' - , l < l l ? I i l i 111 !i /Oil\ 1'

/ t r / . zoo Yh. (1990) 2 9 4 2 4 6 1 ' The Zoological SocietS o i London

Computerized plant records at Paignton Zoological and Botanical Gardens ROY POWELL Record.7 QficerlBiologist. Puignton Zoologicul arid Rotcinicul Grirc/cvi.c. Totrii~s K o t r d . Paignton, Dawn TQ4 7EU, Great Brituin

The aim of this paper is ( I ) to report on the computerization of plant records at Paignton Zoo; (2) to describe the transfer of these data to other collections via the Botanic Gardens Conservation Secre- tariat. Kew, in order to improve collabo- ration and co-ordination between gardens in the conservation of plants; (3) to high- light the application of in-house computer records in various aspects of the manage- ment of a botanical garden.

HISTORY OF BOTANICAL EXHIBITS AT THE ZOO The collection at Paignton is the third oldest and the third largest in England and was the first to be called a Zoological and Botanical Garden when it opened to the public in 1923. It began as a privately owned collection belonging to the Whitley family and its main driving force was the estate owner's son, Herbert Whitley. In his youth he successfully bred domestic and exotic species and made great efforts to recreate the kind of vegetation with which his exotic animals would be found in the wild. The Primley estate where the family lived was well supplied with green- houses and it was there that Herbert Whitley began to cultivate orchids and many other plants collected from all over the uorld.

Plans for the Zoo, which was built on open fields opposite the Primley estate, were drawn up by Whitley in the early 1920s. He was encouraged by his friend Philip Michelmore, a biologist who would visit Paignton while on leave from the colonial service in Uganda and who was to become the Honorary Managing Direc-

tor of the Paignton Zoo. Whitley designed and stocked it with exotic plant specimens and is reputed to have drawn thc first plans for his tropical house on the back of an envelope. It was completed under his supervision and still stands today. Included in the design was a direct routc from his study in Primley House and many hidden passages so that the recluse could visit his collection without being noticed or disturbed. He suffered from insomnia and would work in the tropical house late at night where i t was often possible to find him only by following the trail of fresh plant trimmings he had left on the ground. Other aspects of his eccen- tric life style have been described by Baker (1988). Although Whitley rarely published any of his work, he kept extensive record5 in tiny handwriting; the Zoo's earliesl botanical records would have consisted of some of these. The first plant catalogue was produced for the Primley Botanic Nursery from which plants were sold locally, many to the district Council l o stock the municipal gardens.

On Whitley's death in 1955 the Zoo wits left in Trust as an educational and scien- tific charity. Philip Michelmore. arriving in 1956 to begin work ;is Honorary Managing Director. found that many of the specimens in the maturing vegetation were unfamiliar to him. Bewildered by the immense diversity that confronted him. he asked a botanist friend. James Platt. who was later employed by the Royal Horti- cultural Society. to help him to identif! specimens. Michelmore dreu) LIP planting plans for the beds and shrubberies around the Zoo and began a card-index record

HORTICULTURE IN ZOOS 43

system which he encouraged successive head gardeners to update. In 1966-1971 the staff of the Zoo’s education depart- ment began to collect herbarium speci- mens from the plants and this work has been continued in recent years by Michel- more during his retirement. The speci- mens are currently housed in the Zoo library. Each specimen has a unique her- barium number and each plant sampled has a number attached to it to ensure that further specimens of leaves, flowers or fruit collected during different seasons are taken from the same specimen plant.

Lucas & Oldfield (1986) pointed out that the conservation role has developed more slowly in botanic gardens than in the zoo world. Given its long history as both a zoological and botanical garden, the collection at Paignton has probably been aware of its responsibilities longer than most. For many years it has been trusted with the national collections of Buddleiu and Sorburiu by the Royal Horticultural Society’s National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens (see Pattison, this volume). In the future the collection will serve as a repository for more threatened species and cultivars of plants and will continue to follow the same conservation philo- sophy as that applied to the zoological collection.

BOTANICAL RECORDS: PROBLEMS The problems of maintaining a record system are all too familiar to anyone involved in botanical collections. At Paignton we found that poor continuity between successive head gardeners meant that they had not always updated the planting plans set up by Michelmore in the 1950s. Even where records had been kept the entries were not always con- sistent in taxonomy or other details and eventually the records become out-of-date and were less accurate than the head gardener’s card-index system, which was being continually updated. There were further inconsistencies in the records of

the planting plans, record cards and her- barium specimens.

Over the years various specimen plants lost their identification, with labels lost for reasons which included removal by visitors, perhaps as souvenirs, and some- times vandalism. Labels faded from expo- sure to the elements and some became obscured and lost in the foliage. Inexper- ienced gardeners removed labels acciden- tally during pruning and replaced them on the wrong specimen.

