The Plant Press

Art by Alice Tangerini

From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1998.

This habit drawing of Xenophyllum staffordiae (Sandwith) V.A. Funk, a member of the Asteraceae, has only been found in its type locality in Peru and a possible second collection in Bolivia at altitudes above 4,000 m. The species was named for Dora Stafford who collected it in 1937 in San Antonio de Esquilache, Peru (near Puno). In 1997, it was moved from the genus Werneria to Xenophyllum (i.e. .strange leaves.), by Vicki Funk (Novon 7: 235- 241). The drawing will be part of Funk.s monograph of the genus.

First Cuatrecasas Lecturer Chosen

From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1998.

The first Annual José Cuatrecasas Lecture will be given by James Luteyn of the New York Botanical Garden on June 25th at the National Museum of Natural History. Luteyn is an internationally recognized authority on the flora of the paramo regions of South America, a topic that was also the specialty of the late Cuatrecasas.The paramos are the subject of a soon to be published book by Luteyn which will include the original black and white photos of the region taken by Cuatrecasas during his extensive travels in the Andes. The title of Luteyn’s presentation will be “Paramos: Plant Diversity at the Top of the Andes.” This lecture is sponsored by the José Cuatrecasas Botanical Fund, an international endowment honoring the lifelong work of José Cuatrecasas whose research, especially in the Asteraceae, was devoted to the classification, biogeography, exploration, and ecology of plants of the paramo and subparamo regions of Andean South America. The lecture is open to the public.

New Algae and Lichens Sites Added

From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1998.

In February and March, the Botany Department premiered two World Wide Web sites, on algae and lichens. Both are accessible from the department’s home page (http://www.nmnh.si.edu/departments/botany.html). The new Web sites represent significant advances in the department’s efforts to make information from the Smithsonian’s plant collections and databases available to users around the world.

The algae site is located at http://www.nmnh.si.edu/botany/projects/algae. The Smithsonian holds one of the largest collections of algae in the world, including over 183,000 pressed specimens, and 61,600 specimens on microscope slides, in boxes, or preserved in liquid. The collection includes algae from marine, estuarine, freshwater, terrestrial (including caves), and airborne habitats, with principal holdings of green, brown and red marine macroalgae, diatoms and cyanobacteria. The collection has a strong representation from the Gulf of California, Pacific Mexico, southern and central California and the Channel Islands, the Galapagos Islands, Aldabra Atoll, and the Caribbean (especially Florida, Belize, the Bahamas, and Panama).

The algae Web site currently allows searches and data retrieval for brown algae (Phaeophyta) in the Type Collection. Efforts are underway to expand direct access to all of the algal type holdings. Data for the main collection (including the complete Type Database) can be obtained from in-house staff. Research interest profiles and regularly updated lists of publications (including many abstracts) by the staff are included.

Basic information is also provided on the different algal groups, their economic uses, collecting and preserving algae, references for published marine floras, and hypertext links to other algal sites on the World Wide Web. The new Web site was developed by Robert Sims and other botany staff. Comments and suggestions may be sent to Sims or James Norris (sims.robert@nmnh.si.eduornorris.james@nmnh.si.edu).

The new lichen Web site (http://www.nmnh.si.edu/botany/projects/lichens) provides an introduction to the lichen collection and associated research at the U.S. National Herbarium. The lichen collection, estimated at 250,000 specimens, is the largest in North America and one of the ten largest in the world. The collection is worldwide in coverage, and especially rich in North America, emphasizing Parmeliaceae and Cladoniaceae.

The site was designed to provide electronic access to databases, keys, descriptions, maps and illustrations that will be produced in a five year NSF PEET project “Monographic Studies in the Cladoniaceae” centered at the Smithsonian. Currently, the site provides abstracts and descriptions of this and related projects, a biographical sketch and selected bibliography for Paula DePriest, and links to the Web sites of other researchers. A link to a sister site maintained by Samuel Hammer at Boston University will be added.

Mellon Foundation Fellowship Recipients Announced

From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1998.

George R. Proctor (SJ) and James D. Ackerman (UPRRP), sponsored by Pedro Acevedo, are the recipients of the SI-Mellon Fellowships for 1998-1999. Proctor will visit for a year beginning June 1, and will be working on a treatment of the monocots (except orchids) of Puerto Rico. Paul Peterson and Mark Strong will be providing treatments for certain groups. Along with Proctor will come project collaborators José Cedeño (UPR) and Patrick Lewis (IJ). Ackerman will spend 2 months, starting in June, working on Orchidaceae of the Greater Antilles. His graduate student Carlos Trejo will be here April 15-mid June to investigate the biogeography of the Caribbean region.

