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JOSEPH BANKS would undoubtedly approve: an entire building to house
Kew’s collection of plant materials that have some benefit for mankind.
Better still: a building designed not just to suit the needs of the collection,
but also to show people how much they depend on plants.

Banks was very keen on useful plants. As unofficial director of the
Royal Botanic Gardens in the second half of the 18th century, he sent collectors
all over the world to find new specimens. He was the person King George
III turned to when planters in the West Indies requested a cheap source
of food for their slaves. The King sent Captain Bligh and The Bounty to
Tahiti to collect young breadfruit trees for the colonies. Banks provided
Bligh with a gardener from Kew, to see that the trees had the best possible
chance of survival. The gardener was also dedicated to the cause of economic
botany. After the mutiny, he opted to go with Bligh when the crew cast him
adrift in an open boat. Both the gardener and the breadfruit died, but on
a later voyage Bligh collected a new batch of trees.

Banks began a tradition. Whenever plant collectors travelled the world,
they sent back not just plants and seeds but articles made from plant materials
– baskets and bowls, cloths and dyestuffs, drugs and potions. Sometimes
they sent the tools that were used to make these artefacts: brushes for
Japanese lacquerwork, tools for carving, skin bottles to carry balsams.
Even government officials got the habit, sending back oddities from their
foreign postings. Queen Victoria’s envoy to Japan sent her some bonsai trees,
the first ever seen in Britain. The Queen kept the living ones; Kew acquired
the ones that died en route, to be preserved in its new Museum of Economic
Botany.

The economic botany collection blossomed under Kew’s first official
director, Sir William Hooker. When he went to Kew in 1841, he already had
an impressive collection of plant products. He decided to display them in
Kew’s old apple store, so that people in trade could learn from them. ‘It
was like a design centre for plants,’ says David Field, head of economic
botany. ‘Hooker wanted to show cabinet-makers, food manufacturers, dyers,
weavers and druggists what the materials they used looked like originally
and where they grew. He wanted to show them what the botanical empire had
to offer.’

The philosophy behind the collection has changed little, although these
days most of the people who dig about among the bottles and jars are scientists.
Some of them are simply interested to know how different types of plants
are used in different parts of the world. Others want to know in great detail
what the active ingredient of some folk medicine might be.

In recent years the collection has outgrown its home. Divided up and
stored in two separate buildings, Number One Museum and Number Two Museum,
the collections became increasingly difficult to study. More important,
the conditions in the buildings were not ideal for preserving an irreplaceable
national archive. Some of the materials are hundreds of years old (a few,
such as seeds from the pyramids, are thousands of years old). They need
to be kept under controlled conditions.

The Sir Joseph Banks Building, which opens this week, provides a home
for the entire collection, some 75 000 items, and still has room for more.
It also houses a library, a design studio and a vast exhibition hall. Plans
for a centre for economic botany began almost a decade ago. The architects,
Manning Clamp and Partners of Richmond, won an open competition in 1982
to design the building. It was not a straightforward job, and progress has
been slow. The building had to fit in with the adjacent 17th-century garden
and an 18th-century arboretum with a Nash building, and yet it had to encompass
the most modern technology. Moreover, the Royal Fine Arts Commission wanted
to preserve the view of the 17th-century Kew Palace from Kew Bridge.

Hugh Clamp’s answer was a single-storey structure, much of it underground.
Most of the upper part of the building is covered by the topsoil removed
from the site, and is planted with a garden that follows through the theme
of ‘plants for people’. The view from Kew Bridge remains unspoilt. What
you can see of the building is faced with Portland stone, full of fine fossils.
The long, glass conservatory roof, the most visible part of the building,
is in the tradition of Kew’s glasshouses, from the stately Victorian Palm
House to the ultra-modern Princess of Wales Conservatory. The conservatory
forms the entrance to the exhibition hall and it is the only part of the
building open to sunlight. It houses a long bed of plants chosen to complement
the current exhibition.

Outside the building, two shallow lakes wrap around two of the sides,
linked by a waterfall. The idea of plants for people extends to the lakes,
where rushes and edible waterlilies are planted on specially created islands.

The building is innovative in many ways. It is the largest building
in Europe sheltered by earth, and will probably prove one of the most efficient
at conserving energy. The soil covering insulates the building from the
vagaries of the climate; a heat pump provides energy, exchanging heat with
the ground water to cool the building in summer and warm it in winter.

Scientists from the Building Research Establishment, at Watford, will
spend the next year monitoring the building and checking the performance
of the heat pump. They hope to find that the ‘coefficient of performance’
is 3.65, which means that every kilowatt of electricity provides the equivalent
of 3.65 kilowatts of cooling or heating. The whole building will use little
more than twice as much energy as a small house.

In any archive, valuable specimens must be protected from pollution
and bright light. In the Banks Building incoming air passes through fine
carbon filters, which remove dust and corrosive sulphur dioxide. Even sunlight
can be harmful, and with the exception of the glass-domed conservatory,
none of the building receives direct sunlight. This also helps to keep the
building cool.

