The Plant Press

DNA Exhibit Opens at the U.S. Botanic Garden

From Plant Press, Vol. 10, No. 2 from April 2007.

A new exhibit, DNA Identification of Plants—Reading the Hidden Barcode, has opened at the U.S. Botanic Garden exploring how DNA from plants can be used to develop a rapid and accurate method of species identification. Co-sponsored by the NMNH Department of Botany, Nature’s Barcodes is on display at the USBG Conservatory through June 10.

In devising a natural barcode, scientists study an organism’s unique DNA sequences, which can be easily extracted from tissue samples and then analyzed. Conceivably, this could be done for every species on the planet. The new exhibit tracks the progress of an ongoing joint project to develop such genetic “barcodes” for plants, as well as barcode “readers.” The project uses medicinal plants as a pilot study, also co-sponsored by the Botanic Garden and NMNH.

Awards and Grants

From Plant Press, Vol. 10, No. 2 from April 2007.

Vinita Gowda, graduate student of W. John Kress, received a $500 Heliconia Society International grant for her proposal titled “Nectar study of two native Caribbean heliconias (Heliconia: Heliconiaceae) pollinated by sexually dimorphic Purple-throated Carib Hummingbirds.” Gowda will be working in the field from 9 March to 4 April in St.Kitts, Dominica and St.Vincent to continue her research on Caribbean Heliconia-hummingbird adaptive interactions.

The Smithsonian Institution Women's Committee (SIWC) has provided funding to Rusty Russell for continued work on the plant collections of the United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 (the Wilkes collection). These funds ($34,400) will support continued processing of the collections, research to enhance specimen data, and the development of a web presentation on the Botany website.

Art by Alice Tangerini: Graffenrieda irwinii

From Plant Press, Vol. 10, No. 2 from April 2007. 

Known only from Kaieteur Falls, Guyana, Graffenrieda irwinii is a white-flowered shrub with yellow stamens. Graffenrieda has a species-density center in the Roraima-formation tepuis, with seven Guianan species confined to northwestern Guyana. Alice Tangerini illustrated G. irwinii for John Wurdack’s treatment of Melastomataceae for the Flora of the Guianas (1993).

New Ethnobtoany Exhibit at NMNH

From Plant Press, Vol. 10, No. 2 from April 2007.

 

In February, with guests from the Cultural Institute of Mexico and the Smithsonian Institution Latino Center in attendance, Cristián Samper unveiled the new North Lobby Research Case in the National Museum of Natural History. Entitled “Ethnobotany of the Southwest United States and Mexico,” this new exhibit results from three years of work by Rusty Russell, Bill Merrill and Jamie Whitacre to organize and prepare the data from more than 30,000 Botany and Anthropology specimens, personal journals, and archives materials. Using these collections, the bi-lingual exhibit tells six stories that describe the manner in which local cultures used specific plants more than 100 years ago. It also chronicles the work of Edward Palmer, whose collections of both plants and cultural objects have contributed significantly to the study of ethnobotany in North America. 

The Guiana Shield: 20 Years and Counting

From Plant Press, Vol. 10, No. 2 from April 2007.

By Vicki A. Funk

The Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield (BDG) program has operated in the National Museum of Natural History for over 20 years and although the program interacts with many departments and bureaus across the Smithsonian Institution, it is closely associated with the Department of Botany.  The goals of BDG are 1) to document, study, and preserve the biodiversity of the Guiana Shield, 2) to provide the opportunity for excellent scientific research, and, 3) to make information generated by these studies useful for conservation and education.

Paloue sp. nov. from the Pakaraima Mountains. (Photo by Karen Redden)

The Guiana Shield is a distinct geological unit that underlies the northeastern corner of South America and includes much of the area east and south of the Orinoco River and east and north of the Rio Negro and Rio Amazonas.  The area includes Bolívar, Amazonas, and Delta Amacuro states in Venezuela; most of Guyana, Surinam, and French Guiana; parts of northern Brazil; and parts of southeastern Colombia.  The area has many unusual ecosystems including the famous tepuis of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World” and the unique “Greenheart” forests of Guyana, all of which have high endemicity.

The Shield’s igneous-metamorphic basement was laid down in several events from 3.6 to 0.8 billion years ago.  This granitic basement is easily observed in the many black “hills” of granite that dot the landscape across the Guiana Shield and is also exposed on some of the mountains and massifs.  Between 1.6 and 1 billion years ago, sedimentary covers of sand were successively laid down and cemented during thermal events.  The resulting quartzite and sandstone rocks are known today as the Roraima formation.  Some recent work has suggested that the eastern rocks are the oldest; this would make the Pakaraima Mountains of Guyana and the eastern parts of Venezuela older than the remainder of the Roraima formation.

Plants, Science and People, Oh My!

From Plant Press Vol. 10, no. 2 from 2007.

Editor's Note
By Gary Krupnick, Editor

In my research on conservation biology, I utilize and analyze data from herbarium specimens on a daily basis. Knowing the “who, what, where and when” of collected specimens allows me to assess the conservation status of many species. One aspect of the specimens that I often overlook is the “why.”

Many of the specimens in the U.S. National Herbarium were collected simply because they exist in nature. Yet many of these species were collected because they are quite valuable to humankind. We have your everyday plant species that make life bearable, like chocolate and vanilla (which recently generated many a smile during a tour of the herbarium for my son’s pre-K class). But the herbarium also houses specimens of plant species used in cultures far beyond what can be found in a Washington, DC, neighborhood grocery store. Not only are these plants valuable in today’s societies, but they have been used for generations and generations.

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 10, No. 2 from April 2007.

 

Cuatrecasas Travel Award Fellow Jorge A. Perez-Zabala.

