In 1869, Swedish botanist Alfred Falck published a manual of plant collecting. It was a translation, considerably expanded, of Johann Nave's German handbook, Anleitung zum Einsammeln, Präparieren, und Untersuchen der Planzen mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Kryptogamen from 1864, and Falck believed it to be the first of its kind in the Swedish language:

A member of the Lund Botanical Society, Falck's main target were collectors who participated in the Society's exchange of botanical specimens. There was however another, considerably larger, potential audience for his manual. From 1856 – and for a century to come – students in state secondary schools were required, as part of their natural history education, to compile herbaria of several hundred plants. In order to accomplish this, they relied on practical handbooks of collecting, as well as on the textbooks and floras officially on the curriculum.

These handbooks are the subject of this paper. By tracing the changing fortunes of school collecting and some of the printed tools used in that activity over the course of a century, I will examine the means of and motivations for promoting a particular botanical practice which straddles the boundary between science as taught in school and science as a pastime. School science provides a link between the laboratory, the classroom, and the norms and practice which straddles the boundary between school botany and botany as a pastime: as Kathryn Olesko puts it, between the various “insides” and “outsides” of educational and research settings.

Historians of science pedagogy have emphasized the crucial importance of teaching for understanding scientific practice and its reproduction (Olesko Reference Olesko2006; Kaiser Reference Kaiser and Kaiser2005). In classrooms and textbooks, knowledge is articulated and standardized, not only in terms of facts and theories but also the methods and skills required in scientific practice. Textbooks, and particularly handbooks, spell out what has sometimes been termed the “tacit” knowledge of science (Bensaude-Vincent Reference Bensaude-Vincent2006; Bertomeu-Sánchez et al. Reference Bertomeu-Sánchez, García-Belmar, Lundgren and Patiniotis2006; Olesko Reference Olesko1993).

In analyzing one canonical handbook – Kohlrausch's “practical physics” of 1870 – Kathryn Olesko points out that a canon consists not only of words, but also of standards of behavior (Olesko Reference Olesko and Kaiser2005, 325). Kohlrausch's list of experimental techniques came with a set of rules – preferences, guidelines, and norms – about the kind of physics that is being disseminated. In Swedish school botany, the list was provided by the standard flora: first Hartman's Handbook of the flora of Scandinavia and from 1883, Krok and Almquist's Swedish flora for schools. The floras set the standard for species definitions, nomenclature, and plant geography, and underlay every particular list presented by every particular schoolboy at the end of each summer's collecting. But the canonical floras were supplemented with a range of extracurricular manuals on finding, pressing, and mounting plants. The rules of collecting were spelled out, not in textbooks or even the official floras, but outside of the classroom, in manuals and in botanical exchange societies. Conversely, school curricula and debates often set the agenda for the discussion of science in other fora, and skills taught in schools were used in other contexts.

The skill of collecting and identifying plants was taught and cultivated for moral, physical, pedagogical, as well as for scientific reasons. Through botany, Swedish schoolboys were taught observation and civic virtues, in addition to the practicalities of collecting. The changing status of collecting among students, teachers, and a wider public, and the changing relationships between different practitioners of botanical fieldwork, is traceable through the large number of botanical manuals, handbooks, maps, and field guides published between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.

I will begin by outlining the place of biology in general, and botany in particular, in Swedish secondary education. I describe the floras and handbooks used in schools during the nineteenth century, and the standards for botanical collecting disseminated in these handbooks. These standards were set, not only in schools and universities, but also in naturalist societies and botanical exchange clubs, and were maintained among volunteer naturalists in the environmental movement in the 1970s, long after the decline and disappearance of collecting from the curriculum.

Botany in the Curriculum

For most of the nineteenth century, science remained marginal to Swedish education, whether elementary or advanced. Elementary schools, compulsory from 1842, were primarily concerned with teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and above all, religious education, until (and often beyond) the establishment of national curricula in the 1870s. The relatively elite system of secondary, or grammar schools, preparing students for state careers and university entrance, maintained a heavy emphasis on classical languages and the humanities.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the option of excluding Latin and Greek in favor of science and modern languages was introduced in the upper secondary schools. However, it was not until 1878 that the non-classics option was recognized as a distinct program with a focus on science and civic subjects, and consequently known as the “real” branch of the secondary schools (reallinjen). When Latin ceased to be compulsory for a university degree in 1891, the “real” branch came into its own (Kaiserfeld Reference Kaiserfeld1997; Löwegren Reference Löwegren1974; Reference ÅstrandÅstrand 1976; Lövheim Reference Lövheim2006).

