Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation
A Research Division of Carnegie Mellon University

Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

Search a large and growing portion of our online collections, including handwritten documents.
PROTOTYPE

This prototype uses state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, including a vision-language model (VLM) capable of reading handwritten documents as well as typed and printed text, to create searchable transcriptions of digitized materials in the Hunt Institute Archives. This makes it possible to search the textual contents of individual pages, including material that may not be described in the archival catalog.

Use Keyword search for specific words, names, dates, scientific names, or phrases. Try Semantic search (experimental) to describe a topic, question, or kind of material when you do not know the exact wording used in the documents.

About the AI-generated transcriptions

The transcriptions are generated automatically from page images and may contain errors, especially with difficult handwriting, unusual names, multiple languages, image-quality problems, or complex layouts. They are intended primarily as a discovery aid rather than authoritative transcriptions.

Each result provides the generated transcription and links to the original digitized material and associated archival description so that readings can be checked against the source. The transcription workflow uses AI models run locally by the Hunt Institute.

About Keyword and Semantic search

Keyword search is the default and matches the wording in the transcriptions. Results contain all your terms. Use quotes for an exact phrase. Substring matching is supported, so aceae can find plant-family names ending in -aceae.

Semantic search (experimental) is useful when you know what kind of material you are looking for but do not know the words used in the documents. It ranks transcribed passages by similarity of meaning, so relevant results may not contain the exact words in your query.

Semantic queries can be broad research topics, descriptions of activities or relationships, or natural-language questions. For example:

plant collecting and fieldwork in South America medicinal, culinary, or other traditional uses of plants chromosomes and plant classification early herbals and botanical illustrations botanical institutions exchanging plants, seeds, and specimens microscopy and photomicrography in botanical research How did botanists and gardeners introduce plants from one region to another? grafting, budding, and propagation of tropical fruit crops

Semantic search is not a chatbot: a question is used as a search query, and the system returns archival passages that appear conceptually related to it rather than generating an answer or summary. Short descriptions and ordinary research questions generally work better than lists of disconnected keywords. Quotation marks have no special meaning in Semantic mode. Cross-language matching may work in some cases, but it should not be treated as translation.

Keyword and Semantic search are complementary. Keyword search lets you require particular wording; Semantic search can surface differently worded passages about the same subject. Depending on the research question, trying both can reveal different useful material.

Open a result: use the prominent page-and-transcription link to see the metadata, PDF, and full transcription. Keyword-search terms are highlighted in the transcription.

Archives Collections Database (ArchivesSpace): the Collection, Item/Folder, and Digital Object links open the corresponding archival records. Collection-level dates describe the collection as a whole, not necessarily the specific item or page.

If a PDF does not load: on the detail page, use the Digital Object link, click “Go to file” in ArchivesSpace, and navigate to the page number shown here.

Current limitations
  • Automated transcriptions can contain missing or incorrect text or unintended repetition. Difficult handwriting, image quality, unusual layouts, and multiple languages can reduce accuracy. Always consult the original page image when an exact reading matters.
  • Semantic search remains experimental. Its rankings are an additional discovery aid, not a complete or definitive set of relevant results, and highly ranked pages can sometimes be only broadly related.
  • This is an active prototype. Search coverage, transcriptions, functionality, and the interface may continue to change as additional archival material is processed and the system is improved.

← Back to results

Page 35 · DO #1164 · 27_Morrison_Bx7FF8r

Collection
Benjamin Yoe Morrison (1891–1966) papers
Item/Folder
Report on a trip to Colombia, 1943–1944
Digital Object
DO #1164, page 35
Collection-level dates
1915–1965, n.d.
Open PDF at page 35 ↗

Page transcription

-30-

lines in the open nursery where it can grow without transplanting. Usually by the end of the first summer the whiplike growth is large enough to receive the bud. This heals in place before the winter dormancy begins, passes the winter in an inactive state and breaks into normal growth the following spring. If it is necessary to cut off the top of the seedling stock to force the growth of the bud, this can be done in one or two steps, but meantime the upward flow of sap is assured by the adequate top of the seedling. After the budded seedling has grown for a season, it can be transplanted for growing on.

In contrast with all this, the stock developed from a cutting has the first check in the actual rooting of the cutting. It is further slowed up by its transplanting to the nursery where it is to be budded or grafted.

Grafting, a practice based normally upon a union between stock and scion during their dormant season, requires a longer period of healing and tissue union than budding. Since complete dormancy appears to be difficult and rare in Colombia, the use of grafting rather than budding seems to bring about an additional difficulty for the plant. It has the further mechanical difficulty that the actual union between the two tissues of stock and scion is less perfect as compared to that resulting from budding.

For most routine nursery practices, grafting has been abandoned in the United States. If it is employed, it is usually a winter practice and, in many cases, the stock is represented only by the root of the stock plant without trunk tissue. For this purpose the root of a seedling is often employed, thereby avoiding the possibility of vegetative sprouts from the stock. What adaptations of these practices may be developed in Colombia can be proven only by trial.

Another propagation method, a modification of grafting which may require special study for tropical plants such as mango, is the approach graft or the inarch. This involves essentially the maintenance of two collections of plants in pots, one, the stock plants to receive the graft, the other, the parent plants that supply the scion for inarching. The one cultural difficulty in this system is the production and rapid utilization of the stock plants so that they do not develop root systems damaged by a long stay in the pot or container. This is merely a matter of planning, but it should be understood in advance that all stocks that have become pot-bound before inarching should not be used at all but rather discarded.