The Plant Press

Art by Alice Tangerini: Stifftia chrysantha

From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 1, April 1999.

Stifftia chrysantha H. Robinson (Figs. 1, 2) and S. racemosa H. Robinson (Figs. 3-6) (Asteraceae) were published in Systematic Botany (1991). Discovery of S. racemosa as a distinct species was made by Alice Tangerini upon examining the racemose form of the inflorescence. S. racemosa is probably extinct in its native Minas Gerais state of Brazil, where the holotype was collected by Mendes Magalhaes in 1941. The illustration is currently on display at the Botanical Illustrators Art Exhibit at the Blandy Experimental Farm of the State Arboretum of Virginia located in Boyce, Virginia, which runs from March 12 -April 7.

The Pteridophyte Collection

From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 1, April 1999.

A milestone in the history of the U.S. National Herbarium was passed on January 9, 1999. It marked a century of continuous curation of the pteridophyte collection. William R. Maxon was appointed an aid in cryptogamic botany and entered on duty on January 9, 1899. He had been a student at Syracuse University and had spent a post-graduate year at the New York Botanical Garden with their pteridologist, Lucien M. Underwood. Unfortunately, he suffered a heart attack in 1931 and was in declining health until his retirement in 1946. He died in 1948.

Conrad V. Morton came to the Smithsonian in 1926 to be in charge of western United States, Central American, and Antillean flowering plants. Ater Maxon’s heart attack, Morton devoted the greatest part of his time to the pteridophytes, although he continued research in tropical American Gesneriaceae and Solanaceae. He had a series of heart attacks beginning in 1961 and died in 1972, while still an active member of the staff.

David B. Lellinger spent two summers as an aid in botany in 1960 and 1961 and was made a permanent member of the staff in 1963. Since 1998, he has been assisted by Gregory S. McKee. All three curators were variously active in identification, curation, and field work. This constant attention built the collection into the largest and most diverse pteridophyte herbarium in the hemisphere.

At present, the collection is estimated to exceed 250,000 specimens, and it occupies 151 herbarium cabinets, including six cabinets containing type specimens; more cabinet space is needed. In addition to herbarium duties, Dr. Maxon served for many years as head curator of what is now the Department of Botany. All three curators of the pteridophytes held positions in the American Fern Society for long periods, notably as editor-in-chief of the American Fern Journal, and variously as president, secretary, membership secretary, or associate editor of the journal.

[By David Lellinger]

Herbarium Compactorization Update

From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 1, April 1999.

Compactorization of the first two bays of the U.S. National Herbarium was officially completed at the beginning of February 1999. This area represents about one-tenth of the herbarium. Compactorization provided space for an additional 128 specimen cabinets, increasing storage within those areas by 36%. This will allow for sorely needed decompression of existing collections and will provide expansion to take the herbarium into the 21st century. Progress on the next two bays (adjacent to the west side of those finished) is well underway regarding blueprints and contracts. Actually demolition and construction will not begin for several months.

The 'I' Words

From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 1, April 1999.

Integration of science and Interdisciplinary research. The “I” words. What do these terms mean, and are they important in our work? Open any copy of Science or Nature and there will be at least some mention of how we as scientists need to integrate our disciplines. Such integration clearly may occur at many different levels, for example, between the natural history disciplines of zoology and botany, or between the scientific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics, or even between the intellectual disciplines of science, politics and economics. Is the degree of integrative success proportional to the level of interdisciplinary collaboration? In other words, if I publish with an economist, will the scientific impact be greater than if I publish with a mammologist? Two important questions present themselves: Are we sufficiently trained to conduct such integrated science? And why is interdisciplinary research better?

In a recent editorial in Science (283: 642-643. 1999), Norman Metzger and Richard Zare argue that the basic history, culture and structure of science in America has developed to hinder interdisciplinary research. Specialization and disciplinary expertise is demanded from us from the time we are trained as graduate students, through tenure-track pursuits, and every time we apply to directed funding agencies for research support. Throughout our careers truly integrated science is discouraged. The editorial presents a cold view of the struggle that exists if one is to successfully accomplish anything that cuts across the disciplines, although some solutions to overcome these barriers are suggested, such as creating a Federal funding program owned by several disciplines together.

Is the call for integrated science a realization that each of our disciplines has come to an end, that we have discovered all we can in each of these individual lines of research, and that our only future now is to cut across these boundaries? Obviously not; since clearly much remains to be observed, described and understood in nature, whether it is discovering a new beetle from Peru or a new subatomic particle. More importantly, the new drive to integrate is based on the realization that nothing exists in isolation, that the planet is growing smaller, and that the solutions to global problems are embedded in a larger view of interactions that can only be understood by an integrated approach to science and society.