The science actually taught to most students in this period was primarily natural history, with a heavy emphasis on botany (Pauly Reference Pauly1991; Jenkins Reference Jenkins1979; Goodson [1982] Reference Goodson1993; Rosenthal and Bybee Reference Rosenthal, Bybee and Popkewitz1987). The tasks of collecting plants and making herbaria were carefully listed in the otherwise quite unspecific curriculum, when science was made compulsory in 1859. The first year of secondary school was devoted to general surveys and communal excursions, but from the second year, every student was expected to collect between 50 and 150 plant species per year for the next five years, after which science students went on to physics and chemistry and most classics students dropped science altogether. Subsequent curriculum changes reduced the number of plants and years of collecting, but even the school reforms of 1933 – lamented among science teachers as “the murder of school biology” – retained three years of compulsory collecting for all secondary school students, in classics as well as science (Lövheim Reference Lövheim2006, 133). As late as 1955, as preparations for a comprehensive school system to replace the two-tiered class-bound system of compulsory elementary schools and elite secondary schools began in earnest, collecting remained at the core of school biology, although it was shifted from the individual to the class level. Not until the implementation of the new comprehensive system of education in the late 1960s did collecting finally disappear from the curriculum – and along with it, school museums and herbaria (Förslag till stadga för rikets allmänna läroverk 1891; Bergqvist Reference Bergqvist1906; Kursplaner och metodiska anvisningar 1955; Löwegren Reference Löwegren1974, 6).

Advocates of school science argued that it was more useful than classics, especially for students who did not intend to pursue a university education. But natural history, and particularly plant collecting, was also promoted for pedagogical reasons, as a subject that would encourage students to occupy themselves actively with their environment. Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century pedagogical discussions were dominated by an interest in visual education, or Anschauungspädagogik. By engaging with the natural objects themselves – finding, identifying, preparing – students trained their powers of observation, going from the specific and practical to the general and abstract (Nyhart Reference Nyhart1998 and Reference Nyhart2002; Andersson Reference Andersson1920–21). Thus, school botany would focus on excursions, the examination of living plants, and the practical preparation of herbarium specimens. In addition to developing a specific understanding of botany, of nature and of the various ways of identifying and classifying, collecting improved the mind in general.

It was good for the body, too. Collecting plants entailed many hours spent outdoors, enduring the capricious Swedish summer weather and climbing hills and sliding down slopes in search of rare species. The growing tourist movement with its focus on the healthy mountain air and steep challenges of the north reinforced the association of physical exercise and the study of nature – particularly as alpine plants were considered the rarest and most interesting among botanical specimens. Swedish state secondary schools remained all-male institutions until 1927, although private co-educational schools and an expanding system of state girls’ schools gradually made most of the curriculum available to women (Florin and Johansson Reference Florin and Johansson1993; Johansson Reference Johansson2000; Kyle Reference Kyle1972). Botany, the “lovable science” (scientia amabilis) had long been considered particularly accessible and virtuous, and consequently appropriate for women (Broberg Reference Broberg1990–91; Shteir Reference Shteir1996; Schiebinger Reference Schiebinger1993). But by the middle of the nineteenth century, botany was no longer promoted primarily as an activity particularly suitable for women, as higher education for women became more widely available and botany began to emerge as a specialized scientific activity (Shteir Reference Shteir1997; Beckman Reference Beckman2004; Söderqvist Reference Söderqvist1986). And in Sweden, the land of Linnaeus, the amiable aspects of botany did not disqualify it from being a predominantly male activity.

