The Herbarium Album
Being the creek’s other museum — the one the world kept.
When Mr. Smith kept the Maple Spring , his museum was the wonder of the drive: five thousand pieces of laurel root, every one of them cut from this valley and carved by his own pocket knife. The auctioneers scattered it in 1884. But the valley was keeping a second museum of itself all along — and that one was never sold.
For two hundred years, collectors walked these banks with tin boxes and killing jars: a moss man in 1831, a doctor hunting slime molds in Chestnut Hill, a moth man in Roxborough who filled a house with wings. What they gathered went into drawers in Philadelphia and New York, Washington and Harvard, London and Kew. In our own century the drawers were opened and indexed by GBIF, the world’s registry of specimens — which counts 12,279 preserved specimens from this valley’s ground, 5,768 of them gathered before 1946 . This album borrows thirty-one leaves.
Leaf through. Every label is printed exactly as it was written — the misspellings stand. Where the holding museum publishes a photograph of the specimen under an open license, the photograph rides with its leaf and is credited; where none does, the label travels alone, as it has for a hundred years.
The Index of the Album
The album opens where it wills
Drawn from GBIF · 3 November 2026 · 31 leaves of 5,768
Chapter the First — The Ancients
Three labels, and no portraits. The eldest was written in 1802, when the inns were young.
Label only Leaf 1
Geocalyx graveolens (Schrad.) Nees a liverwort
“by the Wissahickon, Philadelphia”
The eldest thing in this album. Whoever gathered it, while the inns were young, left no name on the label that survives — the plant kept the date, and the creek kept the secret.
Collected 1802
Read the museum’s own record
Label only Leaf 2
Thamnium alopecurum (Hedw.) Schimp. a moss
“Near Wissahickon Creek.”
Gathered by Thomas Potts James, who knew the mosses of America better than any man then living, down at the creek in 1831.
Collected 1831 · by T. P. James
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Label only Leaf 3
Goodyera pubescens (Willd.) R.Br. downy rattlesnake plantain — an orchid
“Wissahiccon [Wissahickon] Creek”
The label misspells the creek, and we print it as written. The orchid crossed the Atlantic regardless, and rests in London.
Collected 1842 · by Gavin Watson
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Chapter the Second — The Slime Molds
Neither plant nor beast nor, properly, fungus. The valley's smallest ghosts.
Leaf 4
Photograph: Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (PH) · CC0 Trichia contorta (Ditmar) Rostaf., 1875 a slime mold
“Chestnut Hill”
Dr. George A. Rex of Chestnut Hill hunted slime molds the way other men hunt deer. This drawer is mostly his life's work.
Collected 1882 · by George A. Rex
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Leaf 5
Photograph: Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (PH) · CC0 Metatrichia vesparia (Batsch) Nann.-Bremek. ex G.W.Martin & Alexop., 1969 the wasp-nest slime mold
“germantown”
It builds a tiny paper nest, like a wasp's — though it is neither wasp nor plant nor, properly speaking, fungus at all.
Collected 1883 · by Amos P. Brown
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Leaf 6
Photograph: Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (PH) · CC0 Cribraria aurantiaca Schrad., 1797 a slime mold
“Chestnut Hill”
The colour of apricot jam and the size of a pinhead. Rex found them by the hundred where the rest of us see only rotten logs.
Collected 1884 · by G. A. Rex
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Leaf 7
Photograph: Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (PH) · CC0 Lycogala epidendrum (L.) Fr., 1829 wolf's milk — a slime mold
“Germantown”
Gathered by Witmer Stone, later the Academy's great bird man. In 1885 he was on his knees in Germantown, collecting slime.
Collected 1885 · by Witmer Stone
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Leaf 8
Photograph: Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (PH) · CC0 Tubifera ferruginosa (Batsch) J.F.Gmel., 1792 the raspberry slime mold
“Chestnut Hill”
A whole raspberry the size of a thumbnail, fruiting on dead wood above the creek.
Collected 1889 · by George A. Rex
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Leaf 9
Photograph: Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (PH) · CC0 Physarum citrinum Schumach., 1803 a slime mold
“Chestnut Hill”
Gathered by Hugo Bilgram of Chestnut Hill, an engineer by trade and a slime-mold man by devotion. The valley had several.
