The Plant Press

ForestGEO awards research grants to 7 forest scientists

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 2019.

Since 2002, ForestGEO has supported the work of forest researchers through its annual Research Grants Program. Proposals were required to use data from at least one of ForestGEO’s 67 long-term, large-scale research sites and could be put towards a research project ranging from 3 months to 2 years. A panel of reviewers met to assess the merit of 30 proposals in early September and granted over $60,000 among seven researchers. These scholars come from five countries and will cumulatively work in up to 14 ForestGEO research sites.

ForestGEO’s Lambir, Malaysia site is the focus of current scientific fieldwork. (photo by Christian Ziegler)

The grant funds will facilitate research in a host of topics pertaining to forest dynamics, including wood decomposition, mycorrhizal fungi, functional trait diversity, nutrient cycling, and habitat associations. Building global scientific capacity requires support throughout the progression of a scientist’s career, and ForestGEO is pleased to have been able to award funding to four Ph.D. students, two postdocs, and one professor.

A look into the Budapest Herbarium

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 2019.

On a recent trip Julia Beros, Botany contactor, accompanied by her sister, visited the Budapest Herbarium. Inspired by the similarities and differences between the herbarium in Budapest Herbarium and the U.S. National Herbarium she recounts some of the tour’s highlights.

 

Curator Zoltan Barina and Julia Beros in the Bupadest herbarium. (photo by Kathryn Beros)

On the corner block of Könyves Kálmán körút is a massive white stucco castle. A relic of Art Nouveau, the “Fairy Palace” at one time housed one of the Royal secondary schools of Hungary, and after a series of various uses it now safeguards the botanical department of the Hungarian Natural History Museum. Zoltán Barina, one of four permanent collections staff in Budapest, gave us a tour of the collections.

The sun radiates in the stillness of the valley, wafting through shallow fields of grass, reflecting off the architectural vestiges of the past, the Baroque facades, the Maria-Theresa yellows, deflecting back over the hills of Buda. A city divided by its own river, here in Pest the herbarium too is split, into the Carpathian and General collections. The Natural History Museum was created in 1802 and the department of Botany in 1870 (around the time the U.S. National Herbarium was formed, 1848). The collections, now surpassing 2 million (with some housed at an offsite extension location), began with a vast deposit from renowned botanist Pál Kitaibel. Frequently referred to as the “Linnaeus of Hungary” for having been the first official collector in the Carpathian basin, and having more than 1,000 names described from his collections.

The herbarium is growing rapidly, having received roughly 150,000 new specimens within the past 15 years from nearby institutions. Though the building underwent renovations in the 1920s it lacks an industrial freezer, making the challenges of running an herbarium more pronounced. Often relying on various chemicals for fumigation, they are still looking for the best way to manage pests in a less than ideal situation. As Barina notes, there are burns from fluoridic acid (no longer in use) on many older sheets. Likewise at the U.S. National Herbarium many older specimens cured with mercury show dark stains, and controlling the spread is a continual chore. One recent acquisition is a collection of around 40,000 specimens from Szeged University of never before fumigated miscellanea. Although some sheets show visible damage many are untouched, which gave researchers a unique opportunity to study natural pest resistance in certain species (or learn which are the tastiest treat for an herbarium stowaway).

Left: Two quasi-books, known as Holz Bücher, camouflaged by their binding made of tree material, act as plant records for various tree collections. Ranging in age some are 130 years old. (photo by Julia Beros); Right: Interior of a Holz Bücher showing different tree parts, and equipped with secret compartments with written descriptions of the plant habits on tiny scrolls. (photo by Julia Beros)

A review of field guides to grasses of the western United States

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 2019.

By Robert J. Soreng

Over the last 12 (to 26) years several field guides to grasses of western United States were published. See the list of cited field guides below with notes on each of them.

Field Guide to the Grasses of Oregon and Washington (Oregon State University Press) by C.T. Roché, R.F. Brainerd, B.L. Wilson, N. Otting and R.C. Korfhage.

Of these guides, those for Alaska (Skinner et al., 2012), Nevada (Perryman & Skinner, 2007), Oregon & Washington (Roché et al., 2019), Texas (for the most part) (Shaw, 2012), and Wyoming (Skinner, 2010) are fully illustrated with photographs of habits and diagnostic parts, sometimes supplemented by line drawings. One additional guide listed below, for Wisconsin (Judziewicz et al., 2014), covers many of north central prairie grasses, and is very thorough and excellently done.

Four other western guides are amply illustrated with line drawings (with or without a few photos): California (Smith, 2014), Colorado (Shaw, 2008), New Mexico (Allred, 1993), and the Intermountain Region (Anderton et al., 2009). You may also find two recent illustrated contributions from Chihuahua (Herrera Arrieta & Peterson, 2018), and Coahuila (Valdés-Reyna, 2015) useful for our southern border regions. Excellent illustrations in these guides are mainly reproduced from the Flora of North America (FNA; Barkworth et al., vol. 25, 2003 & vol. 24, 2007), Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest (Hitchcock et al., 1969), or Manual of Grasses of the United States (Hitchcock {Chase ed.}, 1951). I also recommend the 2^nd edition of the Flora of the Pacific Northwest (Hitchcock et al., 2018), which has been extensively updated for taxa and taxonomy, and still has great illustrated keys. Grass species are still difficult to key out, and having good photos to aid identifications makes a world of difference!

Lorraine Eyde (1932-2019)

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 2019.

Dr. Lorraine Sylvia Eyde (née Dittrich) passed away on July 10, 2019 at the age of 87. She was the widow of Botany curator Richard Husted Eyde (1928-1990), whom she married in 1957. While Dick was completing his Ph.D., the couple lived in India (1960-1961) where Dick had a Fulbright scholarship. Subsequently, they moved to D.C. so that Dick could work at the Smithsonian. A strong proponent of women in the workforce, Laurie pursued her own independent career as a psychologist with the Office of Personnel Management. She continued to maintain an interest in Botany in retirement and served for many years as the Secretary of the Botanical Society of Washington. A son and a grandchild survive her.