Plant collecting had an important moral dimension as well as a physical one. Secondary school boys were a privileged minority, and many of them spent their summer holidays at country estates, in the mountains of the north, or at one of the smart Swedish seaside resorts. They had the opportunity of enriching their school herbaria with rare plants, and would regularly vote the coastal or mountain provinces the most floristically “valuable” (Minutes of the student society Linnaea, 8 February 1890, 27 October 1890, 6 December 1913. Linnaea (Stockholm) Papers). At debating evenings organized by student science societies, they would also discuss whether it was justifiable to benefit by the travels of school friends, and add plants to one's herbarium which one had not collected in person (Minutes of the student society Linnaea 10 December 1887, 29 November 1884, 18 December 1901, 27 February 1915, Linnaea (Stockholm) Papers; Adlerz Reference Adlerz1912; Wennerholm Reference Wennerholm2005, 59–72). In addition to resolving such moral dilemmas, these discussions regularly emphasized the importance of the collecting experience in training the eye by spotting the plant, training the mind by identifying it, and training the body by the physical activity involved in the excursion. The act of collecting was more important than the herbarium.

Floras, Handbooks, and the Art of Identification

The herbarium, however, was crucial for a good grade, and making a good one required considerable skills. In this matter, botany textbooks and floras were of little use. In the mid-nineteenth century, most textbooks used in the secondary schools were primarily directed at university students, which reflected the uncertain status of science in secondary education (Thedenius Reference Thedenius1854; Areschoug Reference Areschoug1860–63; Andersson Reference Andersson1859–1861). They were supplemented by local floras, which were used to teach the names and characters of common plants, but as these often consisted of bare lists of plants and characters, they were of little help when it came to learning to examine or identify unknown specimens in the field.

The main exception was the Hartman Handbook of the Flora of Scandinavia. Originally published in 1820 by Carl Johan Hartman (1790–1849), botanist and physician, it was subsequently revised by his son, Carl Hartman (1824–1884), and went through twelve successful editions (Hartman Reference Hartman1820). The Hartman flora was initially designed as a handbook for beginners, the watchwords being comprehensibility, exactitude, and brevity (ibid., 5). Nevertheless, its extensive species descriptions and careful instructions on plant preparation, terminology, and identification added up to nearly five hundred pages, and it quickly acquired the status of standard reference flora for Swedish botanists on all levels. In 1846, Carl Hartman published an “excursion flora,” concentrating on identification skills and, at a neat 197 pages, suitable for field use (Hartman Reference Hartman1846).

The Hartman flora dominated the limited Swedish botany market for most of the nineteenth century, and was used by university professors and beginners alike. It was one of very few botanical handbooks combining the aim of covering the flora of the entire Scandinavian peninsula with a pedagogical and practical purpose. Its position in Sweden was similar to that of George Bentham's Handbook of the British Flora, which was first published in 1858 and remained in use for almost a century (Allen Reference Allen2003; Shteir Reference Shteir2003). A state committee charged with evaluating Swedish science textbooks in 1871 noted, with satisfaction, that only one other country – presumably Britain – had anything comparable to Hartman's flora (Underdånigt betänkande 1871).

However, its strengths eventually began to be perceived as drawbacks. As both education acts and national curricula grew more detailed during the second half of the nineteenth century, a succession of government and local school committees examined available textbooks. They made a distinction between textbooks specifically intended for school use, and handbooks, such as dictionaries to complement language primers, atlases for geography, and collections of mathematical tables and scientific formulae to accompany textbooks in physics and chemistry. Floras should fall in the latter category, and Hartman's flora, with its wealth of information – each new edition slightly more cumbersome than the last – sat uneasily between categories: too advanced for an elementary flora, and inadequately pedagogical for a textbook (ibid., 58, 167–70). Although Carl Hartman adjusted later editions according to the criticism of the textbook committees, and other botanists continued revising the flora after his death, the Hartman flora was eventually discontinued in 1889 (Hartman Reference Hartman1879; Krok Reference Krok and Thorgny1889).

It was soon replaced by a new national flora, explicitly designed for secondary schools. It was published in 1883 by two prominent Stockholm botanists, Sigfrid Almquist (1844–1923) and Thorgny Ossian Bolivar Napoleon Krok (1834–1921). Almquist was an expert on roses and headmaster of one of the most prestigious schools in the country; his collaborator taught at another prominent Stockholm school (Lagerstedt Reference Lagerstedt1918; Franzén Reference Franzén1977).

The Krok-Almquist flora was comparable in size to Hartman's excursion flora, excluding most subspecies and varieties in the interest of brevity and clarity (Krok and Almquist 1883). Like Hartman's handbook, and unlike most other floras, it included an identification key and a glossary, and later editions also provided brief instructions on collecting and pressing techniques. Some teachers, accustomed to Hartman's handbooks, considered it too elementary, and there was some initial competition from other, more ambitious textbooks, such as Neuman's flora (Neuman Reference Neuman1901; Almquist to Krok, 14 and 18 July 1901, in Krok Papers; Almquist to R. Mattson, 11 April 1902, in Almquist Papers). But after two decades and several new editions, it had completely conquered the school market (Hänninger Reference Hänninger1943; Selander Reference Selander1937).

