Botany connections: Bringing community together in the time of a pandemic

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 1, January 2022.

By Gary Krupnick, Eric Schuettpelz, Rose Gulledge, and Erika Gardner

Among the biggest challenges for a research department during the COVID-19 pandemic have been continuing collaborations and maintaining community. National Museum of Natural History staff were sent home to telework almost two years ago, on 13 March 2020. Since then, most staff, research associates, post-doctoral fellows, interns, contractors, and volunteers have been working remotely with, excepting the past few months, only an occasional opportunity to return to the museum for brief visits. So how does an academic department keep up morale for their employees, associates, and volunteers who have been working for months in isolation?

Alice Tangerini hides behind Magnolia macrophylla. This photograph was one of several picture clues during Botany Bingo, a virtual trivia game played over Zoom that provided a little levity to members of the Department of Botany during the COVID pandemic. (photo by Debbie Bell)

The herbarium collections are a big part of why many of us do what we do. Plant specimens and their associated collections data are irreplaceable sources of information about plants and the world they inhabit. The collections provide the comparative material that is essential for studies in taxonomy, systematics, ecology, anatomy, morphology, conservation biology, biodiversity, ethnobotany, and paleobiology, as well as being used for teaching and by the public. The Department’s collections and data management teams, in partnership with the Smithsonian Digitization Program Office and Picturae (the Dutch-based digitization company), have been successful in nearing the completion of the digitization of the herbarium’s pressed plant specimens. The images and the data online have been critically important in allowing many members of the staff to be productive in a remote, telework environment. It has been difficult for many researchers to be physically separated from the museum collections, having digital access to a large segment of the herbarium has eased that pain. Perhaps even more difficult, however, has been the isolation from colleagues.

While the pandemic has led to many changes of where we work, how we work, and the kind of work we do, it has also uncovered unexpected opportunities. For the past couple of years, various staff members have been making the effort to cultivate connections and build community within the Department of Botany. Highlighted below are several efforts and events that have proven essential in the well-being of Botany’s collective workforce.