The Plant Press

Awards & Honors

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

Alice Tangerini was the recipient of the Linnean Society’s 2020 Jill Smythies Award. The award is given annually to a botanical artist for outstanding, diagnostically relevant published illustrations. Due to the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 award ceremony was postponed, and a decision was subsequently made to hold the 2021 event via Zoom. Although Tangerini was unable to travel to receive the award in person, she accepted the award during a Linnean Society Medals Ceremony held on 24 May 2021. Sandra Knapp, president of the Society, presented the award to Tangerini during the ceremony.

Sandra Knapp, president of the Linnean Society, presents the 2020 Jill Smythies Award to Alice Tangerini during the Society’s virtual medals ceremony on 24 May 2021.

The following accolade was given to Tangerini by the Linnean Society:

For the excellence of her depictions of plants for scientific use, including the detailed portrayal of their diagnostic characteristics, Alice Tangerini is our 2020 winner of the Jill Smythies Award. In addition to illustrating new species, Alice has illustrated multiple taxa from the same group for the same publication, such that the details of the drawings can be used to distinguish the species.

Since 1972, Alice has made diagnostic illustrations for over 1,000 plant species in pen and ink, graphite, and more recently in digital media, for a variety of publications. Using mainly herbarium specimens as her resource material, she has prepared these illustrations to portray the species in a realistic manner with necessary reconstruction to remove the artefacts of drying and physical damage. Significant taxonomic characters have been enlarged with the aid of a microscope to facilitate their use in species descriptions.

Over the years, the detail and accuracy of her drawings and examinations of the specimens have resulted in authors changing descriptions, based on details observed by Alice that had escaped the botanists’ notice. For instance, her detailed examination of a proposed new species of bromeliad resulted in the production of a newly written, enhanced description. As a result, the authors, Lyman B. Smith and Harold Robinson, decided to name the new species Navia aliciae in her honour. Such collaboration with scientists in describing a taxon is the hallmark of exemplary botanical illustration.

Memorial held for Harold Robinson

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

Harold Ernest Robinson, PhD, born in 1932 in Syracuse, NY, and raised in Winchester, VA, passed away on December 17, 2020, at the age of 88. His ashes were interred on Saturday 26 June 2021 at Mount Hebron Cemetery, Winchester, Virginia, in the family plot next to his mother Mabel, along with his father Ernest, and brother William. His brother Charles Robinson’s ashes, who passed away earlier, were also interred alongside Harold according to Harold’s request.

The cover of the 4-page program provided to guests who attended Harold Robinson’s memorial on June 26, 2021.

He was the youngest child and last surviving member of his generation of the Robinsons of Winchester, believed to be descended from a British soldier captured in the battle of Saratoga in the Revolutionary War, when the Shenandoah Valley was used as a prisoner of war camp.

Harold’s niece, Micki Robinson (St. Petersburg, FL) is a minister and presided over the gathering. Although Harold never married, he had 10 nephews and nieces. All eight of the surviving nieces and nephews attended the memorial along with their spouses and children. Other attendees included staff and affiliates from the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH): Carol Kelloff, Mark Strong, Warren Wagner, Lucy Julian, Larry Dorr, Lisa Dorr, Alice Tangerini, and Ken Wurdack. Phil Recchio (NMNH Development) also attended.

The program was not formal and followed a Quaker style service, requested by Harold, where attendees spoke when they felt moved to speak, sharing remembrances or thoughts about the person, a poem or music. Several of the family spoke about recollections of Harold when they were young, especially that as a babysitter for some of them, he wove fantastic tales which included the most outrageous plants and insects, as well as bizarre human behavior, utilizing Captain Crunch as the leader of these sagas of exploratory expeditions. Harold’s niece, Maggie Robinson (Yarmouth, ME), who is an experienced fiddle player played a beautiful solo of “Ashokan Farewell” written by Jay Ungar (inspired by the Catskill Mountains but made famous from use in Ken Burns Civil War PBS series). Several staff from the NMNH Department of Botany (Dorr, Wagner, Tangerini, and Kelloff) all spoke about interactions with Harold over the many years of working together in the department and about his unique approach to research, in which his theories often had been discounted, but ultimately proved amazingly perceptive in the past couple of decades after molecular phylogenetics proved his micromorphological approach to be correct (for a deeper dive into his research, see Taxon 70: 690-698; 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12524).

Another part of a Quaker memorial is a space where photographs, awards/citations/certificates, and personal mementos can be shown and appreciated, as people are arriving or after the service itself. After Harold’s memorial at the cemetery nearly everyone went to a lunch at a nearby hotel restaurant where many of Harold’s drawings, collection of toy soldiers and writings, including an unpublished novel were displayed.

