The Plant Press

Wings of Life: Pollinator Week 2022 [Video]

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 3, July 2022.

The week of 20-26 June 2022 was designated as Pollinator Week to mark a necessary step toward addressing the urgent issue of declining pollinator and plant populations. Pollinator Week events included plantings, seminars, and celebrations aimed at lifting up pollinators and the important conservation work being done on their behalf across the world. As a member of the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC), the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) hosted a series of events to mark Pollinator Week.

On June 21, NMNH hosted a virtual discussion, “Reimagining Greenspace for Pollinators,” featuring NMNH conservation biologist Gary Krupnick, Thorne Rankin and Sally Shea (DC Natives), and Sara Via (University of Maryland Extension). During the program, participants learned how to reimagine backyards and urban spaces as working pollinator gardens that support biodiversity. The webinar has been archived and is available for viewing at https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/after-hours/webinar-reimagining-greenspace-pollinators.

Mister G and Mrs G perform songs about pollinators and other animals during a Pollinator Celebration in Q?rius on June 23.

On June 23, NMNH partnered with the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to host a Pollinator Celebration. During the morning event, museum visitors celebrated pollinators and learned about how we are all connected to pollinators and plants. The celebration included interactive activities and a concert with Latin Grammy Award-winning musician MISTER G. Several learning stations at the event, including one hosted by Gary Krupnick, had giveaways for the visitors, such as flyers, booklets, bookmarks, and posters. The event was held in Q?rius, The Coralyn W. Whitney Science Education Center of NMNH.

As in year’s past, an educational pollinator poster was designed and distributed by the Pollinator Partnership and their partners (including federal agencies, non-profits, and for-profits), to promote Pollinator Week. The 2022 poster, “Wings of Life: Pollinating Butterflies and Moths,” is a celebration of fanciful, jewel-winged pollinators and the essential role they play in pollination, culture, and ecosystem services throughout North America. Butterflies and moths are found in almost every terrestrial ecosystem from deserts to tropical rainforests, and thousands of flowering plants have evolved to rely specifically on their pollination services. The beautiful artwork was drawn by Natalya Zahn, a Vermont-based illustrator and designer deeply inspired by science and nature. Krupnick served as a scientific advisor in the development of the poster.

Corpse flower creates a stench in the research greenhouse

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 3, July 2022.

A Titan arum (Amorphophallus titanium) flowered in the Botany Department Research Greenhouses on the afternoon of July 6, 2022, and lasted only 24 hours before the spathe began to shrivel. The flowering was unexpected as the corm was small – no bigger than a basketball – and produced a small inflorescence, only 82 cm tall (not including its stalk).

Titan arum (Amorphophallus titanium) flowering in the Botany Research Greenhouses on the morning of July 7, 2022. (photo by Ken Wurdack)

The Department of Botany has multiple Titan arum corms of varying sizes and had flowerings in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2013, and 2021, the last of which during the Covid-19 pandemic prematurely collapsed and never fully opened. Some of these flowerings have been put on public display at the U.S. Botanic Garden.

The floral scent of rotten meat can be detected far away and has evolved to entice carrion beetles and flies in Indonesia where the species is native. The inflorescence initially has a female phase when it first opens, followed by a male phase with the anthers releasing copious pollen. Eventually, the plant will then die back and enter a resting phase as an underground corm, after which it will send up a large umbrella-like leaf.

The inflorescence of Titan arum (Amorphophallus titanium) on July 7, 2022. (photo by Ken Wurdack)

“Our Places” explores connections to nature

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 3, July 2022.

The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) opened its latest exhibition, “Our Places: Connecting People & Nature,” on July 1, 2022. “Our Places” explores how people form connections to the natural world through the places we live, work, study, and visit. Everyone is shaped by and are shaping their connections to the natural world. Through the exhibit and its accompanying programming, the museum hopes to inspire visitors to identify their special places in nature, reflect on their connections with them, and become more caring about them. Personal stories from Smithsonian scientists, including Jun Wen and Gary Krupnick from the Department of Botany, highlight how their connections with places inspire and enrich their own work.