Collected 1889 · by Hugo Bilgram
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Chapter the Third — The Fungi
What the valley's fallen trees were quietly becoming.
Leaf 10
Photograph: Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (PH) · CC0 Collybia dryophila (Bull.) P.Kumm. a little woodland mushroom
“Miquon”
The oldest fungus in the album, gathered at Miquon the year after the Civil War ended.
Collected 1866 · by J.G. Hope
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Leaf 11
Photograph: Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (PH) · CC0 Mutinus caninus (Schaeff.) Fr. the dog stinkhorn
“Wissahickon”
The rudest mushroom in the valley, and we shall say no more than its name already says. It smells of carrion, and is proud of it.
Collected 1877 · by C. C. Cresson
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Label only Leaf 12
Amphinema byssoides (Pers.) J.Erikss. a crust fungus
“Wissahickon woods”
Sent out of the Wissahickon woods to Job Bicknell Ellis, the king of North American fungi. Its portrait is not ours to show. Its label is.
Collected 1885 · by Ellis
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Leaf 13
Photograph: University of Illinois Fungarium - Fungi (ILL-) · CC0 Lenzites Fr. a bracket fungus
“Wissahickon Creek”
Thomas Gentry divided this one gathering among five herbaria. One walk along the creek, and the specimen sleeps in five cities.
Collected 1886 · by TG Gentry
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Chapter the Fourth — The Green Things
Pressed flat, glued down, and carried to the ends of the earth.
Leaf 14
Photograph: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew · CC BY Elymus canadensis L. Canada wild rye
“Bank of Wissahickon; Philadelphia”
A grass from the bank of the creek, pressed in 1849 and kept at Kew, in London, ever since.
Collected 1849 · by s.coll.
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Label only Leaf 15
Panax trifolius L. dwarf ginseng
“Wissachickon”
Parker spelled the creek the way he heard it, and we print it so. The plant itself is three inches tall, and keeps to the rich woods still.
Collected 1862 · by C. F. Parker
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Label only Leaf 16
Erigeron pulchellus Michx. Robin's plantain
“Wissahickon”
Same hand, same summer — and this time he spelled it right.
Collected 1862 · by C. F. Parker
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Label only Leaf 17
Trillium cernuum L. nodding trillium
“Manayunk.”
It nods because the flower hangs hidden beneath the leaves, out of sight of anyone not truly looking. Diffenbaugh was looking.
Collected 1865 · by E. Diffenbaugh
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Label only Leaf 18
Erythronium americanum Ker Gawl. yellow trout lily
“Wissahickon”
The creek's own spring flower, named for the speckled trout it blooms beside — and for the speckles on its leaves.
Collected 1868 · by W. D. Day
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Leaf 19
Photograph: Rutgers University · CC BY-NC Lobelia siphilitica L. great blue lobelia
“Flat Rock”
Flat Rock still stands on the creek below the drive. In a good wet August, so does the lobelia.
Collected 1879 · by H. Russell Bassler
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Label only Leaf 20
Carex virescens Muhl. ex Willd. ribbed sedge
“Lower Wissahickon Valley, Philadelphia.”
A sedge has edges and few admirers. Edmondson admired this one enough to press it, in the lower valley, in 1902.
Collected 1902 · by T. W. Edmondson
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Leaf 21
Photograph: University of Florida Herbarium · CC BY-NC Chiloscyphus polyanthos var. rivularis (Schrad.) Nees a river liverwort
“Wissahickon; Glenolden”
It grows in the water itself, on wet stone. Its variety name, rivularis, means simply: of the streams.
Collected 1912 · by A.F.K. Krout
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Chapter the Fifth — Wings
The moth man's drawer, and the bees of Roxborough.
Leaf 22
Photograph: Academy of Natural Sciences · CC BY-NC Noctuidae an owlet moth, never named finer than its family
“Fairmount”
Gathered by Frank Haimbach, the moth man of the Wissahickon, who gave forty thousand moths to the Academy. This one never received a finer name.
Collected 1904 · by F. Haimbach
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Leaf 23
Photograph: Pixel Acuity LLC · CC0 Bombus impatiens Cresson, 1863 the common eastern bumblebee
“Roxborough”
G. Greene took bees all over Roxborough for the Smithsonian. This is the same bee still working the valley's flowers today.
