Botanical research in the age of COVID-19

From Plant Press, Vol. 23, No. 2, April 2020.

By Julia Beros

Life does not exist alone. It’s 12:30PM and the only indication of my coworkers is how slow shared documents begin loading in my remote desktop. During this time of great uncertainty, misinformation, and vulnerability, it can be a challenge to normalize and re-create the habitual, it can even be an insult to the desire to be more “useful.” But developing faith in our shared and now virtual community necessitates that we keep on keepin’ on. The speed at which the Smithsonian Institution reacted to the velocity of COVID-19’s approach in preparing ourselves to transition from a day-to-day routine working physically with specimens and collections to exclusively accessing them remotely and continuing research in the face of unknown challenges is not only impressive but admirable to see our passions overcome the immediate fight or flight reactionary instinct. It is clear as well, that as we log in from our various homes to access the collections, that the continued efforts of digitization at the Smithsonian are a true asset to research and maintaining continuity with the ever-changing infrastructure of our world.

Members of the Department of Botany meet over Zoom on March 30, 2020, for a departmental afternoon tea. All were welcome to participate, including researchers, collection staff, administrators, fellows, and associates. The National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, remains temporarily closed to support the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Like much of the world right now, the conveyor belt, photographing specimens and creating up to 4,000 images a day, has paused, and so have the dedicated contractors who facilitate the process. In this moment of reflection we can see everything that the team accomplished thus far: of a projected 5 million botanical specimens, 2.83 million have been imaged and or recorded in the database (not including those digitized by the Botany IT team previous to the installation of the conveyor belt, or historic photographs and other media), making them available through the online catalog. With the effort of Open Access the information of our specimen image collections is not only digitally safeguarded, but it is accessible by the public for free to look at, use, and download. Nearing our last phase of imaging, the team had just begun digitizing the Poaceae (grasses). Previously about 24,000 bamboo specimens along with the type collections, were digitized, leaving an estimated 500,000 unimaged grasses of which we have already made headway with over 100,000 specimens. At our respective homes, the team continues working on a backlog of specimen data (as we are still inundated with the roses and mustards), checking for completeness and accuracy, uploading to the database, and making the data searchable to expedite access to the collections.

A collective effort! Through crowd-sourcing on the “Herbarium Junkies” Facebook page, a messy label written in German becomes clear and can be accurately transcribed.

Slightly inconvenienced by my new at-home workstation, I find myself still in awe, still inspired, and still feeling giddy as I scan through the U.S. National Herbarium’s historic collections. Seeing an Allium or Apiale specimen come up that happens to be the same kind that I tended to in the garden this morning, or looking at a Rosaceae collected in 1800 and seeing a related species beginning to leaf and bud along the fence in my yard in 2020, is like time-travel giving me a link to the past. Reading the names of women botanists like Emma Lucy Braun and Agnes Chase paving the way for plant research and discovery with their observant and patient collecting while circumnavigating sexism, fills me with hope. Seeing the names of Roosevelt and Cook’s collectors, along with those of Henry Hurd Rusby, N.L. Britton, J.N. Rose, and Rupert Barnaby pop up and imagining the worlds they were collecting in, the trajectory of their work and its lasting impact on today’s research—feeling the weight of history in this single moment where we as a global community are now asked to observe the world we share and become more keen to each other’s needs, it’s hard not to feel humbled by the magnitude of life.

With practically every major art and science institution across the world closed to the public right now, digital collections have become instrumental in serving the public and researchers. This is perhaps one of the first instances where museums have reconfigured to continue sharing their data and collections with the public while a global crisis is actively impacting the day-to-day operations of every society. During WWII, art collections were highly vulnerable to destruction and theft, and were locked deep into storage to keep them safe. Though with tumultuous circumstances outlasting the war, many collections remained in storage and were not visible for many years, rendering them unusable and potentially putting them at risk of damage or decay (or to be lost with only the hope of rediscovery). At this very moment, the Smithsonian, encompassing 19 museums, the National Zoo, all its libraries, archives and research centers, have openly viewable exhibits online, as well as distance learning tools and educational activities (available through their webpages). Around the world, museums continue to share their rich collections via Instagram, Twitter, and other social media, and encourage the public to keep engaging with the arts, sciences, and history whilst practicing social distancing.

Each morning, core collections manager Erika Gardner guides her dedicated volunteers through virtual lessons in lieu of their regular mounting work. Beginning with a plant mounting demo and then continuing with a “botany crash course”, Gardner is working to make interesting and useful courses for volunteers to grow their skillset while away from the Smithsonian.

