The Plant Press

PolliNation DC to document urban buzz

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 2, April 2021.

Community gardens are a valuable social, ecological, and environmental resource, but we currently know very little about the pollinator species visiting them, their ecology, and the impact of human activity on their populations in Washington, DC. Intentionally or not, organic community gardens provide food and shelter for wildlife such as birds, mammals, snails and slugs, insects, spiders and even roly poly crustaceans. Gardeners are intricately connected to nature and in one sense are wildlife managers.

A new citizen scientist project, PolliNation DC, is being launched on April 30, 2021. The project encourages DC community garden volunteers to record the bee, butterfly, wasp, fly, moth, beetle, ant, and other insect species visiting flowers and acting as pollinators for both native and non-native plants in DC community garden sites. The DC Department of Parks and Recreation manages 35 community gardens across the 8 Wards of the District. The native plant gardens at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and the U.S. Botanical Garden (USBG) will serve as control sites. The collected data will help the research team understand which insect species are visiting which native and non-native plant species in an urban environment.

Registration opens for the 2021 Smithsonian Botanical Symposium

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 2, April 2021.

Registration is now open for the 18^th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, “Plant symbiosis: The good, the bad, and the complicated,” to be held 13-14 May 2021. This symposium will be held in a virtual setting and be spread over two days.

If you wish to attend both days of the symposium, be sure to register for each day:

• Thursday, May 13, 2021: https://smithsonian.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4oSefPMrToecWGgkIn62sQ
• Friday, May 14, 2021: https://smithsonian.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kZLs2Iv5S8aQCl5OI87ZPA

Plants, like all organisms, exist in collaboration and competition with other life forms. As primary producers, plants form the basis of most food webs. In many cases they also depend on insects, vertebrate animals, bacteria, and/or fungi to survive and reproduce. Sometimes these interactions are especially close and long lasting and such symbioses are among the most fascinating relationships in the natural world. The 18^th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium will explore current research in the diversity of plant symbioses, examining the relationships plants have with insects, fungi, bacteria, and even other plants. Speakers will include botanists, ecologists, microbiologists, and geneticists whose research unravels the complicated relationships that plants have with their collaborators and competitors in the natural world.

In addition, the 18^th José Cuatrecasas Medal in Tropical Botany will be awarded at the Symposium. This prestigious award is presented annually to an international scholar who has contributed significantly to advancing the field of tropical botany. The award is named in honor of Dr. José Cuatrecasas, a pioneering botanist who spent many years working in the Department of Botany at the Smithsonian and devoted his career to plant exploration in tropical South America.

Schedule for Thursday, May 13, 2021 (Eastern Time)
https://smithsonian.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4oSefPMrToecWGgkIn62sQ

• 1:00 pm – Welcome
• 1:10 pm - Presentation of the José Cuatrecasas Medal
• 1:20 pm - Naomi Pierce (Harvard University), "Context dependent evolution of the African ant acacia, Vachellia drepanolobium, and its multitude of symbionts"
• 1:40 pm - Jay Bolin (Catawba College), "Hydnora from fungus to foul flower: the natural history of the strangest plants in the world"
• 2:00 pm - Posy Busby (Oregon State University), "Assembly and function of the leaf microbiome"
• 2:20 pm - Panel Discussion

Schedule for Friday, May 14, 2021 (Eastern Time)
https://smithsonian.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kZLs2Iv5S8aQCl5OI87ZPA

• 1:00 pm – Welcome
• 1:10 pm - Leonora Bittleston (Boise State University), "Convergent interactions in carnivorous pitcher plant microcosms"
• 1:30 pm - Dong Wang (University of Massachusetts Amherst), "Indentured servitude: host control of intracellular bacteria in the nitrogen-fixing symbiosis"
• 1:50 pm - Manuela Dal Forno (Fort Worth Botanic Garden | Botanical Research Institute of Texas), "The lichen dilemma: unveiling diversity in multi-species symbioses"
• 2:10 pm - Panel Discussion

Rare lichen unique to Florida discovered in museum collections, may be extinct

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 2, April 2021.

-Adapted from the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Scientists have found a new species of fleshy verdigris lichen, thanks to DNA analysis of museum specimens. Misidentified by its original collectors, the lichen is only known from 32 specimens collected in North and Central Florida scrubland between 1885 and 1985. Now the hunt is on to find it in the wild – if it still exists.