- Compiled by Warren Wagner and from memorial program by Frank Vuitch, MD (Dallas, TX)

Harold Robinson’s teenage drawings of fictional plants include highly exaggerated dates into the future. Left: “Symbioticus ventilis”: Symbiotic fern. Spores carry spores of fungi and both germinate together.  Fern gametophyte furnishes food while fungus furnishes moisture.  Fern sporophyte continues to harbor fungus at base of plant. Fungus unable to grow on glabrous petioles of sterile leaves but easily grows on pubescent petiole of sporophyll. Fungus fruits on sporophyll in contact with fern spores and both are released together. 22,000,000 A.D. Right: “Toxis potentis”: Oxidation chamber inside of trunk vaporizes the poisonous excretions of the leaves and returns them to the leaves from which they enter the air. Exceedingly dangerous gases. 22,000,000 A.D.

 

How to find black walnuts

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

By Julia Beros.

It’s the kind of object you might stumble over while on a walk and kick around with your foot accidentally, a palm sized sphere wrapped in a green and rumpled husk pocked like an eczema flare up, with a density that makes a crisp ‘plunk’ when it falls from the tree. It’s the kind of object you pick up for only a moment, but it leaves a stain of stench and tint on your fingers and a lingering waft of spicy and bright aroma along your trail. This time of year (mid-to-late June) is when these fruits begin to plump up and get picked too young by squirrels with an appetite for impatience. These black walnuts, the young fruits of Juglans nigra, begin to litter the forest floor as summer progresses into a dense heat, and for some they are a prized ingredient in a family tradition.

It’s this mid-to-late June time of year, according to the notes in my father’s book, when it’s right to begin collecting young black walnuts. It’s this time of year when large glass jars sit on the front porch, filled nearly to the lip with a thick inky liquid packed with vaguely identifiable objects that bob as the pressure shifts inside and stews under the height of summer sun. This is how my father makes orahovica, a walnut liqueur that is brewed on porches and windowsills that look out over the Dalmatian coast. Here in Maryland he continues to brew using the secrets from his family’s recipes, and is now developing his own confidential techniques with local ingredients to enjoy a familiar flavor.

Young fruit of Juglans nigra. (photo by R.A. Howard)

In Croatia homemade liqueurs like orahovica (and its herbal cousin travarica) make use of abundant local plants and the by-products from wine making (brandy) to create richly aromatic and punchy sips of aperitifs, often enjoyed in the company of guests or as a medicinal nightcap. As each home has their own “perfected” recipe whether it be the “perfect” ratio of ingredients, the “perfect” source of walnuts, the “perfect” windowsill with the “perfect” conditions, or the “perfect” home-life dynamic, each home has an inimitable version of the same drink. It’s the kind of beverage that you are handed when you are welcomed into a neighbor’s home as an introduction to get to know them better, each sip revealing more about the brewer. These traditional brandy drinks were once the libation of choice to share with friends but have become less and less popular with newer generations (perhaps due to the slightly laborious process). Opting for “colas and other soft drinks,” my dad condemns, few people keep up the home-brew tradition. While it may be harder these days to find people selling their hooch at the markets, and fewer glass jars guarding windowsills, these traditional recipes are still passed down like family heirlooms. 

Native Pollinator Garden Recipe Cards are now available

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

The National Museum of Natural History has teamed with the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC), a collaborative body of more than 170 partners, in making Native Pollinator Garden Recipe Cards. These regionally specific cards, available for download at <https://www.pollinator.org/gardencards>, were designed with easy-to-follow guidelines for creating home pollinator gardens that provide a diverse and colorful floral display throughout all growing seasons. The regional cards provide specific recommendations for native plant species to meet the unique environmental characteristics associated with each region and the pollinators that depend on native habitat. Look for these plants where native plants are sold – native plant nurseries and plant sales sponsored by native plant societies, nature centers, and conservation districts.

This Northeast Native Pollinator Garden Recipe Card is one of eight new 2-sided cards designed with easy-to-follow directions for creating home pollinator gardens that provide a diverse and colorful floral display throughout all growing seasons.

Birds, bats, bees, butterflies, beetles, and other animals that pollinate plants are responsible for bringing us one out of every three bites of food. They also sustain our ecosystems and produce natural resources by helping plants reproduce. This service is a precious resource that requires attention and is increasingly in jeopardy. Many populations of pollinating species are in decline and this decline is attributed most severely to a loss in feeding and nesting habitats. Adding natural habitat areas helps. Home gardens can attract and benefit pollinators.

The Native Pollinator Garden Recipe Card series has been designed for the Northeast, Northwest, Intermountain West, Great Plains, Midwest, Southwest, Texas, and Alaska with additional cards coming soon for N. California, S. California, and the Southeast. The recipe cards were a collaborative effort developed by the NAPPC Selecting Plants for Pollinators Task Force of which Gary Krupnick (NMNH) is a member. NAPPC's mission is to encourage the health of resident and migratory pollinating animals in North America. NAPPC raises public awareness about pollinators’ importance to agriculture, ecosystem health, and food supplies, promotes restoration of pollinator habitat, and supports scientific, economic, and policy research. As a founding participant, NMNH has been a collaborative partner of NAPPC since its inception in 1999.