Conditions inside the building are finely controlled. The heat pump
can control the temperature to within 2 Degree C and humidity to within
5 per cent. The air conditioning sucks in fresh air only when essential.
A ‘smell sensor’ in the air duct ‘decides’ when the air needs changing.
If the air is reasonably fresh, it continues to circulate; when the concentration
of body odours builds up to an unacceptable level, new air is drawn in.

Tom Bailey and his colleagues from the buildings department gave the
system a trial run at the staff’s Christmas party. When the exhibition hall
is full, as it might be on rainy days, it can hold 200 people; Kew’s Christmas
party was a fair simulation. While the botanists partied, the air conditioning
stood its most severe trial – but managed to maintain the temperature at
a comfortable level.

‘Controlling temperature and humidity is vital for reference collections
gathered over hundreds of years,’ says Bailey. ‘We have to guarantee the
conditions of the specimens.’ Sensors are placed among the objects to ensure
that the temperature of the collection is monitored rather than the temperature
of the space around them. A computerised monitoring system keeps a minute-by-minute
check on humidity, temperature and light. If something goes wrong, an alarm
alerts an engineer who can operate back-up systems until the problem is
solved. Because the building is underground there is a long delay before
the temperature falls dangerously low – long enough to remedy the fault.
Such a system has another great advantage: it saves money, by chilling or
heating only when necessary.

The plant bed under the glass roof is also designed to save energy.
Because the plants are covered only by glass, they could suffer on frosty
nights. They are protected by being in heated soil. If their roots are warm,
they tolerate a lower temperature above ground. Water collected from the
roof to irrigate the bed will also save money. The local mains water is
bad for plants, and Kew must collect as much rainwater as it can; when the
weather is dry it has to resort to more expensive demineralised water.

The roof garden is a novelty for Kew. The soil is only 2 metres deep,
which means that it warms quickly and dries out quickly. These are conditions
found naturally in the Mediterranean region, so the gardeners have planted
herbs and a scented garden of plants that produce essential oils – plants
that are typically Mediterranean. With automatic irrigation, the roof garden
will also support small fruit trees, continuing the theme of ‘useful plants’.

Inside the reference collection, there is little to see but row upon
row of grey metal cabinets. In the old museums, a jumble of glass jars and
bottles, bolts of cloth and musical instruments were packed into elegant
mahogany-and-glass cabinets. The scents of essential oils, resins, vanillas
and liquorice leaked from stoppered bottles to give a characteristic perfume.
But each leak from a storage jar is a loss of information, and cloths and
dyes and coloured objects faded in the bright light.

The new archive is clinical and efficient. Most articles are packed
in black boxes, carefully labelled before being stored in the rolling metal
cabinets. The new cabinets lack the grace of the old Victorian ones, but
they make it easier to find what you are looking for and will preserve the
materials better. Yet, some things still refuse to be wrapped and packed
away. At one end of the collection lie giant slices of ancient trees collected
in the days when now rare species used to reach great size.

In another section is the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s collection
of crude drugs, which was given to Kew by Bradford University in 1983. This
collection is being kept intact, with its medley of plant extracts, poisons
and resins (and the occasional animal): it includes poison arrows, mandrake
root and an important collection of Cinchona barks, the original sources
of quinines. Faint perfumes are already beginning to give the Sir Joseph
Banks Building some character.

Every item in the collection will eventually be recorded on a database.
Each entry will include the specific name, place of origin and the identity
of the donor and collector; before being packed in its black box, the article
is photographed. Staff have completed half of the database, some 40 000
items. Eventually, anyone wanting to look up an item will be able to find
it by a number of routes, and call up the information – including an image
of the item – on a computer even before entering the archive.

Despite the frustrations of the long delay in the opening of the building
– for the most part the result of a financial crisis at Kew several years
ago – 1990 is an apt time to promote the subject of economic botany. The
current resurgence of interest should be encouraged for several reasons.
One is simple conservation. Many of the plants we have used for centuries
are now in short supply. Some have become extinct. There may be alternatives
among the archives. Plant anatomists at Kew’s Jodrell Laboratory have already
begun a project to match the structure of different types of woods with
their uses. By identifying close relatives of overexploited trees, or other
species with a similar structure, they might be able to encourage loggers
to switch from endangered species to more common ones.

The collection also includes many medicinal plants. The enthusiasm of
pharmaceuticals companies for natural products died down when they found
they could synthesise alternatives in the laboratory. Now that they are
finding that many pathogens are growing resistant to their products, they
need to search for new ones. Ancient remedies can provide a template for
new synthetic drugs. Antimalarial drugs are a good example. Many no longer
work in certain parts of the world, but Kew’s collection of Cinchona barks
could provide the basis for the manufacture of a new drug. Many other materials
in the collection are potential sources of drugs, yet have never been analysed
to find out what their active ingredients are.

