Brief notes on some Percival Wheats

The cabinet housing Percival and Helbaeck samples.

The University of Reading Herbarium houses a collection of wheat samples collected by John Percival.  Some of those samples are archaeological and these are housed in plastic boxes in metal drawers in the main herbarium.  To help scholars who wish to know which samples we hold, this blog includes a photograph of each of the drawers that make up the ‘P’ series numbers from P1-P121. Each box usually contains a handwritten label and some Charcoalized grains although the actual number is hugely variable.

Box P46 opened to illustrate the contents.

There are many papers describing the Percival collections but no published images of the stored collections as far as I am aware.  The images each represent single storage drawers.

Drawer 1

Drawer 1 – samples P1 – P27

Drawer 2

Drawer 2 – samples P28 – P51

Drawer 3

Drawer 3 – Samples P52 – P68, P70 – P76 (Sample P69 is not present)

Drawer 4

Drawer 4 – samples P77 – P100

Drawer 5

Drawer 5 – Samples P101 – P104, P106 – P111, P113 – P117, P118, P120 – P121