News

Drawings of Root Systems in Image Collections

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April 11, 2017

A new collection of 1000 drawings has been added to the Image Collections. The drawings depict 50 years of root system excavations in Europe, mainly in Austria.

The drawings, their analysis and descriptions were executed by 3 researchers of the Pflanzensoziologisches Institut, Klagenfurt (now in Bad Goisern, Austria), led by Prof. Dr. Lore Kutschera (1917-2008).

The researchers continued to draw their findings although others started to use photography or root samples. Sometimes they spent their holidays making drawings. One day they were preparing a root sample on a small hill in the Netherlands. An employee of 'Rijkswaterstaat' ordered them to leave, because they were damaging a dike.

The scans of the original drawings cover a wide variety of species ranging from agricultural crops, to associated weeds, and also natural vegetation, from orchids to alpine shrubs and trees. The drawings show rooting systems of individual species, carefully isolated from their environment and drawn in fine detail. The work led to a number of publications.

Ecologists and soil physicists found WUR funding to scan this unique set of drawings in archive quality. The drawings were scanned in Vienna. Klaas Metselaar, researcher Soil Physics and Land Management coded the figure captions of one part of the 'Wurzelatlas'. Captions from this atlas are now available for statistical analysis. The dataset is stored in the e-depot. Coding the captions of the other atlases is ongoing.

Klaas Metselaar, Wageningen University, Soil Physics and Land Management
Klaas Metselaar, Wageningen University, Soil Physics and Land Management

The drawings are published in the following atlases:

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Examples:

 Phaseolus vulgaris var. nanus (Pen drawing)
Phaseolus vulgaris var. nanus (Pen drawing)
Acorus calamus (Pen drawing)
Acorus calamus (Pen drawing)