The Plant Press

Art by Alice Tangerini: Brodriguesia santosii Cowan

From Plant Press Vol. 17 no. 1, January 2014.

Endemic to Brazil and occurring in the coastal forests of Bahia and Sergipe states, Brodriguesia santosii was published as a new species in 1981 by Richard S. Cowan (Brittonia 33: 9-14). Brodriguesia, named for J. Barbosa Rodrigues, one of Brazil's most illustrious botanists, is similar to Intsia and Afzelia but it differs from both genera in the five subequal petals, the ten fertile stamens, and the minuscule annular aril around the hilum. The detail in the drawing made it a good example for showing techniques of shading leaves and the floral characters in botanical illustration classes that Alice Tangerini has since taught. The drawing was used in the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators’ "Technique Sheets" for the botanical pen and ink model which was distributed to members during the 1980s (pre-digital illustration days).

Medicinal Plant Book from 1440 Reproduced with Modern Commentary

From Plant Press Vol. 17 no. 1, January 2014.

The Tractatus de Herbis (Treatise on Medicinal Plants) is a manual of materia medica compiled during the 13^th century. It describes the plants that were used for therapeutic purposes together with their medicinal uses. Text would often accompany the color illustrations of the plants. Users of this manual, however, eventually stopped reproducing text and illustrations together and started producing copies of the illustrations only. The manuscript Sloane 4016 made around 1440 in Italy is one such edition. It has recently been reproduced in a limited edition facsimile replica of 987 copies by the Spanish publishing house Moleiro Editorial. This limited edition is joined by a full-color commentary volume of study (512 pp.) by Alain Touwaide, Research Associate of the Department of Botany and Scientific Director of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions.

The major question posed by the commentary volume is why Tractatus de Herbis researchers abandoned writing text. The captions of the illustrations provided the names of the plants in the different languages used in the 15^th century, all written with the Latin alphabet. The illustrations hint at the function of the botanical album as an international work that could be used by all the different linguistic groups, whereas the text of the Tractatus could be used only by those who understood Latin. In this view, the development of the botanical album is an unsuspected very modern phenomenon that sheds a completely new light on the history of botanical illustration and highlights a process of internationalization and, at the same time, of linguistic specialization coupled with a principle of economy that had not been uncovered so far.

Such is the Tractatus de Herbis, codex Sloane 4016 – a book without narrative text, containing only captions, so that it could be used by all readers. It was a book connecting the populations of the Middle Ages thanks to its visual nature, a book that was based on image. This was a manuscript that allowed for transcending differences, in short, a book that shows us that the Middle Ages were not an obscure era, but one perfectly capable of mastering visual communication within a modern framework.

A selection of 18 pages from the Tractatus de Herbis is available on the Moleiro website <http://www.moleiro.com/en/books-of-medicine/tractatus-de-herbis.html>.

The Joseph F. Cullman 3^rd Library of Natural History holds the Smithsonian’s collection of rare books in the natural sciences. This library has acquired this publication and it is available to view by appointment.

Notes from the Plant Mounting Room

From Plant Press Vol. 17 no. 1, January 2014.

By Melinda Peters

The volunteers in the Plant Mounting Room were recognized last year with a National Museum of Natural History Peer Recognition Award. What a great way to end 2013 and provide momentum for 2014.

The final quarter of 2013 was slower due to the holidays, and the government shutdown did not help increase numbers, but the volunteers, staff, and contractors were still able to prepare 1,559 specimens for the collection. Two new mounters, Scarlett Presley and Lisa Knight, joined the team. We are happy to have them since a few other volunteer mounters had to leave us this year. Margaret Gardner, staff mounter since 1992, decided to retire. She has prepared some 60,000 specimens for the collection over the years and although we are sad to see her leave, we know she deserves some fun in retirement.

Specimen US 3656009 is the isotype of Merostachys scandens (Poaceae), collected from a secondary forest in São Paulo, Brazil by Tatiana Sendulsky on December 6, 1973.

As for new acquisitions, we are receiving material for specialists and other geographic areas of interest to the U.S. National Herbarium, plus I continue to be amazed at how many types we accession each year. In 2013 we received some 70 type specimens, 27 of them having come from the Missouri Botanical Garden.