Collected 1909 · by G. Greene
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Leaf 24
Photograph: Academy of Natural Sciences · CC BY-NC Schinia thoreaui Grote & Robinson, 1870 Thoreau's flower moth
“Roxborough”
Named for Henry Thoreau, who knew its kind in Massachusetts. Haimbach found it again, half a century on, in Roxborough.
Collected 1910 · by F. Haimbach
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Leaf 25
Photograph: Pixel Acuity LLC · CC0 Bombus pensylvanicus (De Geer, 1773) the American bumblebee
“Roxborough: a neighborhood in the Northwest Philadelphia section of Philadelphia”
Common in Greene's net in 1913. It has since grown scarce across the East — the label has become a record of plenty.
Collected 1913 · by G. Greene
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Leaf 26
Photograph: Academy of Natural Sciences · CC BY-NC Epimecis carbonaria Haimbach, 1915 a moth of Haimbach's own describing
“Roxborough”
Haimbach himself described this species in 1915 — carbonaria, the charcoal one. This specimen was taken at Roxborough six years later, in the describer's own hunting ground.
Collected 1921
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Leaf 27
Photograph: © President and Fellows of Harvard College · CC BY-NC-SA Ellychnia corrusca (Linnaeus, 1767) the winter firefly
“Philadelphia, Chestnut Hill”
A firefly that flies in the cold months and carries no light. Harvard keeps this one.
Collected 1930
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Chapter the Sixth — Feathers, Fur & Scales
Their portraits rest with their keepers. Their labels travel.
Label only Leaf 28
Bombycilla cedrorum Vieillot, 1808 cedar waxwing
“Manayunk”
Taken at Manayunk in 1884 and carried clear to California, where Berkeley keeps it. The waxwing still comes down on the valley's berries every winter.
Collected 1884 · by Collector(s): H. K. Jamison
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Label only Leaf 29
Chelydra serpentina (Linnaeus, 1758) common snapping turtle
“PHILADELPHIA, FAIRMOUNT PARK, WISSAHICKON CREEK AND BELL'S MILL ROAD, ON ROCK IN MIDSTREAM BELOW BRIDGE CHESTNUT HILL”
The label is the whole story, and better than anything we could write. Read it.
Collected 1941 · by HUDSON, ROBERT G
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Label only Leaf 30
Cardinalis cardinalis cardinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) northern cardinal
“Philadelphia; Chestnut Hill”
No portrait rides with this record — only the label, and the bird itself, which is out there yet.
Collected 1941 · by J. N. MacDonald
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Label only Leaf 31
Blarina brevicauda kirtlandi Bole & Moulthrop, 1942 northern short-tailed shrew
“Chestnut Hill”
Oliver Pearson trapped it at Chestnut Hill in 1941. The following year this kind was published as a new subspecies — from specimens such as this.
Collected 1941 · by Collector(s): Oliver P. Pearson
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The Cellar — What the Record Holds
The source. Every leaf is a real museum record, drawn from GBIF (gbif.org) on 3 November 2026 and linked, leaf by leaf, to the museum’s own entry. Nothing in this album was collected, drawn, or imagined for it.
The choosing. Only preserved specimens — a plant on a sheet, a moth on a pin — with coordinates on the valley’s ground, collected between 1802 and 1945, and a label naming the creek or the neighbourhoods on its rim: Roxborough, Manayunk, Chestnut Hill, Germantown, Miquon, Flat Rock, Bell’s Mill Road.
The counts. GBIF holds 12,279 preserved specimens from this ground; 5,768 are dated 1800–1945; on 2,841 of the old records the word Wissahickon is written on the label itself.
The photographs. A photograph is shown only where the holding institution publishes it under an open license (CC0, CC BY, or CC BY-NC); the credit and license stand beneath each one. Where no open photograph exists, the leaf is stamped LABEL ONLY.
The spellings. Labels are transcribed as written — “Wissahiccon” (1842) and “Wissachickon” (1862) among them. The errors are the collectors’ own, and they are part of the record.
A confession. Not one specimen was collected for this album. They were collected for science — which, in the end, kept better notes than the inns did.
