The Plant Press

New issue of International Journal of Plant Sciences honors Vicki Funk

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 3, July 2023.

The cover image of the International Journal of Plant Sciences (volume 184, number 5; 2023) features Vicki A. Funk in a photo dated 2008 and seen through a mosaic composed of images of capitula representing all major groups of Compositae.

A special issue of the International Journal of Plant Sciences just published (volume 184, number 5; 2023) honors Dr. Vicki Ann Funk (November 26, 1947–October 22, 2019), who passed away after a battle with an aggressive cancer. Vicki Funk was an inspirational evolutionary biologist and a champion for collections-based systematics and biogeography. She had broad influence on the way we perform our collections-based systematics today, especially with the development of phylogenetic systematics in botany in the early 1980s and throughout her career. Funk was one of the most active, enthusiastic, and passionate professional botanists of our time. She combined these qualities with a quick mind and glowing wit, with new ideas or opinions that she was eager to share with anyone who would listen, and be willing to enter an engaging dialogue.

During her distinguished career, Funk achieved preeminence in the fields of phylogenetic methods, systematics, biogeography, and biodiversity conservation. She devoted a significant part of her career to mentoring the next generation of botanists and working with groups to tackle larger areas of research, especially Compositae systematics, phylogenetics, and biogeography.

The special issue organized by Jennifer Mandel, Erika Moore-Pollard, Mauricio Bonifacino, Jun Wen, and Warren Wagner consists of eight papers on Compositae (Asteraceae) systematics by various colleagues, two more on collections for botanical systematics, and concludes with a tribute to her career and contributions by Wagner and Wen.

Edward S. Ayensu (1935-2023)

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 3, July 2023.

Former Chair of the Department of Botany, Edward S. Ayensu, passed away on April 22, 2023. He was a distinguished scholar who dedicated his life to science and sustainable development. His contributions to the field of environmental science, biodiversity conservation, and photography are immeasurable.

Edward Ayensu at the National Museum of Natural History in 1975. (photo by Smithsonian Institution)

Ayensu joined the Smithsonian Institution as an Associate Curator of Botany in 1966 and became Chair of Botany in 1970. In 1978, the Smithsonian Office of Biological Conservation was established with Ayensu as Director. The responsibility of this office was to coordinate the various environmental conservation activities already in progress in the Institution and encourage a variety of new projects related to environmental conservation, especially within the area of staff interest. In 1978, Ayensu and Botanist Robert DeFilipps authored a Smithsonian Institution reference book entitled Endangered and Threatened Plants of the United States.

Request for plant exudate samples

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 3, July 2023.

By Jorge A. Santiago-Blay and Joseph B. Lambert

For the past 25 years, Jorge Santiago-Blay, a Research Associate in the National Museum of Natural History’s Department of Paleobiology, and Joseph Lambert, Trinity University, have had a long-standing collaboration on the analyses of plant exudates, the usually sticky and organic substances that many plants produce.

Example of a plant exudate. Resin dripping from an almond tree. (photo by Yintan; licensed under CC BY 4.0)

Although the chemical variation of these materials is enormous, as far as the team knows, plant exudates come in a surprising limited number of molecular types, as revealed by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). The three most common types are: 1) resins, whose molecular building block is isoprene, a five-carbon molecule; 2) gums, whose molecular units are monosaccharides; and 3) phenolics, whose molecular unit is phenol. Amber, a fossilized resin, is a material noted for its beauty, human uses, and amazing preservation of biological materials. The term “latex”, given for the milky substance that some plants produce, is a chemically meaningless term. Thus far, all “latexes” the team has examined are resins.

Santiago-Blay and Lambert continue to analyze these materials and write scientific papers in peer-reviewed venues. Some recent papers include the study of exudates from ferns, cycads, ginkgo, and gnetophytes (Life: The Excitement of Biology 4: 215-232; 2016), the resinous cargo of a Java Sea shipwreck (Archaeometry 59: 949-964; 2017), and the characterization of phenolic plant exudates by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (Journal of Natural Products 84: 2511-2524; 2021).

If you come across these products out in nature or in collections, please contact Santiago-Blay and Lambert so that they may analyze the exudates via NMR. Santiago-Blay may be reached at [email protected], and Lambert may be reached at [email protected].

Cherry and grape hunting in the southeast USA

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 3, July 2023.

By Richie Hodel, Alicia Talavera, Jun Wen.

