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From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 3, October 1999.
Lymania smithii R.E.Reed was published as a new species in honor of Lyman Smith in the J.of the Bromeliad Soc. 34(5): 213 in 1984. The drawing was not made until after the publication came out and was for a proposed treatment of the genus. Robert Read furnished living material of this Brazilian plant and photographs for the illustration. Alice made a watercolor painting later as a commission by a relative of Lyman Smith's.
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From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 3, October 1999.
The 14th annual meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) was held at the Smithsonian Institution, June 27-July 2, 1999. The meeting was co-sponsored by the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education (SCMRE) and the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Approximately 200 people from the U.S. and nine other countries attended the meeting.
The Department of Botany was represented by Deborah Bell and Linda Hollenberg (both also on the local organizing committee), Katherine Rankin and Susan Richardson. Field trips were taken to the Naturalist Center (VA) and National Conservation Training Center (WV), Alexandria Archaeology (VA), and to Calvert County, MD for fossil collecting. Workshops offered were finance and funding, rigging, and carbon dioxide fumigation.
Collections tours (including Botany) were offered by both NMNH and the Museum Support Center (MSC). The Botany greenhouse, plant illustration, dinoflagellates and plant mounting demonstrations were also included in the open house schedule at MSC. The technical sessions included three specialty sections: “Health and Safety in Collections”, “Collecting, Preserving and Accessioning Genetic Resources,” and “Repatriation of Anthropology Collections.”
(by Linda Hollenberg)
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From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 3, October 1999.
At the IAPT nomenclature section meetings (July 26-30) preceding the Congress itself, on July 29 D. H. Nicolson, as chairman/secretary of a nine-person nominating committee, presented the roster of nominations for the next rapporteur-general, as well as for officers and members of the eight permanent committees mandated by the Botanical Code. After corrections and changes made from the floor, the slate was elected.
As retiring president of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT), Nicolson convened the General Assembly of the membership on July 30 and began by a reading of the names of the more than 150 botanists that died since the last meeting (in Yokohama,1993). After reports from the retiring officers, the newly elected officers were seated. Others in attendance at the nomenclature sessions were Vicki Funk, Paul Peterson, Dieter Wasshausen, Robert Soreng, Ernani Menez, Laurence Dorr, and Laurence Skog.
On August 1, at the formal opening of the 16th International Botanical Congress at the America’s Center in St. Louis, Missouri, D.H. Nicolson, a member of the organizing committee for the Congress, dedicated the Congress to the memory of Frans A. Stafleu (1921-1997). In the closing ceremonies on August 7, Nicolson, as past president of IAPT, replaced the new president, Iain Prance, for presentation of the IAPT Engler medals.
In addition to the departmental members who organized symposia, and presented lectures and posters (see below), others in attendance at the scientific sessions were Paul Peterson, Dieter Wasshausen, Donna Herendeen, Ernani Menez, Laurence Skog, Ellen Farr and Robert DeFilipps.
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From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 3, October 1999.
The September 1999 issue of Harvard Papers in Botany Vol. 4 (1) is largely devoted to a festschrift in honor of former curator Lyman B. Smith, under the title: Florilegium Luctatori Botanico Dedicatum - A Tribute to Lyman B. Smith (1904-1977). Jason R.Grant is the tribute organizer and associate editor.The drawing of Lymania smithii (see page 12) is featured on the cover. The tribute contains a brief memoir by Lyman’s son David (pp. 84-87). A biographical article by Stephen Smith, museum specialist in the department, appeared in Taxon 46: 819-824 (1997).
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From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 3, October 1999.
On August 11 the International Aroid Society (IAS) presented the first H.W. Schott Award for Excellence in Aroid Research to Dan H. Nicolson during the 8th International Aroid Conference held at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis. The award was announced by Thomas B. Croat (MO) and presented by IAS President, Dewey Fisk.
Alice Tangerini received a “1999 Distinguished Service Award” from the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators at their annual meeting held in Richland, Washington in August. This was presented “in recognition of her outstanding volunteer service,” including organizing the first annual guild meeting and serving on the planning committee for the two annual meetings held in Washington, D.C. in 1986 and 1996.
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From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 3, October 1999.
[Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of columns which will afford the curators of the Department of Botany an opportunity to discourse on their candid opinions, perhaps to critique and prognosticate, regarding the trends and state-of-the-art in their field of specialization. Dan H. Nicolson suggested the name “Cornered Curator”, and as a gesture of gratitude we cornered him into providing the first installment.]
The 16th International Botanical Congress was a major one-week event (August 1-7) with nearly 5,000 registrants. A one-week meeting (July 26-30) of the Nomenclature Section preceded it with 300 attendees, probably an all-time record. About a dozen members of the department attended both. Some years ago I had some correspondence with Bob Ross (BM, ret.) about his recollections of his first Botanical Congress, the 1950 Congress in Stockholm. He commented that he especially enjoyed the Nomenclature Section, even more than the Congress meetings in his specialty (diatoms), because of all the passions and emotions on display. This meeting of the Nomenclature Section was as passionate and full of emotion as ever, if not more so. Alas, I saw less of this meeting than others (my first was the 1959 Montreal Congress, which was part of our honeymoon) because of duties connected with Committee work, such as the Nominating Committee.
There were three major nomenclatural issues: Names in Current Use (NCU), Registration, and the BioCode. All three were dismissed with such finality that I feel that we begin the new millennium with a backward-looking Code rather than a forwarding-looking one. I suspect that a new generation will re-invent what was summarily dismissed.
Why?
The computer and the Web, which is not my cup of tea, are opening new ways and assets that will change the way we do taxonomy as dramatically as Linnaeus did in creating a new starting point. We are bound to come to a time when we will abandon 18th century starting points like 1753 for most plant groups. It will become the obvious and feasible thing to do when we, like Linnaeus, (1) complete a survey of existing names, (2) sort out what names we need and which can be ignored (synonymized), and (3) set up new rules that deal more with the future than the past. This is exactly what the bacteriologists did in creating their new starting point. In fairness, they had a sea change in the defining of their taxa making their old names and types useless.
The lists of names in current use, some available as printed documents since Yokohama, seem to be ignored or reviled. Yet the list of names in current use for extant plant genera (Greuter & al., 1993. NCU-3) is really quite useful. It is a mini-Index Nominum Genericorum but instead of having 68,000 generic names it only has 28,000, highlighting the fact that we have far more synonyms than accepted names ... a past full of redundancy.
Registration is a technique that aims to move the burden of identifying nomenclatural and taxonomic novelties from gleaners combing the literature, in hopes of stumbling on to the novelties, to the authors themselves who, theoretically, are interested in communicating their novelties, not just publishing them. I am convinced that we will come to a time when we will recognize that the effective date of communication of new information is the date of receipt (as can be defined with a registration procedure) rather than the date of mailing.
The BioCode concept is the idea of a unified Code instead of separate ones for zoology, botany, cultivated plants, and bacteriology. This is regarded as an object of fear for reasons that seem obvious to those who are convinced that “my Code is better than your Code”. What I see is speciation and it worries me. Even our mycologists are well along in speciating within the Botanical Code. There is at least one fundamental difference between zoological and botanical nomenclature that is nearly irreconcilable: zoologists assign priority to the epithet in a combination but botanists assign priority to the combination. You don’t really want me to explain what this means so suffice it to say that this difference is not easy to reconcile. However, the differences in terminology (same term for different things or different terms for the same thing) are philosophically silly. What good is it to have zoologists saying a “valid name” for what botanists call a “correct name”, and have botanists saying a “validly published name” for what zoologists call an “available name”?
There are basically two approaches to nomenclature (law). You can design a Code that is simple and expect to have a lot of conservation proposals to save names that you really don’t want to lose. Alternatively, you can design a Code that is complex by adding details that make it possible to avoid disturbing names you don’t want to lose and have few conservation proposals. We seem to be approaching the worst of all possible worlds, a Code that is amazingly complex and still we need to make hundreds of conservation proposals each year!
I’ve been around too long and read too many papers by colleagues who said, “be patient, eventually all the name changes buried in post 1753 literature will be made and all will be stabilized.” Once more, we looked back to the past at St. Louis. Someday we’ll turn around and look to the future. Someday we’ll do something that will make it possible to ignore what came before 1953, like Linnaeus who made it possible for us to ignore what came before May 1, 1753, by making it academic. Maybe it is still too early but someday ... someday there will be a new starting point date. To get there it will take an accounting of all names we really are using, although some might feel we have to account for every name that has ever been published.