Heart lichens belong to the genus Cora, whose name is derived from the Latin prefix for “heart,” a reference to the shape of their lobes. (photo courtesy of Robert Lücking)

The lichen, named Cora timucua in honor of Florida's Timucua people, is critically endangered, even more so than the federally protected Florida perforate reindeer lichen, and possibly extinct. Researchers are holding out hope that C. timucua may persist in undisturbed pockets of the state's dwindling pine scrub habitat, though recent searches came up empty.

If Cora timucua still exists, it is most likely living in pockets of undisturbed pine scrub habitat in Florida’s Ocala National Forest, pictured here, and O’Leno State Park, researchers said. (photo courtesy of Dani Tinker, CC BY-NC 2.0)

"The million-dollar question is 'Where is this lichen?'" said Laurel Kaminsky, a digitization manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History and co-author of the study. "The optimist in me says it's still out there."

Kaminsky said the sparse information recorded by the lichen's collectors makes it difficult to retrace their steps. More widespread in the early 20^th century, C. timucua was collected only from the Ocala National Forest and O'Leno State Park after 1968, two of Florida's last remaining scrub ecosystems. Citrus groves and urban developments have replaced up to 90 percent of the state's sand pine scrub.

"If it's anywhere, it's going to take a lot of looking in very specific habitats to find it," Kaminsky said.

A botanical cliff-hanger

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 2, April 2021.

By Nancy Khan and Warren Wagner.

Dramatic cliffs along the northern coast of Guam rise over 190 m to form a broad limestone plateau that encompasses the most diverse native plant communities of this small Micronesian island. Until recently the biological diversity of Micronesia was not fully understood, but it is now thought that this region contains a higher percentage of endemic plant species per square kilometer land area than any other hotspot of biodiversity. With an area of about 541 km² Guam is the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands, but exhibits the lowest percent of endemism of the archipelago (Micronesica 43: 51–100; 2012). This bleak account inspired further investigation of an intriguing, yet unidentified specimen collected in 1994 as part of a floristic inventory for an environmental assessment of Andersen Air Force Base sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).

Coastal limestone cliffs of northeastern Guam. (photo courtesy of Toni Mizerek, from Lorence et al. 2020)

Most of the Guam National Wildlife Refuge (GNWR), about 22,456 acres, is an "overlay refuge" (land that is under the primary jurisdiction of one Federal agency and the refuge purpose is superimposed as a secondary interest) formed by two units: Andersen Air Force Overlay and the Navy Overlay Unit. Although the military mission comes first on these overlay lands, the USFWS assists in protecting native species and habitats. Together with the 1,217 acre Ritidian Unit which is managed solely by the USFWS they comprise the GNWR which was established in 1993 when the area was determined to be critical habitat for six species of plants and animals listed as endangered pursuant to the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966.

Pogostemon guamensis Lorence and W.L.Wagner (Perlman & Wood 14266, holotype PTBG-061045)

A previous collection made within the GNWR by Derral Herbst (USFWS) in 1982 guided botanists Steve Perlman and Ken Wood (National Tropical Botanical Garden) to the unusual plant. The pair searched sharp, jagged cliffs along the coast, repeatedly rappelling down vertical escarpments, eventually locating five subpopulations totaling 113 individuals. Field identification tentatively likened it to patchouli, Pogostemon cablin (Lamiaceae), however it lacked the aromatic oils characteristic of the patchouli plant. Six new collections were made by Wood and Perlman to document the distribution and morphological variation of the subpopulations. Subsequent expansion of the military installation and development of cooperative but parallel conservation plans by the USFWS and the U.S. Air Force hindered opportunities to re-visit the site for further exploration.

The six specimens seemed likely to remain an enigma until Smithsonian Department of Botany lab technician Gabe Johnson became involved. He applied molecular techniques to determine the identity of the plant. Small fragments were removed from four of the specimens collected in 1994. Initial extraction indicated that the DNA was highly degraded, but the application of a precise and intricate methodology yielded two samples with 2 regions each of sequenceable DNA that could be compared to known sequences obtained from GenBank (Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 98: 184–200; 2016). A phylogenetic reconstruction of the genus Pogostemon revealed that while there is superficial resemblance to Pogostemon cablin, the mystery plant was a new species native to Guam and more closely related to three species with origins on the Indian subcontinent.