Recently, Curator Jun Wen, and postdoctoral fellows Alicia Talavera and Richie Hodel, undertook a 12-day collecting trip (3,800 miles) in the southeastern United States with the goal of collecting and conducting field studies on several species of wild grapes (Vitis spp.) and cherries (Prunus spp.), as well as associated species. The trip was designed to fill in the collection gaps in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, the panhandle of Florida, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

Alicia Talavera, Jun Wen, and Richie Hodel after successfully finding populations of wild cherries and grapes in oak-hickory-pine forests near Pine Mountain, Georgia. (photo by A. Talavera)

The wild relatives of two economically and ecologically important plant lineages, grapes and cherries, are distributed throughout much of North America. Wen’s research has focused on both the grape genus (Vitis, Vitaceae) and the cherry genus (Prunus, Rosaceae) because both represent lineages that have successfully radiated throughout temperate North America and are model systems for studying the diversification and biogeographic history of forest species. Furthermore, both groups are also excellent taxonomic models to tackle species delimitations integrating morphological, phylogenomic, and ecological data.

A diplomatic solution: Demissew receives physical Cuatrecasas Medal

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 3, July 2023.

Sebsebe Demissew. (photo by

In May 2021, Professor Sebsebe Demissew was awarded the Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). He was recognized for his life's work in conserving and recording the very diverse Ethiopian flora with its many endemic species, and for his leadership of the Ethiopian Flora Project and the National Herbarium. Normally the engraved medal is presented in person to the recipient at the beginning of the annual Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, which NMNH hosts in concert with the U.S. Botanic Garden (USBG). The pandemic, however, forced NMNH and USBG to hold a virtual symposium and travel from Ethiopia to Washington was not feasible. Fortunately, Demissew joined the symposium remotely via Zoom and he spoke briefly after it was announced that he was the medal recipient.

Safely conveying the physical medal to Demissew, however, stymied the award committee until they described their dilemma to Carolyn Glassman, the U.S. Department of State’s liaison to the Smithsonian Institution. Glassman contacted the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa and they agreed to allow the medal to be sent via diplomatic pouch. Embassy staff then went above and beyond the committee’s expectations by organizing an early afternoon reception on the botanical garden-like Embassy grounds where Ambassador Tracey Ann Jacobson presented the medal to Demissew. A little magic with cell phone technology and Microsoft Teams allowed some members of the committee in Washington to observe the ceremony and they happily conveyed once again to Demissew their appreciation for his contributions to tropical botany. The committee was also very pleased that Ambassador Jacobson and the U.S. Embassy recognized the importance of his research for Ethiopia and the world.

Ambassador Tracey Ann Jacobson presents the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany to Sebsebe Demissew. (image courtesy of the U.S. Embassy Addis Ababa)

Social media posts by the U.S. Embassy Addis Ababa appeared on Twitter and Facebook:

Congrats Dr. Sebsebe Demissew! We were pleased to honor Dr. Sebsebe with the @NMNH’s José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany for his life’s work in conserving & recording Ethiopian flora & for important contributions to global understanding of plant biodiversity. pic.twitter.com/elOxDZVyEf

— U.S. Embassy Addis (@USEmbassyAddis) April 20, 2023

Abstracts from the speakers of the 20th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 3, July 2023.

The 20^th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, “New Horizons in the Study of Neotropical Floras,” was held on 19 May 2023. The invited speakers specialize in natural history, geographic diversity, evolution, and conservation of plants in the Neotropics. Below are the abstracts from the papers that were presented by the invited speakers.

Eric Schuettpelz (second from left), Chair of the Botany Department, and Susan Pell (far right), USBG Deputy Executive Director, join the speakers of the 2023 Smithsonian Botanical Symposium at the National Museum of Natural History (from left): Alejandra Vasco, M. Alejandra Jaramillo, W. John Kress, Paola Pedraza-Peñalosa, and Gregory W. Stull. (photo by Ken Wurdack)

John Kress
National Museum of Natural History, USA
“The complexity of nature: A coevolutionary mosaic of plants and animals in the Neotropics”

The complexity of life on Earth is a product of the diversity of species multiplied by the diversity of their interactions. The quantification of species diversity, which requires both correct identification and resolved evolutionary patterns, is a prerequisite to accurately interpret their interactions. I will focus on one charismatic group of neotropical plants in the genus Heliconia and the ecology of the hummingbird pollinators with which they have coevolved. These ecological interactions between the plants and pollinators reveal their intricate patterns of evolutionary history and also how these species may respond to today’s rapidly changing planet.