From Plant Press, Vol. 19, No. 2, April 2016.
By Sy Sohmer
The moment I pushed open the door to the Department of Botany at the National Museum of Natural History in November 2014, and began my reincarnation as a Research Associate, a flood of memories nearly knocked me over. First was the vision of Ray Fosberg and Marie-Hélène Sachet greeting me there at the door on my very first visit to the Smithsonian Institution in 1973. I was there to meet with them and receive an orientation to the Flora of Ceylon project, and begin my post-doctoral fellowship. I would participate three times over the next decade on that project, and cement what became a wonderful friendship with both of those unique people. I was a newly tenured member of the Biology Department at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, an institution that allowed me a number of leave of absences so I could participate in the Ceylon Project (and many others over the next decade).
There they were at the door and they ushered me into the herbarium, and in quick succession I met Mason Hale, Dick Eyde, Aaron Goldberg, Dan Nicolson, Harold Robinson, Bob King, Joan Nowicke, Dieter Wasshausen, Larry Skog, etc. I had never met anyone as tall as Dick. And he had a green coat jacket on and I swear he looked like the Green Hornet! Anyway, it was a warm feeling being back and although most of those named people above had passed or retired, there are still some faces I knew from those early days: Debbie Bell, Rusty Russell, Alice Tangerini and others.
I was brought eventually to what would be my office in my days as a post-doc: the “Cave.” That would be my home away from home during that year along with the many half cabinets that served as sorting tables in those days when there weren't as many full cabinets. I spent hours laying out specimens of Psychotria (Rubiaceae) and what had been the subject of my doctoral dissertation at the University of Hawaii: Charpentiera (Amaranthaceae). It was Ray Fosberg who nudged me into the study of Psychotria, and the first revision I undertook of that genus was for the Hawaiian Archipelago.
And so here I am getting back to the research I used to love doing after first running a program at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as Senior Biodiversity Adviser for three years, and then, spending over 20 years as the director of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT), in Fort Worth, organizing an institution that began in a 10,000 sq. ft. warehouse. There were three people, an herbarium of some 400,000 specimens, an annual budget of $175,000, and a library of some 50,000 titles. When I left, there were 32 people, an annual budget of about $4 million, an herbarium of over one million specimens, and, most importantly, all housed in a LEED Platinum building adjacent to the botanical garden, and with a library of some 150,000 titles and nearly a $50 million endowment.
I now want to do my part for the Smithsonian’s Botany Department as I wish to honor the memory of those who came before me, who were kind to me, and upon whose shoulders I am now standing. In this department are dedicated individuals who, whether they realize it or not, are helping to save global biodiversity by documenting the plant world.
Map of the Islands of New Guinea. Papua New Guinea is at the right of the dividing line.
My plans are to work with Papua New Guinea Psychotria where I left off with my 1988 publication of my monograph. Many more taxa are yet to be recognized. More studies are needed to fully understand the systematics, morphology, phylogeny and diversity of this genus in New Guinea. When I began doing this work I estimated that the number of taxa that is likely to be found in Papua New Guinea would be 200 to 300 (including the vines and the climbers). At present many new taxa have been described from the lowland rainforests to the high altitude forests, but many areas remain unexplored.