The Plant Press

Dan Henry Nicolson (1933-2016)

From Plant Press, Vol. 19, No. 3, July 2016.

Dan Nicolson, recipient of the Distinguished Career in Science Award given by the Washington Academy of Sciences, in 2008.

Dan Nicolson was born on 5 September 1933 in Kansas City, Missouri and grew up in Shenandoah, Iowa where his parents ran the Henry Field’s Seed and Nursery Company, which was then one of the largest mail order seed companies in the country. After graduating from Shenandoah High School (1951) Nicolson enrolled in Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa. Four years later, not only did he graduate with a B.A. (1955) but he also published his first botanical paper: a revision of the genus Asclepias (milkweed) in Iowa. Evidently there was an expectation that he would take over the family business and he dutifully pursued a M.B.A. (1957) at Stanford. Botany, however, proved to be more alluring than business and rather than return to Shenandoah, he moved further east to pursue graduate study in Botany at Cornell University (M.S., 1959 and Ph.D., 1964).

While studying at Cornell, Nicolson met and married Alice (Allie) Black Crawford. The newly wedded couple attended the 1959 International Botanical Congress in Montreal for their honeymoon. This unorthodox destination must not have bothered his wife too much because they remained married for 57 years. While in graduate school Dan and Allie spent almost two years (1960-62) in Malaysia and Southeast Asia where he did the field work that led to a monograph of the genus Aglaonema (Araceae), the subject of his dissertation.

Nicolson supervises the move of the Department of Botany and the assembled collections to the new west wing of the Museum of Natural History, in 1965.

In 1964 Nicolson was hired by the Smithsonian Institution to fill a vacancy created when Richard (Dick) Cowan was promoted to Assistant Director of the U.S. National Museum (now National Museum of Natural History). During his first year on the job Nicolson attended the International Botanical Congress in Edinburgh and spent three months collecting on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean. The following year as the junior curator in the department, he was tasked with organizing the move of the U.S. National Herbarium from the Castle to its current location in the West Wing of the Natural History Building. Several years later he organized the Herbarium Services Unit (now Core Collections Management) and was also instrumental in recruiting Ruth Schallert to serve as the first librarian for what is now the Botany and Horticulture Library.

Nicolson continued his focus on Asian botany and spent a year (1966-67) collecting plants in Nepal as a Senior Fulbright Fellow. This was followed by work in India (1968-74) where he spent three months of each year in Bangalore (now Bengalaru) collaborating with Father C.J. Saldanha on the flora of the Hassan District, which was published in 1975. He also spent a month in Sri Lanka in 1979 and later contributed a treatment of the Araceae to the multi-volume A revised handbook of the flora of Ceylon, which was then being published for the Smithsonian Institution and the National Science Foundation. A three-month long trip to Yunnan, China in 1983 was Nicolson’s last extensive foray into the field.

Nicolson displays a specimen during the blooming of Amorphophallus titanium at the United States Botanic Garden, in 2003.

In the 1970s Nicolson became deeply involved in botanical nomenclature and in the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) so much so that for close to a generation Dan Nicolson and Botanical nomenclature were almost synonymous. He served (1979-99) as nomenclature editor of the journal Taxon and was (1981-2006) also a member of the editorial committee for the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature helping to prepare five separate editions. He held numerous offices in the IAPT including president (1993-99). In conjunction with his interest in nomenclature, Nicolson also delved deeply into Botanical bibliography and history. His most important contributions to these last fields were An interpretation of Van Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus (1988), The Forsters and the botany of the second Cook Expedition (1772-1775) (2004), and the final two supplements to Taxonomic Literature, ed. 2 (2008, 2009). All four of these books were published with an IAPT imprint.

Nicolson liked to quip that his scientific work could be divided into three areas: 1, Monographic work in Araceae (knowing a lot about little); 2, Floristic work in India and the West Indies (knowing a little about a lot); and 3, Nomenclature (knowing a little about really nothing). He was perhaps a little too self-effacing. His contributions to Botany were important and he received recognition for them: a Science Achievement Award (2004) from NMNH, the Stafleu Medal (2005) from the IAPT, and the Secretary’s Research Award (2009) from the Smithsonian Institution.

Nicolson receives the Stafleu Medal from Pieter Baas during the 17th International Botanical Congress in Vienna, Austria, in 2005.

