Ein Netzwerk zur botanischen Erforschung des Saastals im Oberwallis: Das Herbarium Keller-Naegeli und seine Bezüge zu Basel

Abstract

A network for the botanical exploration of the Saastal Valley (Valais, Switzerland) – The herbarium Keller-Naegeli and its connections to Basel. The herbarium presented here was compiled between 1891 and 1924 by the two amateur botanists Alfred Keller and Otto Naegeli, and comprises in total some 130 000 preserved plants from more than 50 000 collections of vascular plants mainly from Switzerland. During ten collection stays for several weeks between 1907 and 1923 Alfred Keller compiled a herbarium documentation of the flora of the Saastal Valley (Valais, Switzerland), which included some 766 species and close to 260 additional varieties and deviating forms («Abnormitäten»), all of them represented with several plants from different localities. Based on detailed information about the collection localities, dates, and names of the collectors, as well as insights from unpublished manuscripts for five oral presentations and letters to about a dozen correspondents, we documented the network of family members and friends of Alfred Keller involved in providing information about plant identifications and supplementing his herbarium. Keller maintained the most important interactions with colleagues from Basel: the two botanists Hermann Christ and Arthur Huber-Morath, and the handicraft teacher Annemarie Weis. Keller himself was an important source for information on the flora of the Saastal Valley to professional botanists and amateur colleagues. This network of naturalists established by Alfred Keller in order to floristically document the Saastal Valley is a prime example for citizen science activities about a century ago.