The Plant Press

“Grass Bunch” visits US

From Plant Press, Vol. 28, No. 2, April 2025.

In 1930, J.B.S. Norton wrote Maryland Grasses, a monograph of the University of Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station, which clearly prioritized grasses of economic importance. According to Norton, the “chief interest” of the Panic Grasses is “furnishing puzzles for botanists.”

Almost a century later, some things have changed – most of the Panic Grasses have been reclassified as Dichanthelium – but the puzzles remain the same. A group of members from the Virginia Native Plant Society (VNPS) visited the Smithsonian’s Department of Botany twice this winter, on January 30 and March 6, to try to solve a few of these puzzles.

“The Grass Bunch”, members from the Virginia Native Plant Society (VNPS), visiting the United States National Herbarium, on January 30, 2025. (photo by Rob Soreng)

The VNPS Grass Bunch is a group dedicated to identifying and documenting the native grasses, sedges, and rushes of Northern Virginia. Over the winter, the group worked with the herbarium of Huntley Meadows Park in Fairfax County, Virginia, to identify a backlog of pressed plant specimens. This resulted in a number of identification challenges.

To work on those confusing species, Grass Bunch members Margaret Chatham, Alan Ford, David Gorsline, Karla Jamir, Jenny Meyer, and Cheryl Roesel (former staff member of the Botany Department) visited the US National Herbarium to examine the Dichanthelium specimens in its collection—in particular, the extensively curated and annotated collection from the old DC Herbarium, including many specimens collected by Agnes Chase.

The group focused on distinguishing D. sphaerocarpon from D. polyanthes and worked on distinguishing the three variants of D. acuminatum using specimens collected in the greater D.C. region. They also reviewed specimens of D. columbianum, which was once considered a variety of acuminatum.

They were assisted by Rod Simmons, Smithsonian Research Associate and longtime mentor to the Grass Bunch, and Department of Botany grass experts Robert Soreng and Paul Peterson.

“The Grass Bunch”, members from the Virginia Native Plant Society (VNPS), examining Dichanthelium specimens at the United States National Herbarium, on January 30, 2025. (photo by Rob Soreng)

 

W. Carl Taylor: A keystone species in the botanical community

From Plant Press, Vol. 28, No. 2, April 2025.

There are lots of flowery (and punny) metaphors that have been made about botany professors being the nurturing mentors in a garden of life. And for all these poetic analogies, Carl completely personified and transcended them. Carl had an infectious sense of positivity that made everyone around him really excited about plants. This is probably why he had so many productive collaborations with fellow botanists around the world and here in the Department of Botany. His seemingly magical ability to make anything super-exciting is probably why all the graduate students he advised were so focused and dedicated and went on to have such successful careers. There is no doubt that all field botany classes at the local universities, field trips with Natural History Research Experiences (NHRE) interns, and Q?rius high-school botany workshops were made ten-fold more enriching by Carl’s involvement.

Liz Zimmer and Carl Taylor standing next to a display of Isoetes at the National Museum of Natural History. (image by Smithsonian Institution)

Carl’s humble, down-to-earth demeanor often shrouded the erudite polylingual scholar that he was. As a Research Associate here at the U.S. National Herbarium, his work was multifaceted, integrating all dimensions of life science research. He brought to our lab his nuclear gene cloning and cytology methods where he worked at the lab bench side-by-side with his students, even on weekends. His work on allopolyploid speciation was cutting-edge and provided important data for critically endangered species and the understudied floras of the American southeast. He was a true organismal biologist growing specimens from spores in axenic lab culture as well as in his incredibly diverse home greenhouse and garden. During field excursions, he taught the next generation of botanists proper hand-lens techniques and specimen pressing with symmetry as perfect as the neatness and accuracy of his field notebooks.

In an age of uncertainty and scientific demoralization, Carl’s unwavering optimism, kind personable demeanor, and stoic wisdom were a panacea. He gave so selflessly and brought energy and life to everyone around him. Like Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree, he provided all he could to support his students and colleagues without complaint or hesitation. Although Carl may no longer be with us, he surely knew that he would live on for many generations through the community of the brilliant scientists he had nurtured.

- Gabe Johnson

W. Carl Taylor (1946-2025)

From Plant Press, Vol. 28, No. 2, April 2025.

William Carl Taylor, of Arlington, Virginia and The Villages, Florida, passed away on March 3, 2025, in Ocala, Florida.

Carl and Jerry Taylor (bottom center) with several Smithsonian botanists, fellows, and interns on July 13, 2023, at Plummers Island, Maryland. (photo by Leopoldo Angulo Crespo)

Taylor was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Ruth and William A. Taylor on April 4, 1946. He attended Bayless School in Afton, Missouri. He got his B.A. from the University of Missouri in Columbia and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Botany from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

From 1970-1971 he served in the US Army. He was a sergeant in the infantry in Vietnam, where he won a purple heart and a bronze star.

Carl and Jerry Taylor documenting cliff-face ferns at Chestnut Woods Association, Pendleton County, West Virginia, on June 13, 2021. (photo by Rod Simmons)

He married his wife, Jerry, on June 12, 1971, in Warrenton, Missouri.

