After the Curator's meeting we went out to the Herb Garden to look at labels

I'm not really a curator, but they let me go cause I'm old and can be counted on to stir up some sort of trouble. We label all of our plants here. Each plant has a "record label" with it's scientific name, date of acquisition? I think, source, and a number that identifies it as an individual (it's "accession number". For our visitors, many of our plants also have a "display label". We've been developing a new format for these labels and we have a new machine to engrave them. We're into the process to the point that 100? labels were written, formatted, created, attached to their new (black! stakes and put out on roses in the Herb Garden. They've been there a while to be observed, analyzed, and... I innocently, well, sort of innocently, asked how the process was going which started a lively discussion that ended with all of us trekking over to the roses and studying the labels.

There was no consensus of opinion. The bottom three labels are new, the top, is an old style. I see that we've omitted the year of introduction from the new labels. I like that information about cultivars and of course in this historical collection it's an important bit of information. I know we're trying to standardize though and for non-cultivars there is no year of introduction unless that plant is from another country and then there are dates of introduction to many countries. I don't know. Even just providing the common name isn't always simple. Some of these roses have important historical names in addition to the name we know them by now. The whole thing is complicated and I'm happy that all I have to do is offer my opinion and let the buck stop with someone else.