The Plant Press

Art by Alice Tangerini: Pseudarthria panii R.Zhang, T.S.Yi & B.Pan

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 3, July 2021.

The diversity of plant symbioses and the relationships plants have with insects, fungi, bacteria, and even other plants was the theme of the 18th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium held virtually in May 2021. One presentation focused on nitrogen-fixing symbiosis between legumes and rhizobia. Alice Tangerini has illustrated several nitrogen-fixing legumes. One such plate of hers remains unpublished. When Tangerini received an unidentified plant specimen from Ashley Egan (Assistant Curator 2013-2017), it was possibly a new species of Desmodium. Tangerini made the drawing from dried unmounted material and some digital images of the flowers and habit. The drawing was done in two plates and combined. One plate contained all floral dissections and habit and a second plate had the adaxial and abaxial leaf surfaces. The hooked hairs on the pedicel were important to show. In a 2018 paper, a team from Kunming Institute of Botany named this plant as a new species of Pseudarthria from Asia.

Research & Activities [Video]

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 3, July 2021.

On May 19, Research Associate John Wiersema presented a webinar entitled, “A Taxonomist’s View on the Essence of Waterlilies that Inspired Claude Monet,” to the membership of Marie Selby Botanical Garden in Sarasota, Florida. In this virtual botanical briefing, Wiersema asked, “What is it about the nature of waterlilies that provided the inspiration for Claude Monet’s gardens and so many of his impressionist paintings?” Wiersema’s webinar examined the role of waterlilies in the aquatic landscape, explored the relationships among the various forms of waterlilies throughout the world, and probed the aesthetic qualities that have made them the ultimate aquatic ornamental. He also spoke about the early history of waterlily hybridization in Europe in relation to the waterlilies available to Monet when Monet established his water garden in Giverny in the late 19th century, with a closer look at those that successfully established on Monet’s estate. Wiersema also finds an appreciation in the sheer beauty and serenity of pristine waterlily settings and a Monet impressionist rendering of it.

In John Wiersema's webinar, "A Taxonomist’s View on the Essence of Waterlilies that Inspired Claude Monet," Wiersema provides a chronology of Monet's paintings and looks closely at the botany behind the artist's inspiration.

Wiersema, a specialist on the taxonomy of the waterlily group, focuses his research on the waterlily genus Nymphaea. He has studied and collected these plants in both temperate and tropical countries on six continents, personally cultivating at least 60 such gatherings for direct observation over the last four decades, and examined thousands of global water lily herbarium specimens. He has discovered and described several new species and has participated in over 30 scientific publications on the group. Retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service after more than 30 years, he now serves as a Research Associate in the Botany Department of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Wiersema gained global standing as a specialist in plant nomenclature, and now has direct editorial involvement with both the botanical and cultivated plant codes of international nomenclature and the international journal Taxon. Over his professional career, he has contributed to some 125 scientific publications.

The presentation is available online at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxlJQwp0N-U>.

Awards & Honors

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 3, July 2021.

Alice Tangerini was the recipient of the Linnean Society’s 2020 Jill Smythies Award. The award is given annually to a botanical artist for outstanding, diagnostically relevant published illustrations. Due to the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 award ceremony was postponed, and a decision was subsequently made to hold the 2021 event via Zoom. Although Tangerini was unable to travel to receive the award in person, she accepted the award during a Linnean Society Medals Ceremony held on 24 May 2021. Sandra Knapp, president of the Society, presented the award to Tangerini during the ceremony.

Sandra Knapp, president of the Linnean Society, presents the 2020 Jill Smythies Award to Alice Tangerini during the Society’s virtual medals ceremony on 24 May 2021.

The following accolade was given to Tangerini by the Linnean Society:

For the excellence of her depictions of plants for scientific use, including the detailed portrayal of their diagnostic characteristics, Alice Tangerini is our 2020 winner of the Jill Smythies Award. In addition to illustrating new species, Alice has illustrated multiple taxa from the same group for the same publication, such that the details of the drawings can be used to distinguish the species.

Since 1972, Alice has made diagnostic illustrations for over 1,000 plant species in pen and ink, graphite, and more recently in digital media, for a variety of publications. Using mainly herbarium specimens as her resource material, she has prepared these illustrations to portray the species in a realistic manner with necessary reconstruction to remove the artefacts of drying and physical damage. Significant taxonomic characters have been enlarged with the aid of a microscope to facilitate their use in species descriptions.

