The Plant Press

Researchers split the birdcatcher trees (genus Pisonia) into three

From Plant Press, Vol. 23, No. 3, July 2020.

-Adapted from Pensoft

The birdcatcher trees – genus Pisonia – are infamous for trapping birds with their super-sticky seed pods that would frequently entangle the body of the ‘victim’. Left flightless, the poor feathered creatures eventually die either from starvation or fatigue, or predators. Similarly notorious are the birdcatcher trees for botanists, who have been baffled by their complicated classification for the last three centuries. 

Large cabbage trees (Pisonia grandis) dominate the landscape of a small island in the Pacific Ocean. (photo by Jean-Yves Meyer, Délégation à la Recherche de Polynésie Française, Tahiti, French Polynesia)

Smithsonian Research Associate Marcos A. Caraballo-Ortiz and graduate student Elson Felipe Rossetto (Universidade Estadual de Londrina, Brazil) are working to untangle the classification of these trees. A recently published paper appears in the open-access scholarly journal PhytoKeys (152: 121-136; 2020).

The authors of the paper reestablished two genera: Ceodes and Rockia, where both had been previously merged under the name of Pisonia. Now, as a result, there are three distinct lineages of birdcatcher trees from the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans: Ceodes, Pisonia, and Rockia (Nyctaginaceae).

“Previous molecular studies on Pisonia species from around the world showed that species were clustered into three major groups, and here we assign names for each of them. With this new classification, a large number of the species known as Pisonia will be henceforth named Ceodes. This includes the Parapara (Ceodes brunoniana) and the birdlime (Ceodes umbellifera) trees, both native to many islands, including Hawaii and New Zealand. They are commonly planted in gardens for their lush and sometimes variegated foliage, as well as their fragrant white flowers. However, the cabbage tree (Pisonia grandis) will still be technically known as Pisonia,” adds the study’s lead author Felipe Rossetto.

Friedrich Vierhapper and the serendipity of Facebook

From Plant Press, Vol. 23, No. 3, July 2020.

By Sylvia Orli

For several years, the Department of Botany’s Information Technology team has been reviewing transcriptions of specimen labels returned from the digitization company Picturae and fixing the records that are incorrectly transcribed. Many specimen labels have terrible handwriting. One kind of label consistently puzzled the team. The label is slightly pinkish with a legible taxonomic name, but every other word is written in an unreadable script. Because the team could not read these labels, we imported these records on to the online catalog as “illegible” with the hopes of one day correcting the record.

I posted examples of these labels in the Facebook page “Herbarium Junkies” with the hopes that crowdsourcing might solve the problem. Herbarium Junkies was created in 2012 by Museum Specialist Erika Gardner when she was in graduate school. She made the page as a bit of a joke, dedicated to herbarium devotees like herself, to post funny and interesting items about herbaria. The Facebook group has since ballooned to over 2,000 members, and has a global membership of botanists, herbaria workers, and plant enthusiasts. Group members post confusing labels, interesting herbarium specimens, images of field work, and all sorts of topics related to herbaria.

My illegible label post caught the eye of Clemens Pachschwoll, doctoral student at the University of Vienna, who verified that the label was written in the Kurrentschrift script, a Germanic cursive script popular in pre-WW2 Germany. He also verified that the collector was Friedrich Vierhapper Sr. Vierhapper (1844-1903) and his son, Friedrich Karl Max Vierhapper (1876-1932), were prominent Austrian botanists of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The Vierhappers specialized in the Flora of Austria and other European countries. Vierhapper Jr. has the genus, Vierhapperia, named after him. Clemens put me in touch with Michael Hohla of Austria, who specializes in the Flora of the Innviertel (the western part of Upper Austria). Amazingly, he and his colleagues had published a monograph of the Vierhappers, “Father and son Vierhapper – two lives dedicated to Botany” in 2019 (Stapfia 110: 1-202), and Hohla was delighted to see these inscrutable labels.

A specimen of Luzula silvatica Gandich collected in Austria, May 1887, by F. Vierhapper. Prof. Michael Hohla transcribed this location as “Wälder am Hausruck bei Eberschwang”.

Growing pains in the Type Herbarium

From Plant Press, Vol. 23, No. 2, April 2020.

By John Boggan

If you have looked for a type specimen recently in the United States National Herbarium (US), you may have noticed that things have changed…a lot. An ongoing rearrangement of the Type Herbarium has addressed two issues: overcrowding of the collection due to growth, and a phylogenetic arrangement that has become increasingly outdated.

