Watch the building of S-E Asia's largest digital plant database

For the first time, the process of preserving plants for posterity can be viewed by the public, following the launch of the Singapore Herbarium’s largest digitalisation effort on Oct 28.

- Ang Qing Correspondent

At the Singapore Botanic Gardens, visitors can now watch botanists painstakingly build a digital database of some 800,000 specimens from Southeast Asia and beyond.

From a viewing gallery, they can observe the plants being unpacked, barcoded, placed on a conveyor belt and photographed between 9am and 5pm on weekdays.

This is the world’s first public showcase of the process in a working herbarium, the National Parks Board (NParks) said in a statement.

The two-year exercise was launched in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the herbarium.

The first of its kind in British Malaya, the herbarium was founded by the Botanic Gardens’ former superintendent Henry James Murton in 1875, marking the start of the gardens’ transformation from a pleasure garden to a scientific institution, keeper of the herbarium Jana Leong-Skornickova told The Straits Times.

The digitalisation effort was launched by Minister of State for National Development Alvin Tan, who helped digitise Singapore’s national flower - the Papilionanthe Miss Joaquim a variety of orchid formerly known as the Vanda Miss Joaquim.

The journey of the herbarium mirrors that of Singapore as a nation, said Mr Tan.

"Like Singapore, it is carefully cultivated over generations, where fragility is transformed into resilience, and where each contribution - no matter how small - adds to collective strength."