Nevertheless, it did not satisfy the demand for collecting handbooks. The terms, characters, and comparisons used in the identification keys were difficult to relate to natural specimens in the field. The purpose of the identification key was not only to guide students to the right species, but also to teach important morphological characteristics along the way. In the interests of pedagogy (as well as economy), floras often lacked illustrations, since pictures might provide a shortcut to identification, which bypassed the actual content of the curriculum. The only illustrations provided in the Krok-Almquist flora were small black-and-white drawings of morphological details such as glumes or awns. Although school textbooks from the late nineteenth century onwards sometimes contained color plates of selected type species, illustrations were always carefully justified, often with reference to the scarcity of flowers available to city children (a common argument in elementary school textbooks), or the brevity of the flowering season in the northern regions of the country (Anvisning att för folkskolorna insamla och anordna föremål ur växtriket 1871; Valmstedt Reference Valmstedt1877; Ilien Reference Ilien1932; Holgén and Linderoth Reference Holgén and Linderoth1933a and Reference Holgén and Linderoth1933b).

As Anne Secord has pointed out, the role of illustrations in botanical handbooks was a contentious issue when it came to recruiting botanical observers in early nineteenth-century Britain (Secord Reference Secord2002). While illustrations were powerful pedagogical tools that could attract readers, they might also damage their value as scientific observers. On the one hand, illustrations, particularly drawings, could draw attention to the particular traits that were considered most important. On the other, they did not necessarily prepare the eye for the messiness of the natural world, and although they demonstrated the characteristics of botanical specimens, they failed to develop the skill of observation. This skill was at the heart of the Anschauungspädagogik, as well as a particularly useful one in floristic botany.

The Krok-Almquist flora was designed to serve a specific and rather narrow purpose in the botany curriculum: to complement school textbooks in plant morphology and identification. On the subject of plant collecting and herbarium making, it had less to offer. As plant collecting was made compulsory in secondary schools, there was a surge in the publication of manuals and instructions in botanical fieldwork and the craft of herbarium making. These were less shy about providing illustrations as well as concrete advice on the practicalities of plant collecting. Most of the literature directed at schoolboys concentrated on plant lists. Some handbooks contained general recommendations of plants to collect in a given year, related to the type specimens described in common botany textbooks, but others offered highly specific maps and lists of locations, aimed at students in particular towns or schools, and often published by local teachers or older students (Thedenius Reference Thedenius1868; Nave Reference Nave1869; Arnell Reference Arnell1896; Stenström Reference Stenström1898 and Reference Stenström1899; Hägerström Reference Hägerström1900; Nordwall Reference Nordwall1906, Reference Nordwall1916, Reference Nordwall1924, and Reference Nordwall1932; Holgén and Linderoth Reference Holgén and Linderoth1933a and Reference Holgén and Linderoth1933b). There were also manuals on plant identification designed to serve as supplements to school and local floras. In addition, there was advice on equipment – vascula, spades, magnifying glasses, paper for pressing, drying, and mounting, glue versus adhesive tape – recommendations on the proper number of plants to mount on a single sheet, bending versus breaking oversize specimens, and discussions about the aesthetics of label writing.

Illustrated field guides became steadily cheaper, and towards the middle of the twentieth century, were available to most botanizers, in school or out. Even Krok and Almquist considered publishing an illustrated version of their school flora, to conclusively defeat competition from other handbooks (Almquist to Krok, 7 March 1914, 31 March 1914, 11 January 1917, 9 July 1918, in Krok Papers). The plan was not realized until 1956, several decades after the deaths of the original authors, but by then, compulsory school collecting was being abolished, and the market for school floras was changing.

Exchange Clubs and Collecting Standards

From the abundant references to school requirements and curricula in the botanical handbooks published after 1850, as well as the concrete advice on likely localities and species directed at the students of specific schools, it is clear that the proliferation of handbooks is connected to the establishment of compulsory collecting in state secondary schools.