COMPUTERIZATION The modern method of overcoming these difficulties is to commit the plant records to computer memory. As microcomputers have become cheaper and more sophisti- cated, computerization has become a feas- ible proposition for individual collections. Our plans were formulated in 1983, when the present Executive Director, Peter Stevens, was appointed on Mr Michel- more’s retirement. There were then existing computer record systems in collections such as Kew Gardens but these required access to a large mainframe computer. Our system can be set up with a PC with at least a 10 Mbyte hard disc, a printer and one of the many types of database software now available. The other essential input is manpower. It requires someone with botanical know- ledge and the ability to learn simple data- base operations. We were fortunate enough to employ a competent botany student who was keen to start the project during the summer vacation.

We divided the 100 x 100 m grid of an Ordnance Survey map of the Zoo grounds into 10 x 10 m squares and gave the posi- tions of the plant specimen a grid refer- ence which could be stored in the computer and plotted on the map. The plants recorded were woody species which are relatively long-term exhibits. In a few areas of the Zoo, plants grow so densely that the grid reference is not accurate enough to pinpoint a particular plant specimen but it narrows the area on the ground and, if the plant is labelled with its

computer accession number. it can bc quickly located.

DATABASE STRlJCTIJRE A standard format for storing computer records was adopted. The obvious choice appeared to be the International Transfer Format (ITF) which was finally agreed upon in 1987 by a taxonomic database working group affiliated to the Tnter- national Association for Plant Taxonomy. The ITF was designed with the following criteria: to enable individual gardens to manage their own records and collections more efficiently; to facilitate exchange of computerized information between botanic gardens on their plant collections, especially those of conservation impor- tance: to provide the mechanism for sharing information with the Botanic Gardens Conservation Secretariat, removing the necessity for lengthy ques- tionnaires. The TTF is now overseen by the BGCS which was established in Kew in 1987 by the IUCN after a conference a t Las Palmas in 1985 on Botanical Gardens and the World Conservation Strategy.

In practice the I T F lays down the exact number and size of fields (elements of computer memory) which may be used for storing essential plant accession data. For each plant accession record. 33 fields (Table 1 ) occupying 363 bytes of computer memory are used, enabling well over 25 000 plant records to be stored on a 10 Mbyte hard disc. Fields 1 and 2 tell the BGCS how to handle the data received; field 3 records the garden's unique code name: field 4 records each unique plant accession number; fields 6-- 18 hold detailed taxonomic data on the plant. Further fields contain data on sex, provenance and the complete history of the specimen, whether collected from the wild. cultivated from seed, donated from another institution (e.g. a university). Finally in field 33 the IUCN Red Data Book category is given.

The information is mailed periodically to the BGCS by individual collections in the form of a database file on a floppy

disc. At the BGCS office at Kew the data arc copied into the memory of a large computer. The Kew database is able to keep accurate statistics on any specics of interest which is cultivated by collections around the world. The BGCS is also able to check the data coming from ;I collec- tion and send back details on the current status of any threatened plants cultivated there.

The information held on the central database will, of course. be invaluable to those co-ordinating the movements of plant material for propagation between gardens in various parts of the world. I t will help botanists and garden directors to maintain the existing genetic diversity of plant species. The role of gardens in conservation is now being taken very seriously. There is discussion on setting up 'field gene bank reserves' which ivould involve growing endangered plants in large numbers. Rain forest regeneration i s also being given urgent consideration. Knowing where to obtain seeds or other plant material for propagation offers ;I considerable advantage in these conserva- tion issues.

The ideas and the computer sbsteni being employed are in many ways similar to those used by ISIS in the captive mana- gement of endangered animal species. However, the plant database software still requires considerable refincment to reach the level of sophistication and 'user frien- dliness' of that which has been available to custodians of captive animals sincc thc establishment of ARKS (Animal Record Keeping System) in 1985 (Simmons. 1985: Flesness & Mace. 1988). In December 1989 1 1 1 867 living vertebrates held by 343 ISIS participant institutions around the world were listed on the ISIS central computer in Minnesota (ISIS. 1989). The availability of data enables curators and species co-ordinators to make decisions on the management of the animals in their care. In the UK data accessibilitl has reached a high level of efficiency with the introduction of NOAH (National On-line Animal History) which operates from the