“Our Places” is an experimental venue for exploring questions to help NMNH better understand museum visitors (how they conceptualize nature, connect with nature and others, and reflect upon these connections), and how different interpretive approaches engage museum visitors and enhance their experience. As such, “Our Places” will be successful if the museum learns something about its visitors and the interpretive approaches that can be used in developing future projects. Museum staff and interns populate the exhibit to interact with visitors, ask for their reactions to what they see, and encourage them to leave behind messages about their own special places. The exhibit intentionally has a “work in progress” look and feel because it will change over time in response to what is learned and as new stories are featured.

The new exhibition, “Our Places: Connecting People & Nature,” explores how people form connections to the natural world through the places we live, work, study, and visit. The exhibit and the online StoryMap features personal stories from Smithsonian scientists, including a story by Botanist Jun Wen.

Where is your special place? The exhibit features an online StoryMap which invites participants to share your special places. You can explore and share stories of connection and inspiration from the comfort of your home, classroom, or cellphone at https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8237f22e8e52462b83514f21c436928d.

The exhibition will be on view through July 2024.

Lost South American wildflower named “extinctus” rediscovered (but still endangered) [Video]

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 3, July 2022.

-Adapted from the Field Museum.

Scientific names get chosen for lots of reasons-- they can honor an important person, or hint at what an organism looks like or where it’s from. For a tropical wildflower first described by Smithsonian Botanist Laurence Skog and his colleague Lars Kvist in 2000, the scientific name “extinctus” was a warning. The orange wildflower had been found 15 years earlier in an Ecuadorian forest that had since been largely destroyed; Skog and Kvist suspected that by the time they named the species, it was already extinct (Syst. Bot. Monogr. 59: 1-118; 2000; https://doi.org/10.2307/25027883). But in a new paper in PhytoKeys (https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.194.79638), researchers report the first confirmed sightings of Gasteranthus extinctus in 40 years.

The bright orange flowers of the Ecuadorian cloud forest herb Gasteranthus extinctus, a species once long believed to have gone extinct. (photo by Riley Fortier)

“Extinctus was given its striking name in light of the extensive deforestation in western Ecuador,” says Dawson White, a postdoctoral researcher at Chicago’s Field Museum and co-lead author of the paper. “But if you claim something's gone, then no one is really going to go out and look for it anymore. There are still a lot of important species that are still out there, even though overall, we're in this age of extinction.”

Botanical data for all: The U.S. National Herbarium is digitized! [Video]

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 3, July 2022.

By Sylvia Orli and Julia Beros.

The breadth of collections held at the U.S. National Herbarium (USNH) document the incredible biodiversity and botanical heritage on our planet and serve as the backbone of our work. In service to the public and as the foundation for research, these collections, as they exist now and grow, are at the core of our mission and purpose as an institution. Making these assets available, in physical and digital form, is a fundamental part of fulfilling our responsibility. The USNH is one of the world’s largest and most diverse botanical collections, accounting for nearly 5 million specimens, the digitization of which fulfills our goal to make specimen data and images discoverable and accessible to all.

Since 2015, the Department of Botany and the Smithsonian Digitization Program Office (DPO) have embarked on a joint project to digitize all pressed and packeted plant specimens, which comprise the great majority of our collections. Collaborating with the contracted digitization company Picturae, based in the Netherlands, we have employed a conveyor belt system and a high-throughput approach to realize this ambition. This approach to digitization provides high resolution images and transcriptions of label data for each specimen. These assets are ported to our data catalog and subsequently aggregated with global collections data from other herbaria. By these means, the digitization of the USNH has a huge impact on botanical research throughout the world—collecting and codifying data that can unexpectedly inform the work of researchers near and far.