Request for wood samples

In recent years the wood collection at the Rijksherbarium was greatly expanded following a renewed interest in wood anatomy as an aid for solving classification problems. Staff members of the Rijksherbarium added to the collection by taking interesting wood samples with them from their expeditions (e.g. from Sumatra by De Wilde & De Wilde-Duyfjes, from Borneo, the Philippines and New Guinea (climbers!) by Jacobs, from Thailand by Van Beusekom and Geesink, and from various localities in Indonesia by De Vogel). The nucleus of the Leiden wood collection remains the BW series from New Guinea expanded by collections by Kalkman, Vink and Van Royen. In spite of these valuable resources to draw upon for comparative wood anatomical work the Leiden wood collection remains underrepresented with respect to the Malesian area. Botanists and Foresters and Curators of Institutional Wood Collections are therefore kindly requested to consider sending wood samples to the Rijksherbarium, preferably accompanied by herbarium vouchers and complete collecting data. Field collectors frequently ask from which part of a tree to collect and how to do it. Since so much depends on facilities in the field no strict rules can be given — in fact each piece of wood is welcome as long as we know whether it came from a thick branch, from the stem-sapwood (in so-called shashes) or whether it is a model sample collected at breast height from a straight-boled tree. Wood is not confined to trees, and with the current interest in habit—anatomy relationships samples from shrubs and climbers are also most welcome. Also for purely taxonomic work wood anatomical studies are often hampered because no material is available of crucial species which never grow bigger than understorey treelets or shrubs.