HORTICULTURE IN ZOOS 45

FIELD NO. SHORT NAME LONG NAME

ITF FIELDS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34

35 36 31 38 39

CUSTOM FIELDS

RECTYPE RECSTAT GARDCODE ACCID A C C S T A T GENHYB GENUS SPECHYB SPECQLIAL SPECIES INFRANK INFREPI CULTIVAR RANKQUAL IDQUAL VERILEV VERIBY VERIDATE SEX PROVTYPE PROPHIST DONORTYPE DONOR DONACCID ISOCODE GEOGAREA LOCALITY ALTITUDE LATITUDE LONGTUDE COLNAME COLID IUCNCAT

SITENAME

GROUP FLAG HERBARIUM NATURHOME GRID-REF COLLOQUIAL

Record type Record status Garden code Accession identifier Accession status Intergeneric hybrid flag Genus Interspecific hybrid flag Species field qualifier Species Infraspecific rank flag Infraspecific epithet Cultivar Rank qualified Identification qualifier Verification level Verifier’s name Verification date Sex Provenance type Propagation history Donor type Donor Donor’s accession number Country of origin Geographical area Locality Altitude Latitude Longitude Collector’s name Collector’s identifier IUCN conservation category

Shrubbery or flower bed name Grouped plant flag Zoo herbarium number Natural habitat of taxon Grid reference within Zoo Common name

Table 1. Fields used in the plant database at Paignton Zoological and Botanical Gardens. Fields 1-33 are based on the International Transfer Format (IUCN-WWF, 1987) and are common to BGCS members contribut- ing data to the central computer. Fields 34-39 are for data specific to the Zoo.

offices of The Zoological Society of the BGCS main database will also be London under the auspices of- the more readily accessible to each member National Federation of Zoos of Great garden in the future. Britain and Ireland. The central database is updated regularly by floppy discs sent IN-HOUSE DATABASE by member zoos and is accessible to each In addition to offering data for use on a via a telephone link to their own micro- national or indeed an international scale, computer. It is hoped that data held on the horticultural database also has uses in

16

the day-to-day running of a botanical garden. The system offers the flexibility to include extra fields to be used by each individual collection for storing relevant in-house data. At Paignton six extra fields have been added: SITENAME stores the name of the flower bed or shrubbery; GROUPFLAG stores a code indicating a physical group of plants; HERBARIUM stores the herbarium number; NATURHOME gives the natural home of the species (for educational use); GRIDREF gives the co- ordinates of the plant in the zoo grounds and COLLOQUIAL gives the common English name of the plant.

There are obvious advantages offered by the database over conventional record- keeping methods. It can be sorted or 'indexed' on any of the fields either indivi- dually or in combination. We have found i t useful to index on the GENUS, SPECIES and CIJLTIVAR fields to put them into alphabetical order and to list them with the SITENAME and GRIDREF fields and others depending on requirements. The location of any plant of interest can thus be located rapidly on the map and subsz- quently o n the ground and to many of the specialists working in the Zoo, this is probably the most useful function. The head gardener. education officer, curators, graphic designerlartist and the marketing manager all. for various reasons, may want to find where specimens of a partic- ular plant taxon are growing.

Listings in which the SITENAME and 'or GRIDREF have been sorted or indexed and tell the user which plant specimens are growing in any chosen area to the nearest 10 m. have also proved valuable. For example, when construction or main- tenance work is planned the plants a t risk from such operations need to be identi- fied. The curators may also need to know which plant species are growing in or near enclosures to assess any potential inter- action between plant and animal exhibits (e.g. poisonous leaves or fruits). A possible future development for in-house records would be the use of ;I digitized map of the Zoo in computer memory so that the locations of plants could be shown on the screen or printed.

REFERENCES B A K t K . J . (1988): ~ / i I t ? i p . \ , < /I<lt?7/7.\ i l l : ( / C / f ~ / l / l i / t l / v .

Paignton: SJH Publications. FLESNESS, N. R. s M ~ C E . Ci. M (1988): I'opulation databases and roological conservation I i i / . Zoo l'h

ISIS (1989): ISIS .specie.\ di. \ r r ih/ iot~ r('por/ t i \ i i i .?/ Dec,m7hcr I 9X 9. M i n neso t a : IS I S . IIJCN-WWF ( 1987). Tllc It7/~~rncitiotitrl 7.riitit/i.r Forn7trt i l T F l f o r hor t r t i i c , yureI~w rcyortk. Pittsburgh: Botanic Garden Conservation Secretariat. Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Carnegie Mellon Univcrsily. LIJCAS. G. R- OLIIFIELU. S. (1986): Rarc plant5 111

zoological collections. f t i / . Zoo 1.h. 24/25: 123-1 26. SIMMOVS. L. (1985): Thc valuc of ;I coinputerizcd studbook program. .4..liiP:I C ' 0 / 7 / Proc. 1985: 393-398.

27: 41-49.