Jorge A. Pérez-Zabala (Herbario MEDEL, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellín) was a Cuatrecasas Travel Award Fellow at the U.S. National Herbarium from 21 January until 23 March. During his 7-week visit he focused on studying the collections of Rosaceae deposited in U.S. National Herbarium. He examined almost 700 specimens of Neotropical Prunus and around of 1,000 specimens of Rosaceae of Colombia and adjacent countries. This research visit gave him a better view of these groups as he worked toward his ultimate goals of preparing a taxonomic treatment of Prunus for the Flora Neotropica project (hopefully a Ph.D. project) and preparing the catalogue of Colombian Rosaceae.

In January, Ling Zhang began a one-year Smithsonian postdoctoral fellowship under the sponsorship of W. John Kress. She is working on the development of an electronic field guide, or Image Identification System (IIS), that will make it possible for botanists to determine the identity of specimens through automated visual search. Zhang proposes to move beyond the current data sets to address a more challenging domain: the tropical woody flora of Barro Colorado Island, the rainforest preserve of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Zhang is an associate professor within the Ecology and Evolution of Plant-Animal Interaction Research Group at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). She received her Ph.D. from Kunming Institute of Botany (KIB), CAS in June 2006. Her doctoral thesis was “Biosystematics and Evolutionary Ecology of Taccaceae.”

 

History of Botany and Ethnobotany of the Ancient Mediterranean World

From Plant Press, Vol. 10, No. 2 from April 2007.

In 2002, Alain Touwaide and Emanuela Appetiti joined the Department as Research Associate and Scientific Collaborator, respectively, to launch a research program dealing with the history of botany, ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology of the ancient Mediterranean world. The main focus of the program consisted of preparing a Flora of Classical Antiquity for which they have been collecting material for more than 30 years. One aspect of their research—the therapeutic uses of plants—was funded in 2002 by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health. The Medicinal Plants of Antiquity program aims at making the ancient documentation—duly translated into English and analyzed—available to botanists, pharmacologists and historians through Web site presentations.

Datura, from “Trattato della historia, natura, et virtu delle Droghe Medicinali, & altri Semplici rarissimi, che vengono portati dalle Indie Orientali in Europa ...” by Cristóbal Acosta. In Venetia, Presso à Francesco Ziletti, 1585. (Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, DC)

However rich they might be, ancient texts need to be complemented by other sources as they are not as explicit as contemporary researchers would wish. To compensate for this limitation, a complementary program was launched on Renaissance herbals. Supported by the Earthwatch Institute, research was conducted from 2003 to 2006 at the National Library of Rome and in 2006 at the Library of Padua, in the most ancient Renaissance botanic garden. The research consisted of making a census of the herbals and of their content, reproducing plant representations in a digital form, and analyzing all of the material from a historical and a botanical viewpoint. All gathered material will be searchable on a Smithsonian Institution Libraries Web site, which is currently in development.

In spite of their apparent diversity, all of these programs have the same objective: bringing light to the documentation of botanical knowledge of the Old World from Antiquity to the Renaissance, and adding new data to the knowledge of plants and their uses before the development of modern botany, particularly from Linnaeus on. The research program complements current botanical research by explaining its origin, including Latin terminology. Furthermore, by analyzing the history of botany in the different cultures that flourished around the Mediterranean, the research program follows the continuous transmission of knowledge from the most remote antiquity to the birth of modern science.

Celebrating Orchids

From Plant Press, Vol. 10, No. 2 from April 2007.

On 3 March, the Smithsonian Institution’s Horticulture Services Division and the U.S. Botanic Garden sponsored a family festival at the National Museum of Natural History in conjunction with the exhibition, Orchids: Take a Walk on the Wild Side. Visitors enjoyed an array of activities for the whole family including coloring botanical prints, taking a scavenger hunt with binoculars, watching orchid-potting demonstrations, asking experts how to grow orchids at home, an orchid murder mystery storytelling and more. Nearly 5,000 visitors participated. Alice Tangerini participated by doing demonstrations of orchid drawing. Tattoos of Tangerini's orchid images were printed for the visiting children. Beth Page, Annie Ceccaraini, Barbara Faust, and others from the Horticultural Services Division planned the many activities with the assistance of Hal Banks in the NMNH Office of Guest Services.

Discovery of Rare Hawaiian Island Species

From Plant Press Vol. 10, no. 2 from 2007.

Labordia lorenciana by Alice Tangerini

A recent discovery of an extremely rare new plant species in Hawaii was made in the context of a collaborative effort between the Department and the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) to discover, describe, and understand plant diversity of the Pacific Islands. This effort is critical at this time to conserving the diversity of island ecosystems. Known from only four individuals, the plant species, Labordia lorenciana, is among ca. 120 other extremely rare Hawaiian species that are limited to less than 50 individuals. It is currently being cultivated for conservation at NTBG.

Labordia lorenciana is described and illustrated from the Hawaiian Island of Kaua'i. This new species, named for David H. Lorence, Director of Science at NTBG, who has made many valuable contributions to Pacific botany and to the study of the large tropical family Rubiaceae (coffee family), most closely resembles the O'ahu endemic species, Labordia kaalae. The new species is described in a paper published in Systematic Botany by Warren Wagner and two colleagues.

Labordia (Loganiaceae: Gentianales) is one of 31 currently recognized vascular plant genera completely restricted to the Hawaiian Islands. It is closely related to the Pacific genus Geniostoma. Labordia comprises 16 species, with 11 species being single-island endemics and the remaining five species occurring on several islands. Three species and two varieties are currently listed as Federally Endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Recent field research by Ken Wood of NTBG within the northwestern canyon region of Kaua`i (i.e., Kawai`iki Valley), has documented another new species known from only a few remaining individuals and critically in need of protection.