and others who have spread the word.

Contributions from the public

Since 2008, responses from over 300 people all over the UK (and a few from overseas) have been received and replied to. A large proportion were misidentifications, but many were correct and over 25 populations of Ghost Slugs are now known. These verified records have been submitted to the National Biodiversity Network via the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. We thank all respondents for their efforts, without which almost none of the populations would have been identified.

As the map shows, the Ghost Slug is widespread in south-east Wales, occurring in all the main Valleys and in the cities of Cardiff and Newport, and at two sites in Bristol. It remains, however, rare or absent in some nearby areas (such as Swansea) and by no means occurs throughout this region. Virtually all the records are from gardens, allotments, or nearby roads and riversides in populated areas. This is also true of an unexpected outlier, reported in May 2013 from Wallingford, Oxfordshire, which might indicate an eastward spread. The species is evidently firmly established in Britain and has survived the unusually cold, dry, or wet winters of the last five years.

Contributions from specialists

This species has had at least 10 years to be spread around Britain, but has not yet been seen elsewhere in Western Europe. The earliest records are from Brecon Cathedral in 2004 (in a 2009 paper by German-based taxonomists) and from Caerphilly in 2006 (on a pet invertebrates forum). We expected its origin to be in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia and Russia or in northern Turkey, where other Selenochlamys occur. However, a 2012 paper by a Ukraine-based taxonomist described a museum specimen of S. ysbryda collected in Crimea in 1989. This makes some sense – Crimea has a number of endemic molluscs, and several alien species now in Britain were originally described from the region. The UK also has a history of conflict and trade with Crimea (there is even a Sebastopol near a slug population in Cwmbran!) making a direct, accidental introduction plausible.

DNA was sequenced from six specimens of the Ghost Slug, from Cardiff, Newport, Bristol, and Talgarth as part of our recent studies on British Slugs. The sequences were all but identical, supporting the theory that the species is not native to the UK.

If you are going to report a sighting, please ensure that your slug is a true Ghost Slug (Selenochlamys ysbryda). This can be done by looking at the mantle and the eyes. The mantle (indicated by the grey lines) looks like a layer of skin through which the breathing hole is often visible.

This Ghost Slug has a tiny, disc-shaped mantle at the rear end of its body. It has no eye spots on its tentacles (indicated by the arrow).

Other white or pale slug species have a large, cloak-like mantle over their “shoulders” near the front of their body. They have black eye spots at the tips of two of their tentacles.

The two shown here are the Netted Field Slug (Deroceras reticulatum) and Worm Slug (Boettgerilla pal lens). These species are very common in gardens, so there is no need to report them to us.

The media

The Ghost Slug was named one of the "Top 10 New Species of the Year" for 2009 by the US International Institute for Species Exploration. It has featured in exhibitions in Cardiff and Bristol, and even in school exam questions. It has also appeared in several books including Animal (Dorling Kindersley, 2011) and, most recently, in our own 2014 guide to the slug species of Britain and Ireland.

Mosses in their extreme environment on the wall surrounding National Museum Cardiff.

Grey-cushioned Grimmia moss (Grimmia pulvinata) with white hair points, seen here on a rock face on the Great Orme in North Wales. © Kath Slade

So how long do you think you can survive without breathing? Humans generally last only six minutes without oxygen before brain damage occurs. But what about 25 years? Some plants can live without respiring for that long. How could this exceptional resurrection ability be used to help thousands of people? Or perhaps even help us to colonise new worlds?

All plants need water to survive. They combine water with carbon dioxide during photosynthesis to create sugar for energy. But what happens in extreme environments when water is not available?

The Antarctic is an extreme environment where water is unavailable to plants as it is locked up as solid ice. But you don’t have to look as far as the Antarctic for an extreme environment for a plant. Your roof, sheer rock faces and the tops of walls are habitats where many plants would struggle to get water. Yet mosses grow in these habitats all around us. So how do they do it?

Some plants have adapted to dry habitats or drought conditions by holding onto water when it is available. They may have waxy leaf surfaces or store water in cells in a similar way to a cactus. Mosses and liverworts take water from the surrounding atmosphere, often relying less on water from the ground. Some mosses also have white hair points to their leaves. These hair points improve take up of water from the air by increasing surface area, as well as acting to catch water droplets.

Other plants show an amazing ability to survive despite being completely dried out. This is not the same as not watering your cactus for a few months, where it is using stored water to stay alive. This is when a plant fully dries out AND all life processes such as photosynthesis and respiration stop. On adding water, life processes begin and the plant revives. This is known as desiccation tolerance.

Desiccation tolerance was first observed in animals over 300 years ago. Dirt from a dried-out river was put in water under a microscope. Tiny rotifers were seen swimming about, much to the surprise of the observer! It took science another 150 years to confirm that resurrection of life was even possible.

This resurrection ability is common in adult mosses and liverworts as well as in seeds, spores and pollen. It is rare in adult flowering plants and ferns (a notable exception being the Resurrection Plant (Selaginella lepidophylla), a plant related to ferns). Scientists have managed to grow seeds from the flowering Lotus that were 1100 years old.

One liverwort has been revived after 25 years of being completely dried out. The resurrection of this liverwort after so long was particularly interesting as it was an adult plant rather than a spore or seed. It’s a strange thought that the dried specimens of mosses and liverworts in the National Museum Wales collections behind me as I’m writing this, may be more alive than I thought!

The National Museum Wales collections - more alive than they first appear?

Heath Star-moss (Campylopus introflexus) with white hair points. First seen in the UK in the 1940s and now fairly common, perhaps helped by its desiccation-tolerant ability? © Kath Slade

The ability to revive depends on how fast the plant dried out, how long for, the intensity of drying and the temperature. The plant may be better able to cope if it has experienced drying out before and become ‘hardened’. Mosses have a number of adaptations that enable them to revive, they can:

• quickly take up water
• quickly repair cell contents
• switch particular genes on and off
• go into protein production overdrive

These mosses contribute to biodiversity in their own right and create habitats for other species. But how could a reviving wall-top moss be useful? The secrets mosses hold in their resurrection abilities can help us understand how plants managed to colonise the land around 470 million years ago.

More relevant to humans may be the discovery of how to translate this desiccation tolerance into crop plants in the future. Thousands of people starve every year when crops fail in drought conditions. If we can help crop plants to survive droughts by programming them to lie dormant until rain returns, we could create a more stable food supply.

An intriguing thought is that desiccation tolerant plants could be used to help terraform other planets. Resurrection abilities helped plants to colonise the land 470 million years ago, maybe one day it could help us colonise new worlds.

Further reading:

J. Graham (2003) Stages in the Terraforming of Mars: the Transition to Flowering Plants. AIP Conference Proceedings

Peter Alpert (2005) The limits and frontiers of desiccation-tolerant life. Integrative and Comparative Biology 45:685-695

Black, M. and H.W. Pritchard (editors) (2002) Desiccation and survival in plants: Drying without dying, pp. 207–237

Proctor et al. (2007) Desiccation-Tolerance in Bryophytes: A Review. The Bryologist, 110:4, 595-621

How Long can Seeds Live? Millenium Seed Bank at Kew Gardens