In 2005 Nicolson attended the International Botanical Congress in Vienna, his ninth and final congress. He retired in December of the same year and initially devoted his time to bringing the monumental IAPT-sponsored project Taxonomic Literature to a conclusion. Health issues, however, prevented him from taking on additional projects.

In addition to his wife Allie, Nicolson’s immediate survivors are his three children, John, Sally, and David. David works in the Natural History Building as a Data Development Coordinator for the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS), which is part of the USGS.

The Department of Botany plans to hold a Memorial Service for Nicolson in the early Fall.

Volunteer Appreciation in Botany

From Plant Press, Vol. 19, No. 3, July 2016.

April was designated as Volunteer Appreciation Month at the National Museum of Natural History. The Department of Botany has many dedicated volunteers involved in all aspects of our work. From plant preparation to map curating and data entry, this extraordinary and talented group of volunteers deserves special recognition.

The museum held a special event in April to honor the volunteers and to give our thanks. During the event a number of Botany volunteers were recognized for their years of service: 5 years (Ann Cardoni, Deanna Crouse, Kathleen Griffin, Ardith Harle), 10 years (Cynthia Ford, Rosalie Elliott, Bayla White), 20 years (Larry Owens), 25 years (Margaret Schweitzer), and 30 years (Gwen Petitjean).

Volunteers from the Department of Botany: (left) Ardith and Jim Harle. We are fortunate to have both of the Harles volunteering in Botany. Jim manages the map project, which has expanded across the museum, and Ardith works on the plant mounting opportunity; (center) the Monday plant mounting crew (from top left): Kat Rankin (retired plant mounting coordinator), Irmgard Dugge, Carol Pihstrom, Gwen Petitjean, Jo Ann McCann, and Bayla White; (right) Larry and Alice Owens with Melinda Peters. Larry works on the plant mounting opportunity.

Mary Monsma in the studio scanning her fern illustrations. (photo by Elizabeth Jacobsen)

Mary Monsma was selected from the Department of Botany for the “Above and Beyond 2016” award. Monsma first worked in Botany in the early 1970s as a contract illustrator drawing ferns for David Lellinger and his publication, The Ferns and Fern-allies of Costa Rica, Panama, and the Choco: Part 1. In 30 years she completed 582 drawings for that publication, and another 596 drawings for the second volume. Part 2 was never published, as the classification of ferns had changed too much. In 2012 Monsma returned to Botany to begin a long term volunteer project to scan, inventory and organize her fern illustrations from her contract years. With her additional knowledge in Photoshop she has been able to reconstruct, label and optimize the illustrations for future inclusion in Botany’s public website.

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 19, No. 3, July 2016.

Manuela Dal Forno joined the Botany Department as a postdoctoral fellow in June 2016, working with Eric Schuettpelz. Dal Forno received her Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Public Policy from George Mason University. Her dissertation research focused on the systematics of tropical basidiolichens in the Dictyonema sensu lato clade (Agaricales: Hygrophoraceae). Dal Forno was awarded an NSF fellowship for research using biological collections and will be obtaining microbiome data from fresh and historical lichen collections deposited at the U.S. National Herbarium. She will be comparing these data in both space (from different localities) and time (at various ages). Her main objective is to test the hypothesis that microbiome data from specimens deposited in herbaria represent the original bacterial assemblage associated with the living lichen thallus. This opens up a remarkable opportunity to add another data layer to millions of existing collections deposited in museums worldwide.

Bort (Robert) Edwards arrived in January as a Powell Center Postdoctoral Fellow under the guidance of Vicki Funk. The Powell Center is a USGS initiative for collaborative analysis and synthesis and Edwards’ project brings together data and investigators from SI, USGS, USDA, CSIRO, NSF, and a number of other organizations and universities. They aim to leverage big data in the form of geochemistry and geology, climate, plant distributions, and sequence data to investigate whether the evolution of extreme environmental tolerances has allowed the differentiation and diversification of plant groups in some of the more challenging environments of North America. Edwards has a Ph.D. in phylogenetics and biogeography from The University of Queensland in Australia studying differentiation, niche evolution, and species identity in a recent and complex radiation of monsoon tropical trees, broadleaved paperbarks (Melaleuca, Myrtaceae). He is also recovering from two years as a Drosophila speciation genetics postdoc at the University of Rochester (identifying the genetic mechanisms of hybrid incompatibility and the large X effect between D. simulans and D. mauritiana), and is enjoying supra-freezing temperatures, blue skies and dabbling with chlorophyll again. His research can be followed at http://bortedwards.weebly.com/ and on Twitter and Instagram @BortEdwards.