One type of interest that was sent by the Missouri Botanical Garden is a bamboo, Merostachys scandens, from Brazil (right). Due to the Material Transfer Agreements between institutes we are able to accession material from Brazil for the permanent collection.

Here is wishing you all a happy start to 2014 and more exciting news from Plant Mounting to come! Stay tuned.

Ancient Algal ‘Tree Rings’ Show Dramatic Decline in Arctic and Sub-Arctic Sea Ice

From Plant Press Vol. 17 no. 1, January 2014.

An ancient new player has entered the debate over global warming and it is pink.

Labrador fishermen call them “red rocks” because underwater they resemble odd-shaped pastry topped with thick pink frosting. The color is the living algae Clathromorphum compactum and the hard rocklike material on which it sits are layers of calcified crusts the algae deposit year after year. They grow in shallow water (49 to 55 feet deep) and are widely distributed in the Arctic and sub-Arctic Oceans.

Now, scientists from the University of Toronto, the Smithsonian Institution and other research organizations have discovered how to use these crusty layers to track changes in Arctic sea ice over centuries, says Jochen Halfar, an associate professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences. Halfar is co-author of a paper printed in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reporting that this newly tapped ‘archive’ shows a dramatic decrease in ice cover during the last 150 years.

Read more and watch the video "Treasure of the Subarctic" AFTER THE BREAK

Partnership Highlights Progress on Plant Conservation Strategy

From Plant Press Vol. 17 no. 1, January 2014.

In 2002, the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) was adopted at the 6^th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The most innovative element of the GSPC is the inclusion of 16 outcome-oriented targets aimed at achieving a series of measurable goals by the year 2010. Even though many of the targets were not achieved, the GSPC was successful in bringing together international collaboration and at organizing action from a variety of sectors. One outcome was the organization of the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation (GPPC), a group that counts the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History as a member. The GPPC supports the worldwide implementation of the GSPC

In 2010, the 10^th Conference of the Parties to the CBD adopted the Updated GSPC 2011-2020. The Strategy was revised by strengthening the language and making the goals even more ambitious. The GPPC had their second conference in July 2011, in St. Louis, Missouri. The meeting was designed to showcase examples of GSPC implementation during the period 2002-2010, and to provide support for national and regional GSPC implementation as it enters the new phase. Proceedings from the GPPC conference were recently published by the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden (Volume 99, Number 2; 2013)

Isotria meleoloides is one of three case studies on endangered orchid species in a recent paper addressing progress on the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. (photo by Melissa McCormick)

Staff from the Smithsonian Institution contributed two of the 14 articles of the published proceedings. Conservation concerns related to the native orchids of the United States and Canada are addressed in “The status and future of orchid conservation in North America” (Ann. Mo. Bot. Gard. 99: 180-198), written by Gary Krupnick (Department of Botany), Melissa McCormick (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center), Tom Mirenda (Smithsonian Gardens), and Dennis Whigham (SERC). The paper focuses on nine of the 16 targets of the GSPC, detailing how three targets have been adequately achieved and noting the limited progress on the other six targets. Three case studies of efforts to conserve native threatened orchids are presented. The paper also describes the efforts in establishing the North American Orchid Conservation Center, an international program to conserve all native orchids in the U.S. and Canada

In another paper, Gary Krupnick and Pedro Acevedo (Department of Botany), lead author James Miller (New York Botanical Garden), and eight additional co-authors from the New York Botanical Garden, the University of Puerto Rico, and the International Institute of Tropical Forestry discuss the efficient use of herbarium specimen data in the conservation evaluation of the native seed plant species of Puerto Rico. The paper, “Toward Target 2 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation: an expert analysis of the Puerto Rican flora to validate new streamlined methods for assessing conservation status” (Ann. Mo. Bot. Gard. 99: 199-205), demonstrates two systems that both efficiently identifies species at risk, which is a step toward both the GSPC Target 2 and a more comprehensive IUCN Red List for plants.

The US Herbarium Looks to Crowdsourcing to Create Digital Records

From Plant Press Vol. 17 no. 1, January 2014.

By Sylvia Orli, IT Manager

The U.S. National Herbarium has over 5 million botanical specimens, making it one of the largest herbaria in the United States and the world. The information on the herbarium sheets can be used for many important purposes, including botanical conservation and floristic studies, and yet without digital access to the material, the information is hidden on the sheets.