Hammer Awards presented

From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1998.

On April 21, Ellen Farr and Tom Hollowell were members of a team of NMNH staff who were awarded one of Vice President Gore’s Hammer awards for their work on the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS). The Hammer Award is Vice President Gore’s special recognition for organizations that have made significant contributions in support of the President’s National Performance Review principles: putting customers first, cutting red tape, empowering employees and getting back to basics. ITIS is an interagency program that supports a database of taxonomic information on species names. It is the first comprehensive, standardized reference for scientific names (including synonyms and common names) for all the plants and animals of North America and the surrounding oceans.

Chair with a View

From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1998.

Thirty-four thousand species of flowering plants, conifers and ferns are threatened with extinction worldwide, including over 4,600 species in the United States alone. This astounding figure was announced to the world on April 8th at simultaneous news conferences in Washington, London, Edinburgh, Sydney, and Cape Town with the publication of the 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants. The Department of Botany at NMNH has a long history of involvement with the Red List, primarily through the efforts of Jane Villa-Lobos who was one of the original compilers of the plant data from Latin America. Jane deserves much credit for the publication of this work as do the curators in the department who contributed their expertise on various plant groups.

The Red List is important for several reasons, it: 1) is the first comprehensive assessment of threatened plant species worldwide; 2) provides a scientific wake-up call on the status of this significant plant extinction event that is occurring in our lifetime; 3) is the result of a unique coalition of scientists and conservationists working together; and 4) could not have been accomplished without the extensive plant collections housed at museums, botanical gardens and universities.

The interaction between government scientific institutions like the Smithsonian and environmental agencies like the IUCN Species Survival Commission and The Nature Conservancy are essential for conserving the world’s biota. The results of the IUCN Red List have made it very clear that such collaborations between research scientists at museums and conservationists at NGO’s will be more important as time goes on. The knowledge and information about plant diversity embodied in our scientific collections provide the foundation upon which rational plans for conserving biodiversity can be formulated. With the publication of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants we now have a clear picture of the magnitude of this national and global biodiversity crisis.

One of the questions repeatedly asked during the news conference was “How do we know what species should be put on the Red List?” The answer is the basic scientific data needed for this assessment has been obtained through the critical study of collections by taxonomists and field botanists around the world. The 4.5 million plant collections housed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, when coupled with the specimens at our collaborating institutions such as the New York Botanical Garden, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Edinburgh, and the National Botanical Institute in South Africa, comprise an invaluable reference library of nearly 20 million plant specimens.

For the reporters and others who were at the news conference and unaware of our extensive specimen holdings, I provided several “real world” examples:

“Here in Washington we are in the middle of our annual Cherry Blossom Festival. Yet few of us realize that 14% of the species in the cherry family are threatened with extinction. We know this because we can monitor the wild status of these plants using our collections.” I then showed a species of Rubus (R. pernagaeus Fernald) that is nearly extinct in its native state of Virginia, the only state where it is found.

“Palm Sunday has just been celebrated this past weekend; nearly 29% of the species in the palm family are threatened with extinction in their native habitats, both here in the United States as well as worldwide. A species of Pritchardia palm,” which I demonstrated with a collection of P. affinis Becc. from our herbarium, “is now nearly extinct in its native habitats in Hawaii. Although fewer than 65 living plants remain on the Big Island of Hawaii, we still have the opportunity to save this species from extinction. Our collections in the Museum allow us to track the history of decline of such threatened species.”

“Flowers of the iris family are one of the most highly prized components of our spring and summer gardens in the United States and Europe. Through our survey of collections at the Natural History Museum as well as other museums and botanical gardens, we now know that nearly 32% of the species in the iris family are seriously threatened.” The isotype of Romulea sulphurea Bég. collected in 1897 in South Africa served as a perfect example of a species now known to be extinct. “Nearly all of the information we have about this plant is contained in this specimen in our collections here at the Smithsonian.”

Finally, I ended with a good medicinal example. St. John’s wort, Hypericum perforatum L., a timehonored herbal remedy for treating depression, is now one of the most popular medicinals available on the market. St. John’s wort is by no means threatened with extinction. However, Hypericum crenulatum Boiss. is a threatened close relative from Asia. Its medicinal potential is unknown. Through the use of our collections we can identify such important species for testing as medicines.