Enough! I am optimistic and certain that someday we will go into the future facing forward rather than backward.
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From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 3, October 1999.
Since the era of Ignatius Urban (1848-1931) and his masterwork, the ninevolume Symbolae Antillanae (1898- 1925), geographically broad taxonomic coverage of the West Indian flora has essentially been the province of four contemporaneous Atlantes, the pillars of Flora’s Caribbean temple. These botanists are: Enrique Liogier (Brother Alain, born 1916); Richard A. Howard (b. 1917); C. Dennis Adams (b. 1920); and George Richardson (“Dick”) Proctor (b. 1920). Proctor recently concluded a 16-month visit to the department, as a senior research fellow on a Mellon Foundation grant, during which he prepared an account of the monocotyledons of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands (except Orchidaceae), the summation of 12 years of intensive field and herbarium work. His stay was arranged and hosted by Pedro Acevedo, who will be contributing the vining aroids, Smilacaceae and Dioscoreaceae for the volume; other collaborating staff will work on the nonbamboo grasses (P. Peterson), sedges (M. Strong), and pandans (R. DeFilipps).
At this juncture in the history of Caribbean floristics, Proctor is unique: the only member of the above-mentioned “Four Horsemen” of West Indian taxonomy who currently resides on a West Indian island (Jamaica). He also demonstrates the rarely encountered ability to pursue both the pteridophytes and the angiosperms, while most taxonomists choose to concentrate on either ferns or flowering plants, one to the exclusion of the other.
Proctor was early inspired by William R. Maxon, curator of plants and a fern specialist at the Smithsonian, who published the young pteridologist’s articles in the American Fern Journal. Maxon unfortunately died in 1948 before completing a book on the ferns of Jamaica, leaving a gap in Caribbean literature which Proctor later filled. Since the Catherwood Expedition of 1948 (see below), Proctor has had a firm home base as botanist, sometime head of the natural history division, and developer of the herbarium at the Institute of Jamaica (Kingston) from 1951-1980, followed by employment as herbarium supervisor at the National Botanical Garden in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (1982-1983), and as a natural resources biologist and establisher of the herbarium (Herbario George R. Proctor) at the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, San Juan (1983-1998). An inventory of the more than 55 West Indian islands where he has collected plants would include the bizarrely named Ginger, George Dog and Fallen Jerusalem, while Central and South America have been destinations as well. Over 55,000 specimens have been collected to date, and his herbarium studies have involved periods of London and European research concentrating on the historical Jamaican collections of Olof Swartz and Sir Hans Sloane.
A Bostonian by birth, and descendant of original Mayflower people including the John Proctor of “The Crucible” (a 1729 portrait of ancestor George Proctor, bearing an exact likeness to the living one, hangs in Langley Hall, County of Norfolk, England), he counts among his relatives two distant cousins of New England origin and botanical repute: Robert F. Thorne (coincidentally born on the same day as Proctor: July 13, 1920) linked through the Folger family; and Lyman B. Smith through the Lyman family.
In the early days, diminished funding for continuation of his 1945-1947 graduate studies towards a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania led Proctor to become an herbarium assistant and research associate at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia (1946-1947), following which he received the job of botanist to accompany the Catherwood-Chaplin West Indies Expedition (Cuba, Cayman Islands, San Andres y Providencia, Colombia) in 1948. After the expedition, a period of research and field work on Jamaican ferns at the Institute of Jamaica in 1949-1951, supported by the Institute and the American Philosophical Society, paved the way for his prodigious efforts to continue throughout the Indies. An Honorary Doctorate of Humanities degree was conferred upon him by Florida International University, Miami in 1978, and his numerous awards include the Special Gold Musgrave Medal (1976) of the Institute of Jamaica; the Order of Distinction (Officer) of the Government of Jamaica (1976); and the Centenary Medal of the Institute of Jamaica (1980). Somewhere he found time to marry twice and enjoy a family of six children (including three adopted), which has geometrically increased over the years into nearly 20 grandchildren and great grandchildren scattered from Boston and New York to Australia.