Laura Tancredi is the newest staff member of the Department of Botany. As part of the Information Management team, her main roles will be to enhance the Botany specimen catalog through digitizing, inventorying and imaging specimens, performing quality control for the rapid digitization project, and supervising volunteers and interns who will assist with the improvement of the online records. Before coming to the Smithsonian as a Collections Program Technician (CPT) in 2012, Tancredi worked as an archaeologist at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. She therefore comes to Botany with plenty of experience “collecting” in the dirt. Tancredi’s first project as a CPT, and first exposure to the world of pressed specimens, was with the National Anthropological Archives, mounting ethnobotanical specimens as part of the Recovering Voices Initiative. She subsequently spent over a year in the Division of Fishes cataloging ~15,000 specimen lots in their fluid collection, and moving and rehousing the osteological collection. She participated in the Department of Entomology’s species level inventory, catalogued the Department of Paleobiology’s Amber Collection, and spent about eight months last spring and summer with the Department of Botany preparing specimens for the conveyor belt digitization project.

Awards and Grants

From Plant Press, Vol. 19, No. 3, July 2016.

A phylogenetic classification of the Poaceae is presented in a new paper in the Journal of Systematics and Evolution. The classification includes 12 subfamilies, 51 tribes, and 80 subtribes evolving clockwise. Triangles are proportional in height to the size of the taxon where the Loliinae is the largest with 698 species.

The Journal of Systematic Evolution (JSE) recognized the 2015 paper, “A worldwide phylogenetic classification of the Poaceae (Gramineae),” by Robert Soreng, Paul Peterson, Kostyantyn Romashchenko, Gerrit Davidse, Fernando O. Zuloaga, Emmet J. Judziewicz, Tarciso S. Filgueiras, Jerrold I. Davis, and Osvaldo Morrone as one of four JSE Outstanding Papers (2014 and 2015). The 2015 paper, “Expression patterns of AP1, FUL, FT and LEAFY orthologs in Vitaceae support the homology of tendrils and inflorescences throughout the grape family,” by Ning Zhang, Jun Wen, and Elizabeth Zimmer, was recognized as one of four JSE Outstanding Papers by Young Investigators (2014 and 2015). Both papers were nominated by JSE editors and were selected largely based on the citations per year. In addition to a certificate, winners received a cash award.

Chair With A View: Taking Stock

From Plant Press, Vol. 19, No. 3, July 2016.

It has been an eventful year. Last summer when it became apparent that I would likely become Chair of the Department of Botany I realized that among many other things I would have to organize and orchestrate a spring symposium. A number of ideas floated through my head and suppressing panic, the strongest of all the ideas, I decided that a symposium on pollination biology might be interesting. I had dabbled with the subject early in my career and I knew that even though pollination biology per se is not a focus of research done here in the Museum, a symposium on this topic could easily underscore the valuable systematic and phylogenetic research done by our Botany and Entomology Departments and inform some of our research on the evolution of plants and insects. When I pitched the idea to Susan Pell of the U.S. Botanic Garden, our partner in this enterprise, she agreed and as they say the rest is history. Of course, a good number of Botany staff worked very hard to make this happen and I think we all should be very pleased with the result: an intellectually stimulating day with one of the largest registrations yet for our symposium series.

Specimens from the United States National Herbarium are placed on a conveyer belt for rapid digitization. (photo by Ingrid Lin)

Another inherited project, which was planned before but inaugurated after I became Chair, is our digitization conveyor project (see The Plant Press 19(2): 6, 7. 2016). The scale of the accomplishments here in the last ten months is phenomenal. As of last week, 566,824 herbarium specimens have been digitized, their label data have been or are now being transcribed, and the specimen images and information will soon be fully searchable on our website. This is currently the largest herbarium digitization project in the Western Hemisphere and to put the scale of what has been accomplished into perspective, I need only add that the average size of the 3,200 institutional herbaria in the world is a modest 100,000 specimens! As with the symposium, this project also is a partnership. The Digitization Program Office (DPO) of the Smithsonian Institution has been a driving force, our principal benefactor, and the administrative contact with Picturae, the Dutch company that owns and runs the conveyor belt and that subcontracts the transcriptions being done in Suriname. The very hard work in getting us to this point has been that of not only the contractors employed by Picturae, but also Botany and Museum staff and contractors who planned the project, prepared the specimens for digitization, verified the transcriptions, and who are now importing the data into our collections database.

