The Plant Press

Keeping an Eye Open for Plant Exudates and Amber

From Plant Press Vol. 16 no. 2

Jorge Santiago-Blay, Department of Paleobiology

Left panel: Resins from Pinus coulteri D. Don (Pinaceae,). Central panel: Latexes from Euphorbia tirrucali L. (Euphorbiaceae). Right panel: Gums from Prunus sp. (Rosaceae). Images by Roy (Chip) Clark.

Several collaborators, including Joseph B. Lambert (Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois), and I have been steadily pursuing the study of plant exudates (e.g. resins, gums, kinos) and ambers (fossilized plant resins) worldwide for several decades. Through their chemistry as well as biological inclusions, in the case of amber, these materials help us understand our past. For example, amber materials we have studied from Chiapas, Mexico, contain inclusions, such as the base of a barnacle and carbonates strongly suggesting a tropical coastal environment million of years ago.

If the exudate happens to be a resin, the nuclear magnetic resonance NMR spectroscopy profile can help us determine the botanical provenance, such as the plant family and sometimes the genus. For instance, using the carbon-13 isotope, the resinous exudates of conifers can be placed into their correct family (e.g. Pinaceae, Cupressaceae, etc.). Additionally, the same resinous exudates of pines and their allies can be further correctly identified to genera if proton NMR is performed.

Some key discoveries resulting from those efforts have included the establishment of a typology of ambers of the world as well as a classification of modern plant exudates of the world. Although exudates have distinct physical properties, looks can be deceiving. An exudate collected from Pinus coulteri D. Don (Pinaceae) is a resin and it is the most commonly collected exudate in conifers. Milky exudates, often called latexes, are also resins, as in the materials oozed by Euphorbia tirrucali L. (Euphorbiaceae). Exudates from cherry trees, like those that ornate our nation’s capital, are gums, as in the case of Prunus sp. (Rosaceae).

Exudates are ubiquitous in the plant world. If any reader sees materials that look like plant exudates, I will appreciate a sample (100 mg or the approximate volume of an eraser on a pencil) or knowing about who to contact to collect such materials.

Notes from the Plant Mounting Room

From Plant Press Vol. 16 no. 2

By Melinda Peters

Kermadecia sp. (US 3653808 )

The plant mounting room at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is buzzing with productivity. It has been a pleasure getting to know the dedicated volunteers, contractors, and staff plant mounters who help prepare the specimens for our research programs. These are treasures of the US collection. We are working on current exchange material for curators while also incorporating specimens from the backlog. The plant mounters have unique backgrounds and are a delightful group to work with. I am also happy to report that two new volunteers, Joan Carpenter and Traute Bushley, have joined the mounting crew, are learning the protocol, and are contributing to this wonderful group. For the first three months of 2013, we have mounted 3,362 specimens for the collection.

I am working on incorporating “learning moments” for the volunteers who are interested in botany and encourage curators and visitors to stop by the mounting room to share any plant knowledge or stories. Many of these volunteers have been coming to work on this project for years and it just shows that they enjoy contributing to our nation’s collection and find it a rewarding experience.

Learn about three noteworthy newly mounted acquisitions below the fold...

The Botany-Horticulture Library Transformed

From Plant Press Vol. 16 no. 2

By Robin Everly

When the August 2011 earthquake damaged the shelving in the Botany-Horticulture library at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, the last thing on anyone’s mind was reorganizing the entire 100,000 book and journal collection, plus modernizing the reading room space. However, a year and a half later, this is exactly what has happened.

During meetings with the Department of Botany, Smithsonian Gardens, and Smithsonian Libraries, all parties decided this was an opportunity to consolidate and merge several collections. Several meetings were held in the fall of 2011 to discuss how to go about making this project a reality. Once the 18,000 books and journals, originally displaced by the earthquake, were brought back to the library in early January 2012, plans were already underway to prepare for two other major shifts of the collection. The first shift, occurred over three days in June, and involved incorporating 2,000 books on ferns and lichens and part of E. Yale Dawson’s donation of phycology books with the main collection.

Connecting Content at the US National Herbarium

From Plant Press Vol. 16 no. 2

By Sylvia Orli, guest contributor
IT Manager

The latest buzz term in natural history is “connecting content.” We see the term used officially in certain contexts, such as the California Academy of Science’s collaborative initiative to digitize natural history field notes and connect them to natural history collections and Biodiversity Heritage Library publications. But connecting content can also refer to projects which connect concepts in various content areas. In the US National Herbarium, we are using our KE EMu (Electronic Museum) data system to store different types of content, such as specimen data, photo images, mapping coordinates, and genetic voucher details, which connect to each other and to outside content. To date, we have nearly 1.2 million specimen descriptive records, 300,000 geocoded collection localities, and 185,000 specimen images and live plant images in EMu and available online. With these resources, we can illustrate botanical taxonomic and geographic checklists with both live images and plant specimen images, create locality maps of our collections, and connect our botanical research to our herbarium collections through the use of online tools.

The original 1856 botanical illustration of “Echinocactus (Sclerocactus) whipplei” drawn by Paulus Roetter, above, is housed at the National Museum of Natural History, whereas the type specimen is at the herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Sometimes the merits of connecting our botanical content into one data storage system are shown to us in surprising ways. For example, this year we will be importing our botanical art images into EMu. Alice Tangerini, our botanical illustrator, discovered that the Department of Botany has most of the original botanical illustrations from the Report of the Expedition of the 35^th Parallel, “Explorations and Surveys of a Railroad Route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean,” published in 1856. The exploration was funded by the U.S. Secretary of War and led by A.W. Whipple of the Corps of Topographical Engineers and accompanied by botanists, George Engelmann and J. M. Bigelow of St. Louis. The expedition was part of an initiative of the U.S. government to find a railroad route from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean.

If the Department of Botany had the original report drawings, shouldn’t we also have the specimens from the expedition? The notion of combing the herbarium for specimens from this expedition to match the drawings seemed daunting, as 70 percent of the herbarium specimens are not inventoried. But Botany has also embarked on the Historical Collections project, an effort to document the botanical explorations in the US National Herbarium and digitize the collections associated with the expeditions as part of the Global Plants Initiative (GPI). By querying the name of the expedition in our EMu system, we were able to retrieve 71 records and specimen images for the Whipple expedition and match many of them to the original illustrations. A score for both the Whipple Expedition illustrations and specimens! We could now digitally connect the illustrations to their voucher specimen records.