The 1997 Red List is obviously a conservative estimate of the number of endangered plant species on the planet. For those countries where the flora is well known the percent threatened is high (for example, the United States with 29% of the total flora threatened.) However, where the flora is still largely unknown and the rate of habitat destruction high, the percent of threatened species is grossly underestimated (for example, Ecuador with only 4.3% threatened and Colombia with a mere 1.4% threatened.) If we are to refine our estimates to reflect the true threatened status of plants on the planet, we must continue to build, maintain and enhance our botanical collections as a vital reference library of our knowledge of the natural world.

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1998.

Emilio Bruna, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California Davis Center for Population Biology, is studying the effects of habitat fragmentation on plant population dynamics at the NMNH Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project near Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil. Bruna is working with John Kress and Preston Aldrich (Post-doctoral Fellow) on the reproductive ecology and dynamics of Heliconia acuminata, conducting field experiments on pollen and resource limitation, pollinator efficiency, and the costs of reproduction. Bruna received a Smithsonian Pre-doctoral Fellowship Award.

The Research Training Program session from May 23-August 3 will include three participants in the Department of Botany. David Taylor will be working with Harold Robinson on Pitcairnia (Bromeliaceae). David is a senior at Sam Houston State University, Texas. Thinley Namgyel will be working with John Kress on a phylogenetic and biogeographic analysis of the Himalayan genus Cautleya (Zingiberaceae). Thinley is from Thimpu, Bhutan, and a senior at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Allison Wack will be working with Stan Shetler on the flora of the Baltimore-Washington Area. Allison is a junior at Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia.

IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants Released

From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1998.

One out of eight plant species worldwide is at risk of extinction, according to the most comprehensive scientific assessment ever assembled on the status of the world’s plants. This announcement was made on April 8 at a press conference at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History as the 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants was released. The IUCN Red List reveals that 12.5%, or 34,000, of the world’s vascular plant species are threatened. In the United States, perhaps one of the most thoroughly studied countries in the world, 29% of the nation’s 16,000 plant species are at risk of extinction.

The Red List is the result of a 20-year effort by a unique coalition of scientists, conservation organizations, botanical gardens and museums. The Red List was published by IUCN-The World Conservation Union and compiled by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC). Conservation assessments were provided by numerous scientists and conservationists with major input from the Smithsonian’s Department of Botany, The Nature Conservancy, Environment Australia and CSIRO, the National Botanical Institute (South Africa), Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Edinburgh, and the New York Botanical Garden.

The Department of Botany has had a collaborative agreement with IUCN and WCMC since 1980 to gather information on threatened plants and habitats in Mexico, Central and South America. Through the efforts of Jane Villa-Lobos, Director of the Latin American Plants Program, an extensive global network of scientists was established to assemble and monitor vital information on the conservation status of plants in this diverse region. Staff in the department and the plant collections in the U.S. National Herbarium were an invaluable source of information on taxonomy, distribution and conservation status. This scientific data is a major component of the Red List.

Of the estimated 270,000 known species of vascular plants, which include ferns, fern allies, gymnosperms (including conifers and cycads), and flowering plants, 33,798 were found to be at risk of extinction. These plants are found in 369 families and are scattered throughout 200 countries. Of the plant species named in the Red List, 91% are found only in a single country. A limited geographic distribution can make a species much more vulnerable and may reduce options for its protection. In addition, islands or island groups, which often have high rates of endemicity, face particularly high levels of threat to their flora. Seven out of the top ten areas listed according to percentage of threatened flora are islands: St. Helena, Mauritius, Seychelles, Jamaica, French Polynesia, Pitcairn, and Reunion.

A great number of plant species known to have medicinal value are at risk of disappearing, leaving their healing potential unfulfilled. For instance, 75% of the species from the yew family, a source of important cancer-fighting compounds, are threatened. The willow family, from which aspirin is derived, has 12% of its species threatened. Numerous other species whose medicinal value has not yet been studied also are at risk.

The Red List shows that 380 species have become extinct in the wild, with an additional 371 species listed as Extinct/Endangered. Over 6,500 species are categorized as Endangered, indicating their numbers have been drastically reduced to a critical level and they are deemed to be in immediate danger of extinction. Threat assessments are assigned according to the pre-1994 IUCN threat categories. The introduction to the book details the purpose and history of the project, an explanation of the information and an analysis of the list, including valuable tables on threatened plants in each country by IUCN category and by major taxa and families.

Publication of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants marks a turning point for conservation. The book, an important new conservation tool, provides baseline information to measure conservation progress and serves as a primary source of data on plant species. Most importantly, it provides the building blocks on which to base worldwide efforts to conserve plant species and the ecosystems they inhabit.