But schoolboys were not the only audience for these publications. In Sweden, as in many other countries, the nineteenth century was the heyday of naturalist societies and botanical clubs (Falck Reference Falck1870; Kohlstedt Reference Kohlstedt, Holton and Blanpied1976; Allen Reference Allen1976 and Reference Allen1986; Keeney Reference Keeney1992; Secord Reference Secord1994a and Reference Secord1994b; Alberti Reference Alberti2000). Nevertheless, most of these clubs centered around secondary schools, or gymnasia (Falck Reference Falck1870). Even if their membership might be wider than the students of the school, they were often run by students or teachers, sometimes with the support of local merchants and officials (Linnaea [Stockholm] Papers; Norra Reals naturvetenskapliga förening [NRF] Papers; Wennerholm Reference Wennerholm2005). The scope of their activities varied, from occasional meetings and discussions about plants and localities, to regular lectures, publications, libraries, and collections. Many botanical societies were organized around the common purpose of compiling a complete herbarium of the local parish or province. The numerous new schools built around the country in the decades after 1850 provided ample space for museums, with opportunities for school societies as well as private collectors to display their treasures to a wider audience (Löwegren Reference Löwegren1974, 27ff).

Closely related to the shared herbarium work was the exchange of botanical specimens for private collections. For some societies, indeed, exchange was the principal activity. The Botanical Society at Uppsala, founded in 1852, changed its name to Upsala Botaniska Bytesförening (the Upsala Botanical Exchange Society) a year later to reflect the fact that exchange was its main purpose. The Botanical Society of the British Isles, in some of its incarnations over the years, engaged primarily in botanical exchange, and for a long period it was known as The Botanical Exchange Club (Berättelse om Botaniska Föreningens i Upsala verksamhet vårterminen 1853, Upsala Botaniska Bytesförening Papers; Allen Reference Allen1986, 69–129). Members of school societies exchanged specimens to fulfill the requirements of the curriculum; university-based clubs provided plants for research as well as for large public and private herbaria. Exchange clubs operated on the local, national, and, in some cases, international level, and formed an intricate web of collectors and clubs with its own standards and hierarchies. Large exchange clubs, such as those of Vienna and Silesia, dealt with collectors all over the world, while others had a more modest scope (“Växtbytet,” in Botaniska föreningen i Lund Papers; Linnaea [Lund] Papers). Members included other clubs as well as individuals, and some exchange societies, such as Linnaea in Lund, Sweden, run by a retired naval officer with a passion for plants and international relations, aimed to serve as meta-societies, connecting smaller societies and collectors who were not part of the same networks.

Organizing botanical exchange was expensive and time-consuming. According to the most common practice, members submitted lists of their own specimens to the club after the end of the collecting season, whereupon a catalogue was printed and distributed. Members would send the catalogue back with their desiderata indicated, and plants would then be distributed according to the wishes as well as the submissions of each member. To ensure a fair allotment of specimens, Swedish societies used an intricate rating system, where plants were assigned a number of points according to their rarity and desirability (Pointsförteckning öfver Skandinaviens växter 1879, 1880, 1883, 1891, 1896, 1900; Förteckning över Skandinaviens växter 1907–1941). It was often possible for less conscientious collectors to buy into the exchange by paying per point, but contributing members took precedence over mere collectors.

In view of the heavy administrative work of botanical exchange, many societies developed strict rules and standards to ensure the quality of specimens, to avoid accumulating large stocks of undesirable plants, and to force members to submit specimens and desiderata on time. (Small botanical societies, particularly school societies such as Linnaea and Norra Reals naturvetenskapliga Förening in Stockholm, often discontinued their exchange activities after realizing the level of commitment required.) Members who did not conform were excluded, or persuaded or bullied to submit to the rules of the society, as demonstrated by the following draft of a letter (in idiosyncratic English) from Gustaf Hyltén-Cavallius, director of Linnaea in Lund, to a Mr. Lomax on March 5, 1885:

The plant evaluation tables developed by influential clubs such as the Lund and Uppsala Botanical Societies set the standard for the whole of Sweden, and their policies on issues such as nomenclature, the number of specimens per herbarium sheet, or the proper recording of localities, permeated through botanical circles. National standards, however, still varied considerably, as did the design of practical tools such as vascula (Allen Reference Allen1959, idem Reference Allen1965–67a, and idem Reference Allen1965–67b).

