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Millions of plants picked by Victorian collectors up to 150 years ago and held in herbarium collections across the world could become a new source of data for studying climate change, according to research. The scarcity of reliable long-term data on phenology - the study of natural climate-driven events - has hindered scientists' understanding of how species respond to climate change. But research by a team of ecologists from the 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of East Anglia, the 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Kent, the 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Sussex and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, shows that plants pressed up to 150 years ago experienced warmer springs resulting in earlier flowering, similar to field-based observations of flowering made much more recently.