The Plant Press

Behind-the-scenes video takes you inside the Botany Digitization Conveyor project [video]

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 4, October 2021.

A behind-the-scenes video of the Botany Digitization Conveyor project is now available on YouTube  where you can see the conveyor belt in action and hear about the workflows and processes that made the project such a success. After 6 years of digitizing the US National Herbarium, the digitization project is nearly complete. By January 2022, nearly 4 million catalog records of the herbarium’s botanical specimens will have been digitized, each with a high-resolution image. All flowering plants and ferns, lichens, bryophytes, and algae will be represented online (see the online collection portal). 

The behind-the-scenes video was featured during the “Biodiversity Digitization: A Decade of Success” (Biodiversity Digitization 2021 | iDigBio) virtual conference. Co-sponsored by the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), iDigBio, and GBiF, the two-day conference held on September 22 and 23 celebrated the collective successes of mobilization and efforts to digitize the world’s biodiversity data in the US and abroad. Participation by NMNH staff in the conference included six speakers and four virtual tours of the museum’s collections. Over 800 attendees pre-registered for this event.

The virtual conference provided both detailed looks at specific work being done in digitization, as well as a broad outlook on the meaning and significance of digitized collections. The themes for the two-day conference were innovations, community, grand challenges, what’s next, and looking to the future of digitization.

Other behind-the-scenes tours featured at the conference include those of the Entomology Collection, Molluscs Collection, and Cultural Objects. Each video is part of NMNH’s “Natural History for Scientists” YouTube channel.

A behind-the-scenes video of the Botany Digitization Conveyor project features Sylvia Orli and Victor Shields (Picturae) with an introduction by Eric Schuettpelz.

A Sowerby surprise: Specimen digitization project finds original hand-painted engravings

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 4, October 2021.

By Julia Beros.

They were found within the herbarium case of lichen specimens, following name and geographic order and next to cases of other lichen specimens. Then in a single cubby above and below other cubbies filled neatly by folders with CLADONIA marked on them, were a stack of lichen reference material filed right where it -could likely- belong. As digitizing the vast holdings of the U.S. National Herbarium makes its rounds of the collection, accruing over 3.5 million images, the conveyor project’s circumstantial overhaul of the Herbarium’s vast holdings has unearthed some one-of-a-kind objects.

Etching of a lichen by James Sowerby, with a species name annotated as “lanatus” and print series number “846” in upper corner, published 1801. The etching was recently found in a folder in the lichen cabinets during the digitization process of lichen specimens.

Sometimes you discover a stray specimen or two and maybe some out-of-place photo slides or glass plates are apt to get misplaced in the herbarium. Museum Specialist Carol Kelloff recalls the time when Emeritus Curator Harold Robinson accidentally refiled a stack of specimens with his unfinished manuscript at the bottom of the pile—and after finding it much later, he published it, post haste! So it is not unlikely, although still surprising, when a stack of beautifully hand-painted original engravings are found amongst packets of aging lichens. Nearing the final cases of imaging and cuing up the Bryophytes and Algae, the digitization project has just imaged the lichen collection, transcribing the label data for inclusion in the database and to be more easily accessible. Including all parts of the herbarium in this project not only rounds out the database, it gives a clearer picture of our holdings, prioritizing needs amongst the collections, and renewing focus in underutilized parts of the collections. In the lichen cabinets, pages delicately torn from original publications of James Sowerby’s engravings are stapled tidily to specimen sheets and annotated with new or confirmed names at the bottom. 

The artist James Sowerby (1757–1822), an innate naturalist, studied at the Royal Academy in London and in combining these two passions “decided to be a painter of flowers.” He worked first with botanist William Curtis, who helped Sowerby develop a scientific eye which laid the foundation of his career as a scientific illustrator. His first published engravings that he hand-painted were plates in Curtis’ Flora Londinensis. A prolific illustrator, his work was published in many floras, mineralogy, and zoology books, and his sons, learning the trade from childhood, continued the Sowerby legacy of scientific illustration.

Art by Alice Tangerini: Pseudarthria panii R.Zhang, T.S.Yi & B.Pan

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 3, July 2021.

The diversity of plant symbioses and the relationships plants have with insects, fungi, bacteria, and even other plants was the theme of the 18th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium held virtually in May 2021. One presentation focused on nitrogen-fixing symbiosis between legumes and rhizobia. Alice Tangerini has illustrated several nitrogen-fixing legumes. One such plate of hers remains unpublished. When Tangerini received an unidentified plant specimen from Ashley Egan (Assistant Curator 2013-2017), it was possibly a new species of Desmodium. Tangerini made the drawing from dried unmounted material and some digital images of the flowers and habit. The drawing was done in two plates and combined. One plate contained all floral dissections and habit and a second plate had the adaxial and abaxial leaf surfaces. The hooked hairs on the pedicel were important to show. In a 2018 paper, a team from Kunming Institute of Botany named this plant as a new species of Pseudarthria from Asia.

Research & Activities [Video]

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 3, July 2021.

On May 19, Research Associate John Wiersema presented a webinar entitled, “A Taxonomist’s View on the Essence of Waterlilies that Inspired Claude Monet,” to the membership of Marie Selby Botanical Garden in Sarasota, Florida. In this virtual botanical briefing, Wiersema asked, “What is it about the nature of waterlilies that provided the inspiration for Claude Monet’s gardens and so many of his impressionist paintings?” Wiersema’s webinar examined the role of waterlilies in the aquatic landscape, explored the relationships among the various forms of waterlilies throughout the world, and probed the aesthetic qualities that have made them the ultimate aquatic ornamental. He also spoke about the early history of waterlily hybridization in Europe in relation to the waterlilies available to Monet when Monet established his water garden in Giverny in the late 19th century, with a closer look at those that successfully established on Monet’s estate. Wiersema also finds an appreciation in the sheer beauty and serenity of pristine waterlily settings and a Monet impressionist rendering of it.

In John Wiersema's webinar, "A Taxonomist’s View on the Essence of Waterlilies that Inspired Claude Monet," Wiersema provides a chronology of Monet's paintings and looks closely at the botany behind the artist's inspiration.

Wiersema, a specialist on the taxonomy of the waterlily group, focuses his research on the waterlily genus Nymphaea. He has studied and collected these plants in both temperate and tropical countries on six continents, personally cultivating at least 60 such gatherings for direct observation over the last four decades, and examined thousands of global water lily herbarium specimens. He has discovered and described several new species and has participated in over 30 scientific publications on the group. Retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service after more than 30 years, he now serves as a Research Associate in the Botany Department of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Wiersema gained global standing as a specialist in plant nomenclature, and now has direct editorial involvement with both the botanical and cultivated plant codes of international nomenclature and the international journal Taxon. Over his professional career, he has contributed to some 125 scientific publications.

The presentation is available online at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxlJQwp0N-U>.