Feeling at times like it is not of primary importance to be able to know the difference between vascular and non-vascular plants, or what type of leaf shape is a dead giveaway for Sassafras, I remind myself that Botany not only has played a critical role in humanity, it will continue to serve us. With a rapid resurgence in “victory gardening” and more people taking daily hikes in abundantly forested seclusion, botanical and horticultural knowledge continues to support the needs and curiosities of humans, helping them engage in their physical world and actively participate in their food cycle. Perhaps this is a chance to regain perspective of our role in life: including ourselves in nature not just as those (negatively) affecting it, but ourselves being affected by nature. The speed at which information is disseminated is astonishing in both the biological and technological landscapes: bacteria can transcribe DNA and replicate their own population size exponentially; with the click of a button an entire website can go live on the internet and be read by anyone with WiFi; and a virus can spread globally via the air we share. As we cultivate more tools and broaden our capacity to engage in our world virtually, we also amplify the speed at which information (and misinformation) travels, making work in data-checking and database management all the more essential. This also poses a challenge: as these become necessary tools to navigate our world, making access to digital infrastructure truly egalitarian becomes a requisite.

While writing and editing papers on grasses, researcher Robert Soreng uses JSTOR Global Plants, and Biodiversity Heritage Library daily to aid in his work. Updating literature and nomenclature in Tropicos, he confers with other researchers through email exchange. Hoping to find the original type specimen related to some fragments brought to the USNH by A.S. Hitchcock in 1907, Soreng reached out to curator Otakar Sida in Prague who was able to find a not yet uploaded image of the original type. Collected by Thaddaeus Haenke in the 1790s it was originally described as Brizopyrum subspicatum, which was transferred to Poa subspicata where it remains today. As Soreng notes, “Through digitization of specimens, such histories are documented in a useful way.”

Digitization of collections has long been of interest for museums, libraries, and archives, but it often takes a moment when collections access is limited to truly comprehend the benefits of this work. We already rely heavily on many digital tools: in botany we use collaborative sites like Tropicos, IPNI, and World Flora Online to stay up to date with nomenclature and family changes, synonyms, and author names; we utilize the Index Herbariorum to find and connect with institutions throughout the world; and we even use herbaria list-serves and social media to query obscure encounters (often related to poor hand-writing on labels). As readership and visitation of digital collections is going up, a big question has been circulating as to how to properly cite digital specimens in new publications. With more and more people being forced to use digital specimens for their research, there hopefully begins a shift in opinions about using these in lieu of physical ones. What previously took effort to defend the benefits, efficiency, and accuracy of sharing and using information through digital records is now proven, as shipping physical specimens out for loans and exchange is not the safest or most efficient way to share data during this time.

Feeling the solidarity of my fellow Smithsonian workers as they continue their research, continue to fact check and clean data, continue to make research tools and specimens openly and easily accessible, continue to collect local flora, press plants, and mount backlogged specimens, feeling infinitely grateful for our facilities, operations, and security staff continuing to show up to our museums and safeguard our collections and buildings, I am reminded of the importance of individual and solitary contributions to a shared goal. It is with the tools of art, history, and science that we are able to create solutions and innovate, solving problems that are unexpected and often self-provoked. Through the process of digitization and collections inventorying we can better assess our collections numbers and more accurately represent what is housed. Spending time editing and cleaning records, full days face deep in Microsoft Access sheets culling records for errors, we can more accurately represent the data that has been collected for hundreds of years. Plants collected decades ago, not with a clear intention of what discoveries they may incite or how they can inspire solutions to unforeseen challenges, just with the intention of preserving and sharing our natural history, take on new importance. With the continuing work of collections digitization, we make possible the enduring study of our world and inspire compassion through our shared curiosities.

It’s 1:32PM and I’ve received an email reply that begins, “I’m eating too much, sleeping too much, watching TV too much,” from curator emeritus Harold Robinson. I asked him for a story:

Stories? Did I tell about the time I was walking past the Academy of Sciences building and outside the ivy-covered lawn was sticking up a squirrel's tail. I pulled it. Mistake. Small animals have a much more rapid reaction time than us big animals. It ran up my arm, sat on my shoulder and gave me a good scolding before it ran back down my arm and ran off. I don't recommend pulling a squirrel's tail. I was lucky it only chattered in my ear rather than biting it. It was just a brushy-tailed rat that chewed me out instead of chewing on me. I certainly felt like a nut.

Watching the squirrels outside is a practical distraction these days, but I also see the sweeping ephemeral blooms of magnolias, cherries, and lilacs, their warm scent a gesture of welcome, asking us to be observant and reminding us that our virtual realms still depend on the physical reality.