The botanical handbook literature addressed both schoolboys and voluntary collectors (though the overlap between these groups was extensive). Standards set in schools and articulated in handbooks were reinforced and extended in naturalist societies and botanical exchange clubs. Although most manuals directly addressed schoolboys, many – like Alfred Falck in 1869 – also lamented the untidy collections submitted to botanical societies.

The clubs flourished during the second half of the nineteenth century, and a few decades into the twentieth. Some survived for almost a century. The Lund exchange club closed its activities in the 1950s and certain specialist exchange clubs such as the Societé d'Echange de Muscinées, dealing exclusively with mosses, were still active in the 1970s (Een Reference Een2005). Their decline coincided with challenges to the position of collecting in secondary school curricula.

The Boredom of Botany

The secondary school system went through several reforms during the first half of the twentieth century, with far-reaching consequences for botany and school collecting. In 1905, the place of science in the curriculum was greatly expanded, with increased hours, compulsory laboratory practicals, and the transformation of “natural history” into “biology.” This trend was continued in 1927, but in 1933, the curriculum was changed in favor of history, literature, and modern languages, while the sciences lost ground. Finally, as the two-tiered school system was abolished in favor of a comprehensive school system in the 1960s, collecting disappeared altogether from Swedish schools. During this period, collecting in the curriculum was criticized on several fronts. First, it was not sufficiently scientific. Second, it did not promote the civic values associated with the humanities, as well as other aspects of biology. Third, and most importantly, collecting was boring.

The new school subject “biology,” introduced in 1905, included physiology, evolution, heredity, and sexual hygiene. Plant collecting remained prominent in the curriculum, and several biology teachers, among them Sigfrid Almquist, criticized the proposed 1905 reform as placing too great an emphasis on systematics (Lövheim Reference Lövheim2006, 57). However, advocates of the “new” biology did not want to eliminate field botany from the curriculum. In fact, many of the botanists who argued for the importance of physiology and evolutionary biology were themselves systematists. Almquist was one of the most successful flora publishers of the century, and another supporter of laboratory biology, J. F. Nordwall, was the author of a great number of field manuals and textbooks. To Nordwall, Linnaean botany and physiology were perfectly compatible, and he argued that Swedes were “born biologists” and duty-bound to provide a science curriculum that could serve as a model to other nations (Nordwall Reference Nordwall1913). The emphasis on physiology served rather to demonstrate the scientific status of the new subject of biology, of which collecting and identifying plants was merely one component. The place of herbaria in the curriculum was not seriously threatened, and collecting remained central to Swedish school biology.

Subsequent school reforms resulted in increased hours for the sciences, and a further broadening of the biology curriculum to focus on heredity and hygiene in addition to botany, zoology, and physiology. The continued emphasis on science provoked vehement reactions among advocates of the humanities curriculum. The “terror of biology” failed to promote civic and democratic values, and in 1933, the minister of education in the new Social Democratic government decided that things had gone far enough (ibid., 110ff). Following the franchise reforms of the early 1920s, discussions of public education contrasted the importance of science education to Swedish industry with the civic virtues of the humanities, and this time, the humanities carried the day, especially in the higher forms. (Ironically, since the bulk of collecting occurred in the lower forms, the boredom of botany remained even though the terror of biology was reduced.)

But the most compelling criticism leveled against school botany was that it was dull. Botany was increasingly associated with compulsory collecting and holiday drudgery, and the “boredom of biology” became a recurring topic in debates about school science (Andersson Reference Andersson1920–21, 3; Pehrson Reference Pehrson1928, 3; Sundstedt Reference Sundstedt1934, 12; Lövheim Reference Lövheim2006).

