From Plant Press, Vol. 19, No. 1, January 2016.
By Spencer Goyette
-Adapted from Smithsonian Libraries Unbound
The Department of Botany’s fern collection was highlighted several times last year. It was the main focus of the annual Smithsonian Botanical Symposium and was extended to a full week in June as "Next Generation Pteridology - An International Conference on Lycophyte & Fern Research", and now is a central part of the rapid capture digitization project to digitize and make accessible online the entire fern herbarium.
When I started as an intern and contractor in the Department at the beginning of 2015 I had no idea of the scale of diversity and richness that existed within this distinct plant lineage. My previous knowledge of ferns was elementary at best. In college, most of my professors glossed over the identification and ecology of ferns, opting instead to focus more lesson time on the seed plants.
As a contractor I helped prepare the collection for the digitization that is currently taking place within the herbarium. Most of the work was rote and mundane: replacing species covers, relabeling and making genus folders, moving cabinets of genera to reflect their more accurate phylogeny. Not exciting work but necessary. A definite perk of being around so many different genera and species was witnessing the global diversity of this group that was represented within our collection: from the diminutive tree fern that inhabits the tops of South American Tepuis, to the devastatingly simple-looking but incredibly speciose Tongueferns (Elaphoglossum), to the obscure Grammitids whose names possess a certain mellifluous indelibility (Melpomene and Terpsichore were among my favorites).
Like many staff and herbarium visitors, I decided to explore the resources available in the Botany and Horticulture Library in order to learn more about the life histories of these plants, and to help ready myself for a two week fern-collecting trip to Puebla, Mexico with a team of pteridologists led by Eric Schuettpelz, Curator of Pteridophytes at the National Museum of Natural History. I thought finding a book to read on the subject would be an easy way to build on the little knowledge I had built up over the past few months and prepare me for what turned out to be one of the most interesting adventures of my life.
While any volume focused on the ferns of southern Mexico could be considered “niche” by even the most eclectic of readers, I was pleased to discover a copy of Oaxaca Journal by Dr. Oliver Sacks in our library. Coincidentally, I read Oaxaca Journal around the same time as the week-long, fern-focused Botany Symposium. Only on rare occasions are the people who populate the pages of our books presented in three dimensions, yet there they were. At this conference were some of the very same people mentioned in Sacks’ book. Although in retrospect it seems inevitable, as the world of serious fern-lovers is not exactly a large one.
Welcoming and familiar, the fern community becomes intertwined with Sacks’ narrative in Oaxaca Journal, as he describes the landscape of Mexico with a dynamic and colorful eye, connecting humans and flora through time and place. Once we made it into the field I consciously tried to make similar connections of my own between the pressed specimens I had seen in the herbarium with what I had read in Sacks’ book to the wonderful array of plants we were seeing daily. In one of my favorite passages from the book Sacks comments on the enthusiasm with which his fellow travelers identify seemingly dead, desiccated plants:
“It takes a practiced eye to see dried-up, withered and contracted ferns, to pick them out from the brown earth, but most of the group have had experience with this, and now, lenses in hand, careless of their clothes, they are crawling all over the ground, climbing the slopes, picking out new ferns every second. ‘Notholaena galeottii!’ someone cries. ‘Astrolepis sinuata!” cries another, and there are no fewer than five species of Cheilanthes.”
As our team began to comb through Puebla’s gullies, streams, and mountainsides for ferns, we became a similar symphony of excitement when we happened upon another genus or species. In fact, finding Scoliosorus, a Vittarioid fern and one of our main targets, was a major highlight of the trip that we celebrated with hoots and hollers that visibly amused a nearby Cabaña manager.
Working in such species rich habitats was mind-boggling. Every day it seemed like we found new species, uncollected from the days prior. Another book, The Pteridophytes of Mexico by John Mickel and Alan R. Smith, provided key insight into potentially new species records and was definitely worth its weight for field identification (more in depth than Oaxaca Journal, but equally interesting and more field valuable). Between the spider bites, wasp stings, sunburn, altitude sickness, “ditch bananas,” lightning strikes, a deluge or two, and stomach bugs we managed to not only collect more ferns than I would have thought possible, but had a blast at the same time.
It goes without saying that in this Year of Ferns I have been exposed to unique human and scientific experiences that I will remember for the rest of my life and will build upon as I make future career choices.
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