Digitisation saves the botanical history burnt in UCT flames

It’s been a nail-biting week for staff of the plant-conservation unit at the University of Cape Town. On Sunday as smoke spread over Cape Town so did a rumour that the department’s building and thousands of photographs and dried plant specimens had caught alight.

The extent of damage was not known, and for department head Prof Tony Verboom and his team, an anxious wait began.

On Monday, he said: “We know that the building caught on fire and that from above the Bolus Herbarium — the oldest functioning herbarium in the land, with a collection of over 350,000 specimens — a lot of water was coming in when they were putting out the fire, so if there is damage to the herbarium, it is water damage.”

Verboom said the team was still waiting for a structural engineer, and an insurance assessment would follow.

The biggest fear was for unit head Prof Timm Hoffman’s photographic collection of landscapes, one that took decades to create “to track long-term vegetation change through repeated photography of the same landscapes”. When the flames were finally doused and Tuesday brought a clearer picture of the destruction, Hoffman said: “The entire building has been affected by the fire and it will take months to restore.”

Embers from burning pines had ignited vegetation around the campus, including a large palm tree near the HW Pearson Building, home to the plant conservation unit. But in a beautiful twist of fate, Hoffman’s foresight came to the rescue.

“All hard copies of our photographs were lost in the fire.

“However, we have spent a lot of time over the past two decades digitising all our photographic collections, and have most of the historical and repeated images in digital form,” said Hoffman.

“We were busy with a few remaining large collections and these have been destroyed in the fire and are now lost forever.

“The loss of these collections, as well as the plant conservation unit’s offices, is a great tragedy for us,” he said. The loss of the photographic collection, in particular, means “our ability to comprehend the scale of change in Southern African environments over time has been diminished”. However, this is an opportunity to “look forward as well”. Already the team is thinking about how to rebuild the unit.

Hoffman said the department was “overwhelmed with words of condolence and offers of support” from all over the world.

Calling the fire a “tragedy”, Verboom said: “It’s a freak event. What can you do?” He said the psychological impact had come in the wake of protests on campus, the drought, the rape and murder of student Uyinene Mrwetyana and the pandemic.

“This isn’t just the university. This is SA — these things start to feel like that’s just how life is, but yes, UCT does seem to have caught a lot of it.

“There are endless amounts of drama, and my sense is that we’ ve been so traumatised we’ve almost become adapted to this crazy hardship.

“Most of us didn’t sleep on Sunday night, but there is also resilience, and we must remember that.”

WE HAVE … MOST OF THE HISTORICAL AND REPEATED IMAGES IN DIGITAL FORM