Do we need to return to the concept of the Renaissance intellectual who studied, understood, and published on art, nature, government and economic growth? No, very few of us can have the individual breadth to comprehend all of these disciplines in the depth that is required to be successful. Rather, each of us needs to develop an integrated perspective on what we do as individual scientists in our respective disciplines and open up our research to the possibility of collaborative programs. Integrative research is as much a state of mind as a level of knowledge. We must recognize that although we are not experts in all aspects of science, we are willing to share our knowledge across disciplines. We can acknowledge that we know our own fields, but must risk the fact that we are ignorant outside these boundaries. It may likely require an entire generation of scientists to make the transition from a disciplinary to an interdisciplinary perspective.

It is clear that the transition has begun. As scientists at the end of the millennium, we must allow this perspective into our contemporary research programs and promote integration as a fundamental part of the training of our young scientists.

A Prolific Asian Plant Corrector

From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 1, April 1999.

By Robert DeFilipps

Dan Henry Nicolson is one of the world’s foremost “plant correctors”. While studying the true identity of an aroid from the insular periphery of Asia, the “Telinga potato” which was known for over a hundred years as Amorphophallus campanulatus, he unhesitatingly corrected its name to A. paeoniifolius. He also rescued, from a maze of generic uncertainty, one of the most well-known of all houseplants, the variegated “pothos”, and designated it as the cultivar Epipremnum pinnatum ‘Aureum’. In fact, if it were possible to do so, this avid family genealogist would correct his own birthplace from the actual locus of Kansas City, Missouri, to the more affectionate town of Shenandoah, Iowa where he grew up, but that’s another story.

The seeds of a nascent interest in botany surrounded him as a youth, for his family owned several seed and nursery companies in the Midwest, and his first educational venture was business school, in order to absorb techniques for involvement in the family’s concerns. While enrolled in business school (MBA, Stanford University, 1957), a desire for botany which had originally surfaced at Grinnell College (AB, 1955) began to proliferate as various collections of cultivated plants were made, and culminated in a master’s degree (1959) and doctorate (1964) from Cornell University. He joined the Department of Botany in the National Museum of Natural History in 1964, and his doctoral thesis, a revision of the Asiatic aroid genus Aglaonema, which includes the popular “Chinese evergreen” of horticulture, became the very first listing under the new series entitled Smithsonian Contributions to Botany (1969). Fast-forwarding to three decades beyond 1969, he was recently appointed by Chairman W. J. Kress to the position of managing editorship of the Smithsonian Contributions to Botany. With approximately 200 publications (including three books) under his belt, Nicolson’s advice on botanical nomenclature is widely sought by an international clientele, and perhaps acknowledged in more taxonomic articles than that of almost any of his contemporaries.

Nicolson spent his honeymoon in 1959 at the International Botanical Congress in Montreal, Canada, and since the mid-1950s his career has always included a generous amount of devotion to the activities of worldwide botanical organizations. He served the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) as an officer on numerous committees (e.g., Spermatophyta; Typification of Generic Names; Orthography; Bureau of Nomenclature; Awards; Nominations; Editorial Committee of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature), and as nomenclature editor of the journal Taxon from 1979 to date. He was IAPT vice-president from 1985-1993, and is now in the last year of a six-year term as president of the IAPT, which began in 1993 when he was elected prior to the Tokyo Congress. In addition to those impeccable credentials, he has been intimately involved with the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, the Botanical Society of Washington, and the Flora Malesiana Foundation, and is a founding member of the International Aroid Society and the AETFAT (Association pour l’Etude Taxonomique de la Flore d’Afrique Tropicale).

Sessions of intensive field work in Southeast Asia (17 months); Nepal (1 year); Yunnan, China (3 months); Sri Lanka (1 month); India; Dominica (West Indies), and elsewhere paved the way for substantial publications with reference to the Flora of the Hassan District, Karnataka (India); Rheede’s (1669-1698) Hortus Malabaricus; and the Flora of Dominica: Dicotyledoneae. Currently, Nicolson is completing a major project, initiated by Dr. F. Raymond Fosberg, documenting the publications and collections of the Forsters, a father-and-son team who accompanied the second voyage of Captain Cook, and whose work became a cornerstone of Pacific botany. Additionally, he intends to take a shot at preparing a revision of the Indomalaysian genus Anadendrum Schott, for publication in the venerable Flora Malesiana.

This year is already a very busy one for Nicolson, who is one of the ten members of the Steering Committee for the 1999 International Botanical Congress to be held in August in St. Louis, Missouri. A new set of rules and recommendations, the “St. Louis Code” of botanical nomenclature, will arise from the deliberations of the participants. Being the adroit master of technicalities that he is, Nicolson seemed disinclined to register any speculations about the ultimate fate of the major issues before the Congress, and in deference to his office I refrained from asking.

In a curious twist of fate, as the unofficial necrologist of the department, sooner or later the meticulous talents of Dr. Nicolson may be summoned to prepare the last written statements concerning the careers of some of us who at this moment are reading the details of his accomplishments.