Ancient foods are also coming back into fashion, as people in Western
countries search for novelty and variety in their diet. Already, one British
firm is selling quinoa, ‘the grain of the Incas’. There is more to this
aspect of research than satisfying the consumers’ desire for a change. It
has important implications in developing countries, where all too often
people look down on their traditional foods as inferior to those of the
‘sophisticated West’. Kew is keen to discover and promote ancient foodstuffs
in order to encourage people in developing countries to eat their local,
often more nutritious, produce. A similar philosophy applies to other local
goods and materials. As long as the plants these are made from are not endangered,
there is scope for building up local industries based on indigenous materials.

The black boxes stored away in the Sir Joseph Banks Building contain
a huge amount of untapped potential. ‘People ask why we maintain the collection,’
says David Field, ‘The answer is that you never know what use might be made
of these plants.’

The first exhibition in the Joseph Banks Building is The Thread of Life,
the story of cellulose. It opens to the public on 21 March.

* * *

Fruits of the desert – a survival kit for the future

ECONOMIC botany is not a backwater where botanists dabble among weird
and wonderful collections of arrowheads and carved beads. As its name suggests,
it is about economics and is as relevant today as it ever was.

One area of activity that is growing increasingly urgent is to find
plants that could improve the quality of life in some of the driest lands
in the world. The arid and semi-arid zones are spreading, while the number
of people living in them is increasing. And, as the world warms under the
influence of the greenhouse effect, the marginal lands may grow still less
hospitable.

One of the most important tasks for economic botanists is to identify
the plants that local people use, however rarely, for one purpose or another.
To this end, Kew has compiled a second database for economic botany; an
archive that holds details of 6000 species that people use for food, forage
or fuel in arid and semi-arid lands. Botanists built up a record of these
plants for the Survey of Economic Plants for Arid and Semi-Arid Lands project,
begun after the disastrous droughts that plagued Africa in the late 1970s.

The next phase of the project involves collecting seeds of these plants
from their natural habitats, growing them in the laboratory and learning
more about them. Seed collectors based at Wakehurst Place, Kew’s outpost
in Sussex, have begun to concentrate their efforts on species that seem
to have the most potential.

A wide range of plants could help the people living in marginal lands.
Many fruits and vegetables are eaten only occasionally.

Some could be valuable as a more regular part of the diet. One such
species is Cordeauxia edulis, from the border of Ethiopia and Somalia. This
plant produces the ye’eb nut, which tastes rather like a sweet peanut. Local
people eat the nuts when they come across them and their animals browse
on the shrubby plant. According to David Field, head of the economic and
conservation section at Kew, the ye’eb could become the next macadamia nut,
providing an income for local people as well as food.

Another plant has already shown its potential. The root of the grapple
plant, Harpagophytum procumbens, is a remedy for just about every disorder.
Already, there is a large market for the root in Europe. Thousands of tonnes
of grapple roots have been exported from the Kalahari in Namibia and the
plant is seriously overexploited. Without a programme to replant the grapple,
it could soon disappear from the local array of remedies.

Before beginning programmes to grow plants known to be useful, scientists
need to learn more about how to cultivate them. A newly discovered species
of locust bean from Oman would be an ideal plant for arid lands. It is drought
resistant, more productive than the Mediterranean carob and makes good forage.
Unfortunately it is very rare and it is difficult to grow. Researchers have
only been able to raise this species using micropropagation. ‘This species
is vulnerable in its natural habitat, but potentially it is a very useful
plant for the tropics,’ says Field. If its potential is not realised soon
it could disappear.

Choosing plants for arid lands is not simply a question of looking at
what people eat in dire straits. Some foods that people turn to in times
of famine are a last resort. They often contain toxins, which people can
tolerate for a short time. With more research however, it might be possible
to select strains that do not contain toxins and make a palatable everyday
food.

In many of the dry lands, growing food plants is not the biggest priority.
The first step is to stabilise and improve the soils of the desert. Frances
Crook, a colleague of Field’s, is looking for plants that form a ‘green
glue’, holding back the desert and increasing the fertility of the soil.
The legumes Astragalus kentophyta and Tephrosia vogelii, which fix nitrogen,
are especially good at doing both. The researchers at Kew are focusing their
attentions on plants that have more than one use, providing fuel and an
edible fruit or gum for example. The more benefits a plant brings the more
likely local people are to plant them.

Kew hopes that aid agencies, local organisations and village projects
will take the information it provides and set up planting trials. It would
also like to maintain a close involvement. ‘Kew would like to send teams
that include ecologists, anthropologists and ethnobotanists to bring together
all the information on the plants and the people who use them,’ said Field.
‘This will help in designing programmes for planting.’ In the early days
of the arid and semi-arid lands project, the researchers received funding
from Oxfam and the Clothworkers Foundation. Now that it has reached a practical
stage of its work, it desperately needs more support.