The Smithsonian Herbarium page of the Australia Living Atlas Biodiversity Volunteer Portal

The Department of Botany has been striving to inventory the collection since the 1970s and we have managed to digitize nearly 1.5 million specimens, including our entire Type Collection. We have 3.5 million specimens to go. At the current rate of inventory, we should finish digitizing the collection in 113 years. The question becomes how do we increase our rate with the limited resources we have in hand?

One route that we have embarked upon is crowdsourcing the digital inventory, by using online volunteers to transcribe the specimen labels. We have been using two online transcription sites, the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and the Smithsonian Transcription Center:

• The ALA has a wonderful Biodiversity Volunteer Portal (BVP), which is available for natural history institutions to use to transcribe field books, survey sheets and natural history collections. Volunteers from all over the world transcribe the material from image to text, and the Department of Botany has posted collections of Passifloraceae, Aristolochiaceae, Tiliaceae and Malvaceae for transcription. Since June 2013, volunteers have transcribed nearly 8,000 US specimen labels, making these collections available to online users.

• The Smithsonian Transcription Center has recently opened to the public and contains treasures of the Smithsonian. Field books and historic documents, along with many thousands of US Herbarium specimen sheets, are available for transcription at <https://transcription.si.edu/browse?owner=NMNH - Department of Botany>.

The Department of Botany IT Team is also investigating the use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to transcribe the specimen labels. Using software and programs such as ABBYY Fine Reader and SALIX, specimen label images can be converted to text strings which can either be parsed into data record fields or left as a text string that can be searched.

By using crowdsourcing and OCR to augment our traditional methods of creating digital specimen records, we hope to increase the rate of digitization by 100 percent in the next year. Our digitized specimen collection including specimen records and plant images is available at http://collections.mnh.si.edu/search/botany/.

Go Orchids Interactive Website Has Launched

From Plant Press Vol. 17 no. 1, January 2014.

More than half of North America's orchids are threatened or endangered somewhere in their native range. The North American Orchid Conservation Center (NAOCC) just launched Go Orchids, a searchable database where users can see which ones are in danger, find the orchids nearest them...or just look at lots of pretty pictures. Go Orchids is a tool to explore orchids native to the U.S. and Canada. Go Orchids will initially focus on orchids in New England and the mid-Atlantic region. Orchids of the southeast and Alaska will be added early in 2014. This site will be similar to Go Botany, developed by our partners at the New England Wild Flower Society and will eventually include all of the orchid species in the U.S. and Canada.

The North American Orchid Conservation Center is a coalition of organizations dedicated to conserving the diverse orchid heritage of the U.S. and Canada. Based at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, it also includes the National Zoological Park, the National Museum of Natural History, and Smithsonian Gardens. The U.S. Botanic Garden is the other founding partner. The initial group of public and private organizations that support NAOCC have joined forces with a common goal: to ensure the survival of native orchids for future generations.

Go Orchids has been developed to interact across a variety of platforms, including smart phones and tablets. We encourage you to explore the site.

More Than a ‘Pygmy’ Discovery

From Plant Press Vol. 17 no. 1, January 2014.

By Cavan Allen & Wesley Knapp

Field work over the past two years has resulted in the rediscovery of a species believed historic and extirpated from Maryland. Before its rediscovery, water pygmyweed (Crassula aquatica (L.) Schoenl.) was last seen in Maryland in 1950, some 62 years ago. This plant is aptly named, as the plants stand no more than one inch tall. This diminutive plant occurs in the inner-tidal zone in the eastern United States from Canada south to Maryland, with disjunct populations in Mississippi and Alabama.

In 2012, Allen rediscovered several plants growing along a tidal stream in Charles County, Maryland. He contacted Knapp, who set up a more thorough survey with Kathy McCarthy and Kerry Wixted, two additional staff of the Maryland Wildlife and Heritage Service. The resulting search yielded the discovery of thousands of individuals growing on the exposed rocky substrates that are only shallowly flooded at high tide. Crassula aquatica apparently preferred the rocky substrate, as very few individuals were found on mud or muck substrates in the immediate vicinity.