Approximately 28 plants have been named for Proctor, including species from the Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Islands, Guatemala, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, and St. Lucia; among them is the palm Coccothrinax proctorii Read (1980), the national tree of the Cayman Islands. The dimensionality of Proctor’s output is indicated by major publications such as: Monocotyledones in Flora of Barbados; Bromeliaceae, Myrtaceae, and Melastomataceae in Flowering Plants of Jamaica; the Pteridophytes volume in Flora of the Lesser Antilles; Flora of the Cayman Islands; Ferns of Jamaica; and Ferns of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
What has Proctor done to fill in his spare time over the years? He attended the Hollywood opening of Disney’s Fantasia in 1940’s Los Angeles; he was location consultant for simulating the Congo in Jamaica for Dark of the Sun, a film starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux (1968); he was presented to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on their visit to the Cayman Islands Botanic Park; he unknowingly saved the life of hereditary Portland Maroon chief Deni Wilson on a storm-tossed ship in the English Channel and was later made an Honorary Maroon of Jamaica; he introduced in 1968 the still thriving Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), from material sent by Marie Wurdack, into a bog in the Mason River Field Station which he founded in Jamaica; and he was friends with the real James Bond (the Philadelphia Academy ornithologist namesake of Ian Fleming’s Agent 007) and his wife Mary Wickham Bond as far back as the Catherwood Expedition days. Regarding the abundance of these interesting experiences, Proctor recently told me: “You haven’t heard one-tenth of it.”
He is presently affiliated with the herbarium in the Department of Life Sciences, University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston 7, Jamaica, where he will be supervising graduate students and continuing his botanical studies. Notwithstanding his great accomplishments, Proctor believes there is still a need for people to work on various subjects such as the gymnosperms of the Greater Antilles; the higher slopes of the Blue Mountains; the John Crow Mountains (he is the only botanist who has crossed them); and the plants of Trelawny, St. James and Hanover parishes in his beloved Jamaica.
(by Robert DeFilipps)
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From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 3, October 1999.
The department has begun to create a unified Plant Image Collection (PIC) for use by scientists, educators, and the general public. Image resources representing the 4.6 million plant specimens and other botanical assets in the department and U.S. National Herbarium include photographs, electron micrographs, 35mm slides, scientific illustrations, and original botanical art. It is planned to digitize the herbarium specimen collection, beginning with the 90,000 specimens in the Type Collection, which constitute a virtual “bureau of standards” for plant nomenclature. The Type Collection contains specimens of great historical importance, including collections from the Wilkes Expedition (1838-1842), Mexican Boundary Survey (1854-1855), California Geological Survey (1860-1867), and Colombia Cinchona Mission (1940-1945).
In 1998 a pilot project to database all of the more than 3,000 scientific illustrations and botanical art in the department was finished. With support from the Atherton Seidell Endowment Fund, approximately 500 illustrations representing three selected families (Bromeliaceae, Cactaceae and Melastomataceae) were digitized and made available on the department’s home page (http://www.nmnh.si.edu/botany). In addition, with support from the Women’s Committee, over 3,600 photographic slides of plant species and plant habitats were assembled and committed to Photo-CD. These activities have created not only a useful information resource for research purposes, but a quality tool for professional collections management.
(by George. F. Russell)
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From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 3, October 1999.
What would come to your mind if asked to name some of the most publicized drugs available today? Would you list some of the man-made and legally prescribed drugs, such as Prozac and Viagra? Or would you list some of the plant-based and over-the-counter drugs, such as aspirin? You might think of such drugs as marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, the plant-based but illegal drugs that we read about in the newspaper every day. We have come to an interesting intersection of the acceptance and rejection of substances we call “drugs” that have originated from various sources: either directly from the chemists, directly from the plants, or indirectly from the plants through the chemists. For reasons that are not always clear, these drugs have been either embraced or outlawed by our society. We are in the midst of considerable debate about the benefits, costs and property rights of plant-based medicines and agricultural products, so it is fitting to consider the current status of drugs on the world’s markets.
Many conservationists have justified the preservation of the remaining pristine forests of the world, both tropical and temperate, as treasure troves of potential drugs and medicines of future benefit to society. Although there is a long history of the use of herbals for healing, surprisingly few major medicines derived directly from plants have actually reached legal commercial markets over the last 20 years. The Pacific yew from the American Northwest and the rosy periwinkle from Madagascar are the two most commonly cited examples of plant species yielding substances of great medicinal value. On the other hand numerous herbals, such as ginkgo, echinacea, St. John’s wort, ginseng, and valerian, together comprise a multi-million dollar industry of home remedies and cures. Many pharmaceutical houses are searching for these potential marketable plant medicinals around the world. As taxonomists and specialists on plant diversity we can provide invaluable information on the identification of these species, and even determine their botanical relatives with potentially far greater potency and value.