His career began at the Milwaukee Public Museum of Natural History where he became the head of the Botany Department. After 30 years, he briefly moved to Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and then became a Program Officer at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.

He was well known for his studies on the taxonomy of a group of spore-bearing plants in the genus Isoetes. He mentored many graduate students and was honored with a Colloquium in 2018 at the Botanical Society of America annual meeting. He taught courses in botany at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Old Dominion University, Eagle Hill Research Institute in Steuben, Maine, and the Organization for Tropical Studies in Costa Rica. He was a Research Associate at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. He retired in 2011.

He loved plants! With his wife, he enjoyed growing plants in his greenhouse and planting all native plants in his yards in Wisconsin, Virginia, and The Villages.

He is survived by his wife.

The 2024 JSE Outstanding Papers Awards given to Smithsonian botanists

From Plant Press, Vol. 28, No. 2, April 2025.

Three papers co-written by Smithsonian botanists were recently recognized in the 2024 JSE Outstanding Papers Awards. The Journal of Systematics and Evolution (JSE) established the award to recognize the important, high-impact papers published in JSE in the previous two years.

The journal’s award review committee conducted a comprehensive evaluation of articles published in 2022 based on five criteria: importance of the topic, innovative content, scientific rigor of research, practical applicability of findings, and readability of the articles, ultimately selecting 10 outstanding papers.

The winners of the JSE Outstanding Papers Awards receive a certificate and a monetary prize.

Among the 10 award-wining papers, in first place is Soreng, et al. (2022), which presents an updated worldwide phylogenetic classification of Poaceae with 11,783 species in 12 subfamilies, 7 supertribes, 54 tribes, 5 super subtribes, 109 subtribes, and 789 accepted genera.

Robert J. Soreng, Paul M. Peterson, Fernando O. Zuloaga, Konstantin Romaschenko, Lynn G. Clark, Jordan K. Teisher, Lynn J. Gillespie, Patricia Barberá, Cassiano A. D. Welker, Elizabeth A. Kellogg, De-Zhu Li, and Gerrit Davidse. 2022. A worldwide phylogenetic classification of the Poaceae (Gramineae) III: An update. J. Syst. Evol. 60 (3): 476-521. https://doi.org/10.1111/jse.12847

In third place is Gallaher, et al. (2022), which uses DNA sequence data, whole plastomes and chloroplast sequences, to reappraise the grass family’s origins, timing, and geographic spread and the factors that have promoted diversification.

Timothy J. Gallaher, Paul M. Peterson, Robert J. Soreng, Fernando O. Zuloaga, De-Zhu Li, Lynn G. Clark, Christopher D. Tyrrell, Cassiano A.D. Welker, Elizabeth A. Kellogg, and Jordan K. Teisher. 2022. Grasses through space and time: An overview of the biogeographical and macroevolutionary history of Poaceae. J. Syst. Evol. 60 (3): 522-569. https://doi.org/10.1111/jse.12857

In fourth place is Dong, et al. (2022), which uses phylogenomic data from genome skimming to resolve relationships within Olea and to identify molecular markers for species identification.

Wen-Pan Dong, Jia-Hui Sun, Yan-Lei Liu, Chao Xu, Yi-Heng Wang, Zhi-Li Suo, Shi-Liang Zhou, Zhi-Xiang Zhang, and Jun Wen. 2022. Phylogenomic relationships and species identification of the olive genus Olea (Oleaceae). J. Syst. Evol. 60(6): 1263-1280. https://doi.org/10.1111/jse.12802

New spatial mechanism for the coexistence of tree species

From Plant Press, Vol. 28, No. 2, April 2025.

Hidden patterns in tree distribution stabilize biodiversity in forests

 -Adapted from Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ

 The reason why so many tree species can coexist in species-rich forests has long been a subject of debate in ecology. This question is key to understanding the mechanisms governing the dynamics and stability of forests. An international team of scientists, including W. John Kress of the Smithsonian’s Department of Botany and Stuart Davies of Smithsonian’s Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO), has now discovered unexpected patterns in the spatial distribution of tree species, as reported in the scientific journal Nature (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08604-z). Their results suggest that tree species in tropical and temperate forests manifest contrasting coexistence strategies as a result of differences in the patterns of tree clustering and the abundances of tree species.

The highly complex spatial distribution of tree species in species-rich tropical forests. Shown is the spatial position, species identity (color), and size of individual trees in a 500 m × 1000 m study plot on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, which was analyzed in the study. (photo courtesy of UFZ)

The data sets are very large with more than 75 permanent forest dynamics plots in 29 countries worldwide. The ForestGEO network of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) provides excellent forest inventories for investigating the dynamics of forest ecosystems and better understanding the processes that drive the structure and function of forests. On these 20-to-50-hectare plots, every single tree with a diameter not much larger than a pencil has been identified, measured and mapped every five years, often totaling more than 200,000 trees.

The international team took a closer look at 21 of these forest megaplots, which cover a gradient from the tropical to the subtropical and temperate zones. The team then used the ForestGEO data to analyze the distribution of tree species in the forests and which processes are responsible for their spatial patterns. "The search for simple principles underlying the spatial structure and dynamics of plant communities is a long-standing challenge in theoretical ecology," says first author Thorsten Wiegand of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, describing their research question.