Bamboo specimens sit in swing space as they await their move to new metal herbarium cases. (photo by Amanda Grusz)

The past year has also seen a transformation in the U.S. National Herbarium, which although far from complete, augers well for the future. The new cases designed to house our bulky bamboo collections (see The Plant Press 19(2): 8. 2016) have been installed and the specimens transferred from the old cases to the new. We are poised as well to order new cases for the ferns and for an area currently used as our specimen sorting center and these will be in place before the end of the year. The sorting center will be relocated and this will provide room for us to expand the Asteraceae. The new cabinetry was purchased with monies awarded by the Smithsonian’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund (CCPF) for which we are extremely grateful. A separate CCPF grant is helping us to process a large backlog of grass specimens that will free up space and generate a significant amount of exchange material. A separate, moderately controversial change was the reintegration of the D.C. (District of Columbia) Herbarium into the main collection. Space and the need to focus staff resources on other matters drove this decision. In addition, we also came to the conclusion that the most efficient organization of the U.S. National Herbarium is to have the least number of separate collections possible.

Having taken stock of a few of our major activities where do we go now? There will be another Smithsonian Botanical Symposium in May 2017 and we have initiated a discussion with the U.S. Botanic Garden about the theme. We are continuing the digitization of the herbarium and are beginning to think about how we can use very large data sets to address and answer questions with herbarium specimens that we could not imagine doing before. We are reorganizing the phanerogamic portion of the herbarium as a prelude to converting our filing scheme to a modern one that better reflects our understanding of phylogeny. Finally, you might ask why these things matter. They matter because we are trying to support and improve our research on the systematics and evolution of plants, fungi (i.e., lichens), and algae.

Bawa Receives 14th Cuatrecasas Medal

From Plant Press, Vol. 19, No. 3, July 2016.

The Department of Botany and the United States National Herbarium present the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany annually to a botanist and scholar of international stature who has contributed significantly to advancing the field of tropical botany. The Medal is named in honor of Dr. José Cuatrecasas, a pioneering botanist and taxonomist, who spent nearly a half-century working in the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Botany. Dr. Cuatrecasas devoted his career to plant exploration in tropical South America and this award serves to keep vibrant the accomplishments and memory of this outstanding scientist.

The winner of this prestigious award is selected by a committee made up of four botanists on staff in the Department in consultation with other plant scientists outside of the Smithsonian Institution. Nominations for the Medal are accepted from all scientists in the Botany Department. The award consists of a bronze medal bearing an image of José Cuatrecasas on the front with the recipient’s name and date of presentation on the back. Highlights from past presentations to the recipients are available at <http://botany.si.edu/cuatrecasas/cuatrecasasMedal.cfm>.

Kenneth Wurdack presents Kamal Bawa with the 14th José Cuatrecasas Medal in Tropical Botany. (photo by Tomas Fer)

Kamaljit [Kamal] S. Bawa is the 14^th recipient of the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany. He was educated at Punjab University in Chandigarh, India, where he received his bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. degrees. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1967, he came to the United States for postdoctoral appointments, first at the University of Washington and then at the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University. In 1974 he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he has remained and presently is a Distinguished Professor of Biology. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment, Giorgio Ruffolo Fellow in Sustainability Science, and in 2012 was the first laureate of the Gunnerus Sustainability Award from the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters. He is a fellow or officer in many scientific societies, including a past president of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC).

The Cuatrecasas Medal selection committee took special note of Bawa’s extensive and often pioneering contributions to tropical biology and international conservation. Of special relevance to this Symposium is his research in reproductive ecology (including pollination biology) and population genetics in both the Old and New World tropics. His more recent contributions have addressed the challenges of biodiversity conservation and sustainability, especially for India and its centers of biodiversity in the Western Ghats and Himalayas. In 1996 he founded the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), which has developed research and education programs to address key environmental problems in India. He has authored, coauthored, and edited over 200 scholarly articles and 11 books that span a remarkable array of breadth from basic biology to environmental policy in a changing world.