The Plant Press

Art by Alice Tangerini: Asteraceae achenes

From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2024.

Many of the urgent identifications that botanists of the National Identification Services (NIS) perform are of Asteraceae achenes, as these are common contaminants of cargo shipments. The botanists must rule out the presence of a Federal Noxious Weed (FNW) species, and many of the designated FNWs are in Asteraceae. Illustrated here are Asteraceae achenes of (150) Bebbia juncea, (151) Tridax procumbens, (152) Dyscritothamnus filifolius, (153) Dimeresia howellii, (154-155) Coreopsis lanceolata, and (156) Bidens pilosa. In 1980, Alice Tangerini illustrated these achenes for Harold Robinson using a technique of polycarbonate pencils on drafting film. The depth of shading with the pencils defined the intricate ridges and hair types of the achenes and provided the best media for publication in Smithsonian Contributions to Botany, No. 51 (1981). She remembers the most laborious part of the illustration was cutting amberliths (silhouettes) around each achene to drop out the gray background—a process no longer necessary with current printing methods.

New faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2024.

Karina Alves

Karina Alves, a 2023 Cuatrecasas Travel awardee, conducted research in the U.S. National Herbarium in March 2024. She is a Brazilian PhD student in Botany at the Postgraduate Program of Biological Sciences - Tropical Botany, of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi and the Universidade Federal Rural da Amazônia in Pará, Brazil. Her thesis is focused on the Systematics and Evolution of Rhynchospora section Pauciflorae Kük. (Cyperaceae), a misunderstood group of sedges, unrevised since its creation in 1949, and enigmatic even among the Cyperaceae specialists. The U.S. National Herbarium houses a large collection made by the Flora of the Guianas project, one of the diversity centers for the species of section Pauciflorae, and the contributions of Mark Strong, one of the world's leading Rhynchospora scholars. The U.S. herbarium also has important collections from Australia and Asia, including types, where some species of the focused section occur. During her visit, Alves could consult ca. 400 specimens, describe new species, consult important type specimens for the group, and collect samples of leaf tissue for DNA extraction to perform with the phylogeny, especially from the Australasian specimens, that are not available for her research in Brazil. The studies will contribute to the comprehension of the diversity of section Pauciflorae, its evolutionary history, and the relationships with the other sections of Rhynchospora, one of the largest genera of Cyperaceae, with high diversity levels in the Neotropics.

Ian Medeiros

Ian Medeiros joined the Department of Botany as a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow in February 2024. He is working under the supervision of Eric Schuettpelz to investigate species boundaries in southern African Xanthoparmelia, the most speciose genus of lichen-forming fungi in the Greater Cape Floristic Region. Medeiros recently completed his PhD at Duke University under the supervision of François Lutzoni, which included work on the systematics of the fungal classes Lecanoromycetes and Eurotiomycetes and the green algal genus Trebouxia. He is broadly interested in the systematics, genomics, ecology, and biogeography of ascomycete fungi involved in symbioses with photosynthetic organisms—primarily lichens, but also fungal endophytes and bryophilous (moss- and liverwort-inhabiting) fungi.

Department of Botany travel award recipients announced

From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2024.

Named awards are presented annually to support the study of collections in the United States National Herbarium. This year, a total of eight awards were made. Each of the 2024 awardees will visit for approximately one month over the course of the next year.

Harold E. Robinson & Vicki A. Funk Award

Danielle Remor
Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana (Brazil)
Systematic studies in the Stilpnopappus alliance (Asteraceae: Vernonieae)

Fabiula Moreno Arantes
Uberlândia Federal University (Brazil)
Systematics and floral evolution of Wunderlichioideae, an endemic subfamily of South America

José Cuatrecasas Award

Ana Gabriela Martínez Becerril
National Autonomous University of Mexico
Unraveling the systematics of a tropical fern clade in the megadiverse genus Elaphoglossum (Dryopteridaceae)

Andrés Fonseca Cortés
Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana (Brazil)
Systematics of Macropsychanthus (Leguminosae): phylogeny, biogeography and taxonomic revision

Atiles Reis Junior
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Systematics of the neotropical Diplazium cristatum complex

Rosa María Villanueva Espinoza
South China Botanical Garden
Taxonomy and phylogeny of the genus Justicia (Acanthaceae: Justicieae: Justiciinae) in Peru

Yeison Londoño Echeverri
University of Antioquia (Colombia)
Taxonomic synopsis of the family Rutaceae Juss. (Sapindales) in Colombia: diversity, endemism, new species, and conservation status

Lyman B. & Ruth C. Smith Award

María Fernanda Valencia Escalante
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Systematics of the "Sodiroa" group within Guzmania Ruiz & Pav. (Bromeliaceae: Tillandsioideae)

News from the Botany Research Greenhouse

From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2024.

Research botanists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) occasionally come across plants in the field that they cannot identify, and so they bring the living plant back to Washington, DC, for further study. The living collections are then cared for in the Botany Research Greenhouses, located in Suitland, Maryland, at the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center (MSC), where the plant may one day reach flowering stage for easier identification.

A living collection of Polyscias diversifolia from Singapore growing in the Botany Research Greenhouses. (photo by Carl Johnson)

Such is the case of an unidentified plant specimen collected by Jun Wen a few years ago in Singapore. While Wen could identify it to Araliaceae, the plant needed to grow to flowering size to get a positive species identification. There are two specimens of this plant growing in the greenhouses, and with the horticultural expertise of Carl Johnson, both specimens began flowering in January 2024. With flowers at hand, the plants have now been identified as Polyscias diversifolia, a species that grows in wet tropical forests from Indo-China to west and central Malesia. In addition to the positive identification, Wen was able to take cuttings of the mature plants, which will be used to make herbarium vouchers.

This contribution of plant material from the greenhouse to the herbarium is a great example of the Department of Botany's greenhouse facility and the U.S. National Herbarium working in tandem with Smithsonian Gardens to facilitate research goals. As a collaboration between Smithsonian Gardens and NMNH, the goal of the greenhouses is to bring together shared botanical and horticultural resources, passions, and missions.

While the well-known herbarium has a collection of over 5 million dried, pressed plant specimens, the greenhouses maintain an impressive collection of just under 2,000 living plants. The new greenhouse facility, recently on the move from one location at MSC to another, is expected to open in its new location in June 2024.

New studies from ForestGEO emphasize the importance of biodiversity

From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2024.

Forest biodiversity seen in ForestGEO’s Huai Kha Khaeng Forest Dynamics Plot, western Thailand. (photo by Christian Ziegler)

In the past few months, ForestGEO published three papers in major science journals, each discussing the importance of biodiversity and how it impacts forest community structure and relationships. The Hülsmann, et al. (2024) paper in Nature (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07118-4) shows how trees perform better when they are surrounded by varied (rather than the same) species, especially in tropical forests, which highlights how critical it is to maintain a diverse species population. The Kalyuzhny, et al. (2023) paper in Science (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adg7021) further supports this idea, describing how a tree is more likely to survive when surrounded by different species with different resource needs, diseases, and herbivores, leading to greater distances separating trees of the same species. This helps explain why tropical forests have such high diversity. Lastly, the Medina-Vega, et al. (2024) paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02298-0) dives deeper into functional diversity by exploring how the distribution and abundance of ectomycorrhizal-associated trees are independent of soil quality. The three papers demonstrate why biodiversity is essential for a healthy forest.