When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, they threatened not only the thousands of dried, pressed, and preserved specimens stored at the university, but the land where those samples had been collected. Rare species found only in Ukraine, some of which are at risk of extinction, are documented on its shelves. Though it's by no means the world’s largest-the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris has 9,500,000 specimens-Kherson’s herbarium is, Moisienko says, valuable because of its unique contribution to the field. They serve a vital role in the study of species extinction, invasive pests, and climate change. Herbaria like the one in Kherson, a port city in the south of Ukraine, are about more than just taxonomy. “This is something like a piece of art,” says 52-year-old Moisienko. Their mission was to rescue a piece of history: the Kherson herbarium, an irreplaceable collection of more than 32,000 plants, lichen, mosses, and fungi, amassed over a century by generations of scientists, some from thousand-kilometer-long treks across remote areas of Ukraine. The city was still being shelled, and to access their laboratory meant scaling a spiraling stairwell lined with stained-glass windows looking out over the Dnipro River, towards the enemy. That morning, the pair-both professors of botany-had arrived on the train from Kyiv and made their way through the partially ruined streets of Kherson to reach the university. The explosions, they thought, were likely coming from the tanks less than 5 kilometers away from where they stood. Mushroom clouds hung over the horizon as they gazed through the rattling floor-to-ceiling windows of the botany department. It was a cool December morning, and the Russian troops that had occupied the Ukrainian city of Kherson since the earliest days of Moscow’s full-scale invasion had recently retreated east across the Dnipro River. From the seventh floor at Kherson State University, Oleksandr Khodosovtsev and Ivan Moisienko had a clear view of the enemy.
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