Plant collecting topic at Bruce

The Bruce Museum will open a new exhibition from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. this weekend. It is called “Pressed for Time: Botanical Collecting as Genteel Pastime or Scientific Pursuit?” and will be on view through March 3. The exhibition will introduce visitors to the hobby and profession of plant collecting around the turn of the 19th century. In the 1820s, botanical collecting became a hugely popular outdoor activity for both amateurs and professionals. For decades, amateurs and academics published articles in the same journals, exchanged specimens, and considered one another peers. But by 1900, a divide developed between the two camps. As botanists moved toward academic and scholarly work, local clubs of amateur enthusiasts carried on the tradition of collecting and pressing plants as a hobby. Highlighting amateur collectors in Connecticut from 1885 to 1944, this exhibition presents beautiful and fragile historical herbarium specimens. For more info, visit BruceMuseum.org.