Ecos (c) report on Herbarium in Armenia

Ecos April/May 2006 pp.24-27

"Professor Gabrielian is renowned in world botany, yet she sits in a small room stacked high with fading hope and memories, surrounded by her lifelong collection
and the 11 weighty monographs she has authored and published. It is a priceless repository but has no clear future or home when she and her septuagenarian
colleagues can no longer work.

"She opens her arms indicating the piles of newspapers that hide tens of thousands of dried, pressed specimens. ‘Some of the most beautiful and rare wild plants
on the planet are here,’ she says. ‘And like all plants they hold crucial places in delicately balanced ecosystems. Some of these plants come from landscapes that swing from plus 40 to minus 40 degrees Celsius between summer and winter. It is vitally important to find out what plants like this can teach us.’

"Eleonora Gabrielian has been collecting since she was a student in 1946. That same year she met her husband, who then worked alongside her for the next four decades. He died in 1994, after a bitter winter when there was no heating at all.

"‘Perhaps we are crazy,’ says Professor Gabrielian solemnly. ‘We are paid 74 000 drams [US$24] a month and we each have to put in 20 000 drams for electricity.
But botany is our life. It is the science of life and it keeps us going. Future generations will need this knowledge if they are to sustain the planet’s biodiversity … but I am 76 years old and I need to be able to put what’s in my head into the heads of future generations.’"

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Copyright: Ecos (CSIRO) 2006
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