“Collecting plants, ‘botanising’,” noted one skeptic, “is something which most people have to submit to in school, more or less voluntarily and with more or less enjoyment. It cannot be denied, that for many students this entire branch of science is shrouded in a veil of tedium or even loathing” (Pehrson Reference Pehrson1928, 3). Throughout the period, critics focused on the tedium and the practical problems of making herbaria. Collecting had to take place during the summer holidays, since the flowering season of most plants in Sweden did not coincide with the school year. Parents as well as students objected to spending the long vacation roaming the countryside in search of the 50 plants required for their particular year. And despite manuals and instructions, the herbaria themselves could rarely be used as records of the acquired knowledge – most of them turned to “hay” as soon as they had been demonstrated in class. The drudgery of collecting threatened to destroy whatever interest students might have had in science: “Where Linnaeus passes, flowers wither and birds stop singing,” one plant physiologist was quoted as saying, and a Lund zoologist held that “we are not the country-men of Linnaeus with impunity” (Vestergren Reference Vestergren1912, 56). The playwright Strindberg famously compared systematics to collecting buttons, of which there were several families – trouser buttons, coat buttons, etc., and many genera – with or without holes, made from zinc, copper, wood, and bone (Strindberg Reference Strindberg1907, 382ff). “Buttonology” was a popular caricature of the uselessness and obscurity of science in general, and the boredom of botany in particular.

The defenders of school botany argued that, rather than old-fashioned, anti-social, and dull, collecting was scientific, civic, and fun. Strindberg's “buttonology” was picked up by later writers, who used it to emphasize the pedagogic nature of even seemingly trivial activities such as button collecting:

The appeal of collecting in itself to 13-year-old boys was not to be neglected as a pedagogic tool (Vestergren Reference Vestergren1912; Bergqvist Reference Bergqvist1906), although endangered species should be protected from the compulsive collector's lust for rarities:

By reducing the number of systematic terms, or a judicious use of illustrations, or an appeal to the pleasures of the outdoors, the boredom and formalism of school botany might be eliminated. The gradual reduction in the number of required plants in successive national curricula was greeted with mixed feelings by botany teachers: on the one hand, the foundations for a scientific study of botany were shakier, on the other, less enthusiastic students would suffer less, and the reputation of biology might improve. As one teacher put it: “Studying biology by the cane is a poor method” (Vestergren Reference Vestergren1912, 63).

The discussion about school collecting found its way into the floras and handbooks themselves (Sundstedt and Ericsson Reference Sundstedt and Ericsson1936; Söderberg Reference Söderberg1943–47; Jeppsson Reference Jeppsson1945; Sörlin Reference Sörlin1948; Reference ÅkerlundÅkerlund 1952; Bolin Reference Bolin1953 and 1965). The secondary schools – still an elite system at the turn of the twentieth century, and comprising only a fraction of the student population in 1950 – set the agenda for botany, and handbooks and manuals not officially on the school curriculum still had to consider the role of botany in the school system. In light of the boredom of biology, handbook publishers stressed the joy of making one's own herbarium:

Aiming simultaneously at hobby botanists and schoolboys in need of help and inspiration, handbook writers also argued for the social value of collecting. Introducing a guide to the Swedish plant world, Rutger Sernander, professor of plant biology at Uppsala, praised the “Linnaean heritage” of the Swedish people as a civic virtue, and lamented that those who neglected it ran the risk of also ignoring “humanity and civic education” (Sundstedt Reference Sundstedt1934, 5). Linnaean botany was deeply entrenched in the Swedish state as well as in the Swedish soul, and botany as well as the humanities should be regarded as a social science. At the same time that many biologists emphasized the importance of the laboratory biology, collecting found a new niche as a civic enterprise celebrating nature, Linnaeus, and the Swedish countryside. In this spirit, the poet and botanist Sten Selander, for many years president of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, compared Linnaeus not to a modern scientist, but to a botanizing schoolboy. While the “severe majesty” of the science of Einstein or de Broglie might inspire awe and incomprehension, the “Linnaean heritage” invited a modest and practical engagement with nature, and a sense of community (Selander Reference Selander1934).

Changing Audiences: Botany Off the Curriculum

The civic value of collecting was particularly stressed in botanical literature intended for use outside of the formal school system. From the early twentieth century, handbooks and manuals were written for study circles organized by adult education associations, as well as for secondary schools. Study circles were run by unions, temperance societies, religious and agricultural organizations, and offered classes on general and social topics as well as practical courses on gardening, nature protection, and agriculture. Botanical classes often included all of these perspectives, combined with the same practical instructions on examining and collecting plants that had edified schoolboys since the mid-nineteenth century. The Krok-Almquist flora was extensively used, supplemented by study plans modelled closely on school textbooks, and including instructions on plant examination and identification. In a context where specialist teachers were not necessarily available, manuals were crucial. Conversely, study plans and textbooks written for study circles and the general public were used as supplementary reading in schools (Sernander and Skottsberg Reference Sernander and Skottsberg1915; Lindman Reference Lindman1928; Jeppson 1945; Sörlin Reference Sörlin1948; Bolin Reference Bolin1953 and 1965; Reference ÅseÅse 1965). Although the framework and the audience were different, the practice remained the same.

