Notes from the Plant Mounting Room

From Plant Press Vol. 16 no. 3, July 2013

By Melinda Peters

Specimen US 3487444 is a bromeliad collected by botanical artist Margaret Mee

The Plant Mounting Program at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History continues to flourish as we enter the summer months. With some volunteers away for summer fun, we are still meeting the needs of the Botany Department with regards to newly acquired material and material from the backlog. During this quarter, staff, volunteers and contractors have mounted some 3,500 specimens for the permanent collection.

We have recently hosted Terrie Chan, a volunteer in Paleobotany, who is working on preparing Ginkgo specimens for Conrad Labandeira and Jorge Santiago-Blay for their study of herbivory on Ginkgo through time. She has enjoyed the project so much that she will be joining our Plant Mounting Program as a new volunteer. We are also helping to train some volunteers who will be charged with working on botanical specimens for the museum’s education center, entitled Q?RIUS, slated to open later this year.

We have had many new acquisitions so far this year. We have received approximately 3,000 specimens as exchange, 1,240 as gifts, and 280 as gifts for identification.

Learn about three noteworthy newly mounted acquisitions below the fold...

Specimen US 3487444 (above) is a specimen of Ananas nanus (L.B. Sm.) L.B. Sm. (Bromeliaceae) collected in Brazil by Margaret Mee. This was an exciting find in the backlog because Margaret Mee, botanical illustrator, contributed many Bromeliaceae drawings to Lyman B. Smith’s publication, “The Bromeliads” in 1969. A great description from the introduction of this publication describes Mee as “not satisfied to drag a dying plant back to the comfort of her studio nor to reconstruct from a dead one. Instead, she met them where they lived and painted them there, evolving a highly successful technique through trial and error and undergoing some hair-raising experiences in the process.” Even though this specimen was not used as a drawing model, it represents the rich historical specimen data found here at the U.S. National Herbarium.

Specimen US 3654291 (below) is a specimen of Codonorchis lessonii (Brongn.) Lindl. (Orchidaceae) collected by Roger Tory Peterson and Philip S. Humphrey in Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South America, during their expedition in 1960 to collect birds. The goal was to collect and document bird species, but they also collected plant specimens as a record of potential food sources. The specimens were sent to the U.S. National Herbarium from Yale University in 1962 where Humphrey was on the staff. Peterson is known as being an American naturalist and for writing many field guides. Humphrey was a Curator of Birds at the Peabody Museum at Yale University when this expedition took place; he later became the Director of the Museum of Natural History at the University of Kansas until he retired.

Specimen US 3654291 is an orchid collected by American naturalist Roger Tory Peterson and ornithologist Philip S. Humphrey