Digital Guide

Paul Klee

Sheet of herbarium

Pflanzen auf grundiertem Papier , 46,5 x 30,5 cm

Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Schenkung Familie Klee

Show garden 2

Barley is growing on our main field this year. This will be used to brew beer – but not until next year. Various crops that can be used for brewing are growing in our show garden. For example, different varieties of malting barley with names like Leandra or Ellinor. There is also a variety of brewing wheat called Elixir!

We also grow different crops that can end up on our breakfast or lunch table: Potatoes and sweet potatoes, pearl millet, sweet corn and perennial rye. Pearl millet originally comes from Africa and is particularly resistant to drought. It is also known as brush millet! Perennial rye is also known as ancient rye and is also a very old type of grain. You can bake bread from its flour, process the grains into grain risotto or eat the grains directly.

About the Work

Paul Klee made herbarium pages for years: He collected plants while traveling or during his hikes and walks. Back home, he affixed the plants to black paper to preserve them. This allowed Klee to study the particularities and structures of individual plants. The herbarium pages, therefore, most clearly show Klee’s intense interest in plants and in nature more generally. This page is special because Klee affixed different kinds of clover (“Klee” in German) to it. In addition to the specific Latin names, he wrote at the bottom right: “Everything that is called ‘Klee.’”

Learn More: The Herbarium – A History

An herbarium is a collection of plants. The word comes from the Latin “herba,” which means herb. It is usually a collection of pressed and dried plants that are affixed to cardboard or sheets of paper. Herbaria were created as early as the 15th century, mostly to be able to observe plants during the winter months. In the earliest herbaria, the individual sheets of paper were bound into books. Later, scientific herbaria were created in which plants were collected and organized as comprehensively as possible and according to specific criteria.