Over the years, the detail and accuracy of her drawings and examinations of the specimens have resulted in authors changing descriptions, based on details observed by Alice that had escaped the botanists’ notice. For instance, her detailed examination of a proposed new species of bromeliad resulted in the production of a newly written, enhanced description. As a result, the authors, Lyman B. Smith and Harold Robinson, decided to name the new species Navia aliciae in her honour. Such collaboration with scientists in describing a taxon is the hallmark of exemplary botanical illustration.

Memorial held for Harold Robinson

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 3, July 2021.

Harold Ernest Robinson, PhD, born in 1932 in Syracuse, NY, and raised in Winchester, VA, passed away on December 17, 2020, at the age of 88. His ashes were interred on Saturday 26 June 2021 at Mount Hebron Cemetery, Winchester, Virginia, in the family plot next to his mother Mabel, along with his father Ernest, and brother William. His brother Charles Robinson’s ashes, who passed away earlier, were also interred alongside Harold according to Harold’s request.

The cover of the 4-page program provided to guests who attended Harold Robinson’s memorial on June 26, 2021.

He was the youngest child and last surviving member of his generation of the Robinsons of Winchester, believed to be descended from a British soldier captured in the battle of Saratoga in the Revolutionary War, when the Shenandoah Valley was used as a prisoner of war camp.

Harold’s niece, Micki Robinson (St. Petersburg, FL) is a minister and presided over the gathering. Although Harold never married, he had 10 nephews and nieces. All eight of the surviving nieces and nephews attended the memorial along with their spouses and children. Other attendees included staff and affiliates from the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH): Carol Kelloff, Mark Strong, Warren Wagner, Lucy Julian, Larry Dorr, Lisa Dorr, Alice Tangerini, and Ken Wurdack. Phil Recchio (NMNH Development) also attended.

The program was not formal and followed a Quaker style service, requested by Harold, where attendees spoke when they felt moved to speak, sharing remembrances or thoughts about the person, a poem or music. Several of the family spoke about recollections of Harold when they were young, especially that as a babysitter for some of them, he wove fantastic tales which included the most outrageous plants and insects, as well as bizarre human behavior, utilizing Captain Crunch as the leader of these sagas of exploratory expeditions. Harold’s niece, Maggie Robinson (Yarmouth, ME), who is an experienced fiddle player played a beautiful solo of “Ashokan Farewell” written by Jay Ungar (inspired by the Catskill Mountains but made famous from use in Ken Burns Civil War PBS series). Several staff from the NMNH Department of Botany (Dorr, Wagner, Tangerini, and Kelloff) all spoke about interactions with Harold over the many years of working together in the department and about his unique approach to research, in which his theories often had been discounted, but ultimately proved amazingly perceptive in the past couple of decades after molecular phylogenetics proved his micromorphological approach to be correct (for a deeper dive into his research, see Taxon 70: 690-698; 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12524).

Another part of a Quaker memorial is a space where photographs, awards/citations/certificates, and personal mementos can be shown and appreciated, as people are arriving or after the service itself. After Harold’s memorial at the cemetery nearly everyone went to a lunch at a nearby hotel restaurant where many of Harold’s drawings, collection of toy soldiers and writings, including an unpublished novel were displayed.

- Compiled by Warren Wagner and from memorial program by Frank Vuitch, MD (Dallas, TX)

Harold Robinson’s teenage drawings of fictional plants include highly exaggerated dates into the future. Left: “Symbioticus ventilis”: Symbiotic fern. Spores carry spores of fungi and both germinate together.  Fern gametophyte furnishes food while fungus furnishes moisture.  Fern sporophyte continues to harbor fungus at base of plant. Fungus unable to grow on glabrous petioles of sterile leaves but easily grows on pubescent petiole of sporophyll. Fungus fruits on sporophyll in contact with fern spores and both are released together. 22,000,000 A.D. Right: “Toxis potentis”: Oxidation chamber inside of trunk vaporizes the poisonous excretions of the leaves and returns them to the leaves from which they enter the air. Exceedingly dangerous gases. 22,000,000 A.D.