Handbooks addressing study circles emphasized that botanizing was fun: the technical knowledge of plant examination and herbarium making was no obstacle to enjoying nature from an aesthetic point of view. On the contrary: those who attempted to experience nature without the knowledge of species and names succeeded only in isolating themselves from the plants, and ran the risk of “drowning in [their] own more or less muddled emotions” (Bolin Reference Bolin1953, 8–9). For schoolboys as well as for holiday ramblers, collecting was scientific as well as entertaining, and it fostered a sense of civic responsibility.

From the 1970s, nature conservation was added to the virtues of field botany. After some years of decline, botanical study circles revived in the 1970s and 1980s, in the context of the environmental movement. Although many circles discussed biocides and the energy crisis, in line with the debates of the day, a significant number concentrated on examining and recording plants (Studiefrämjandet Papers). These skills were useful for municipal wildlife surveys and local flora projects, organized throughout the country by regional authorities and local botanical societies (Beckman Reference Beckman and Beretta2005). They were disseminated with the help of a new generation of handbooks. These were typically small, cheap paperback books, providing practical information about botanical Latin, identification methods, and recording practice, and were intended to be used with the Krok-Almquist flora (Bolin Reference Bolin1953; Wahlin Reference Wahlin1962; Bolin Reference Bolin1965; Olsson and Nilsson Reference Olsson and Nilsson1982; Rydberg Reference Rydberg1984).

Many, if not most, of the environmental activists and botanical recorders of the 1970s were old enough (and middle-class enough) to have been exposed to collecting during their schooldays. In study circles and botanical clubs they initiated younger, or less privileged friends and colleagues into the art of plant identification. In this way, local flora enthusiasts and environmental administrators could fall back on a century of standardized botanical practice in their search for floristic information.

The standardization of collecting and herbarium practice helped incorporate field botanists on several levels into the pursuit of knowledge about Swedish flora. It also connected botanists in different professional positions. School teachers, agricultural scientists, conservationists, and university professors representing the “new” as well as the “old” biology, were all interested in encouraging collecting, and identifying plants. Although school herbaria were the subject of much debate and division, especially during the first half of the twentieth century, the fault lines did not necessarily correspond with professional or academic boundaries. The (sometimes) debatable scientific status of collecting was no bar to its promotion as a civic, moral, or aesthetic activity, or indeed, as a road into science proper (cf. Lynch and Law Reference Lynch, Law and Biagioli1999, 320).

This approach dominated school botany until the introduction of comprehensive education in the 1960s. By this time, the practice had shifted to the voluntary system of study circles and specialist societies. State support had moved from the school system to conservation agencies promoting national and regional recording projects. The surge of local flora projects in the 1970s and 1980s benefited from a continuing practice of botanical recording, maintained through floras and handbooks used as assigned reading in study circles and botanical societies enrolled in recording local and endangered species, and remaining remarkably similar to those used by schoolboys and collectors a century earlier.

To use Kathryn Olesko's terms, amateur collecting and later volunteer recording was one particular “outside” connected to the “inside” of classroom botany by means of collecting standards. The rules of the Swedish botanical canon were articulated and disseminated in manuals and handbooks used both inside and outside the school system. But these rules consisted of more than practical standards. They came with norms of physical education, observation, and moral improvement. Later, these values were expressed in terms of civic virtues and national pride; still later, in nature protection.

The most important norm promoted through school botany was that plant collecting and herbarium making were worthwhile occupations. As well as disseminating standardized methods, school was a source of motivation for scientific activity. In her paper on the perils and pleasures of botanical illustration, Anne Secord has argued for “allurement” as an important concept for “understanding periods when most practitioners of botany were independently motivated private individuals” (Secord Reference Secord2002, 29). As the textbooks and handbooks used by Swedish schoolboys show, “allurement” was equally important in the system of compulsory collecting which characterized Swedish school botany for a century. This system, in turn, supported and was supported by a range of organizations, activities, and publications extending beyond the classroom – all of which emphasized that collecting was fun.