However, it is clear that the value of a particular plant species as a drug is not simply based on its effect as a potent cure for a disease or ailment. The value of a drug to society, either plant-based or man-made, is derived from a complex interaction of historical milieu, cultural prejudice, and economic climate. A recent essay in the New York Times Magazine (M. Pollan, 12 September 1999, pp. 27-28) addressed the paradox of explaining the “taxonomy of chemicals” underpinning the use and acceptance of drugs. Neither safety nor addictiveness, neither disease-related nor pleasure-related, neither naturalness nor artificiality, are criteria that are employed uniformly in evaluating the benefit of a drug to society. It is obvious that drugs of both positive and negative effects are prevalent throughout our society, and that the legality and cost is not always correlated with these good or bad traits. Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) is an obvious example of an addictive but legal plant product that is a proven health hazard. An opposite and less obvious case is the attempt in Yemen to outlaw, without even a cursory study of its medicinal and cultural worth, the chewing of khat leaves (Catha edulis), which contain a stimulant similar to coffee and tea and has been an important element of the social fabric of the Arabian Peninsula for centuries.
Some plant-based but illegal drugs that are today considered very destructive to both the individual and society were initially accepted as medicinals of great value when first introduced. This chronology is true of Papaver somniferum (from which opium and heroin are derived) and Erythroxylon coca (from which cocaine is derived). The products of these plant species were introduced into American and European culture as potent and beneficial tonics or prescribed medicines at the turn of the last Century. They are both now considered highly addictive and dangerous, and form the basis of an international illegal trading cartel. Andrew Weil has correctly pointed out that the medicinal and cultural character of these plant species radically changed as their active ingredients were isolated, purified, and marketed. Cannabis sativa (marijuana) also has had a bumpy career with respect to its rejection or acceptance as either a recreational drug of destructive nature, or a drug with potentially significant therapeutic value (as I write its status seems again to be changing). Although the debate rages over who owns the intellectual property rights of new plant species with potential drug value, and hence market value, no one is claiming the rights to these illegal drugs despite the multi-billion dollar black market they represent.
Predicting the ultimate value of any drug, be it plant-based or man-made, is not a trivial matter. And predicting the eventual use, either good or bad, of any product derived from a plant species is also a difficult task. It is an important lesson for us that some of the most powerful and potent plant products that are outlawed in today’s society have been rejected because of their abuse or as a result of a misunderstanding of the natural properties for which they were originally used. As we scour the planet for new drugs and medicines derived from plants, we must keep in mind that our discoveries may have a future that is very different from our original intentions.
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From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 3, October 1999.
Gary Krupnick, former post-doctoral fellow in integrative plant biology at Pennsylvania State University, has joined the department as head of the Plant Conservation Unit. His previous research focused on the ecology and physiology of plant reproductive biology and plantinsect interactions. Krupnick has examined the sex expression of two different species, the California shrub Isomeris arborea (Capparaceae) and the wild progenitor of zucchini, Cucurbita texana (Cucurbitaceae). He has also investigated the interaction between herbivory and pollination, and the effects of endogenous ethylene production on plant reproduction. Originally from southern California, he received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine and a B.A. from University of California, San Diego.
Dawn Dubois is the new secretary (office assistant) to the chairman. Formerly at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Herbert School of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology (Bethesda, Maryland), Dubois was secretary to the department chair, administrative officer and faculty. The university is a branch of the Department of Defense. DuBois is also working towards a B.S. in natural resources management at the University of Maryland. Formerly in the Department of Paleobiology,
Walter H. Adey has become a curator of botany. Adey brings to the U.S. National Herbarium a very significant, comprehensive collection of marine coralline algae specimens gathered from around the world. His research laboratory will remain in Paleobiology.
Alejandra Jaramillo, a graduate student from Duke University, who is studying the molecular systematics and morphology of the genus Piper, and Judy Skog, on sabbatical from George Mason University, who is working with Elizabeth Zimmer and Scott Wing (Department of Paleobiology) on “early modern fern families,” are new members of the Laboratory of Molecular Systematics at the Museum Support Center and the Department of Botany.
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