Among the oldest type specimens in the US collection is Banksia integrifolia. It was collected along the eastern coast of Australia (then called New Holland) by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander during Captain James Cook’s first voyage of the ship Endeavour (1768 - 1771).

A botanical type specimen is a physical specimen, usually a pressed herbarium sheet, designated by the author of a new taxon to serve as a permanent reference point for the published name. Type specimens are critical to research as they provide an unambiguous representative of the taxon, provide physical details that a written description may not, and allow subsequent researchers to study and understand how the name should be applied.

In my position as the Type Registrar, I assist the management and curation of the digital records in our Type Register and the physical specimens in our Type Herbarium, one of the largest and most important collections of type specimens in the world. Our type collection is well-documented, with each specimen verified as a type by comparison with the original literature. Our types were among the first specimens in our herbarium to be barcoded, inventoried, and photographed, a task made easier because, unlike some herbaria, our type specimens are segregated from the rest of the collection. All of our types were photographed in the 1980s and while these photos have since been superseded by digital photographs, I still occasionally refer to them on microfiche to document changes in the specimens (e.g., insect or mechanical damage) or to gather data from specimens that have since been lost (a rare occurrence, thank goodness). Under the direction of retired staff member Ellen Farr, our type collection was one of the first in the world to present both our digital records and images of our specimens online.

Prunus is a model clade for investigating tropical-to-temperate transitions

From Plant Press, Vol. 23, No. 2, April 2020.

By Richie Hodel

For over a century, biologists have observed a latitudinal gradient in species diversity in many clades across the Tree of Life, with greater species richness near the equator. However, we lack consensus about the cause of this biogeographic pattern and several hypotheses have been proposed. The tropical conservatism hypothesis (TCH) is one explanation for the observed latitudinal gradient; the TCH states that the relatively high biodiversity of the tropics is explained primarily by the geographic extent of tropical taxa during the past ~55 million years and the subsequent evolutionary conservation of environmental niches.

Recent large-scale phylogenetic studies using over 10,000 angiosperm species identified general trends describing how the latitudinal species gradient affects plant diversity. Notably, few lineages transitioned from tropical environments to temperate ones, which may be explained by the difficulty of acquiring the substantial adaptations necessary to tolerate the cooler conditions in temperate zones. One of the goals of my postdoctoral work at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is to use the genus Prunus (Rosaceae) to test the TCH.

Prunus contains approximately 250-400 evergreen and deciduous species occurring throughout the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere and in the tropics and subtropics. Phylogenetic studies of Prunus have used several chloroplast and nuclear loci and produced key insights, but many questions remain. The phylogenetic position of Prunus within Rosaceae is uncertain, and phylogenetic relationships within Prunus are not yet fully resolved. Discord among chloroplast, nuclear, and morphological phylogenies suggests ancient polyploidy and/or hybridization may have impacted the evolutionary history of Prunus, and more data are needed to resolve the phylogeny (see figure below).

Cytonuclear discord in Prunus: the plastid phylogeny (left) infers a monophyletic racemose group, but the nuclear phylogeny (right) yields a paraphyletic racemose group. ‘A’ represents taxa in the Prunus-Amygdalus group, ‘B’ shows taxa in the Cerasus group, and ‘C’ depicts the polypoid racemose Prunus, which includes Laurocerasus, Padus, Pygeum, and Maddenia. The question mark shows the location on the phylogeny where ancient allopolyploidy may have occurred, leading to uncertain phylogenetic relationships in the racemose Prunus. Figure modified from Chin et al. 2014 and Zhao et al. 2016.

YES! Interns experience a summer of mistletoes and lichens

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 2019.

This past summer, the Department of Botany hosted four interns through the Youth Engagement through Science (YES!) internship program at the National Museum of Natural History. YES! is a career immersion and science communication program for youths between the ages of 14-19, who are currently enrolled in high school (grades 9-11) in the Washington D.C. region. The YES! program gives interns practical experience through a hands-on science internship with Smithsonian science staff. In addition to conducting research, the teens also had access to behind-the-scenes tours and field trips, creative studio workshops, college preparatory classes, and the opportunity to create their own TED-type talks. To protect the privacy of these minors, their last names are being withheld in this article.

YES! interns Leah and Nina (left to right) learn laboratory techniques to study the diversity of parasitic mistletoes. (photo by Smithsonian Institution)

Marcos Caraballo mentored two YES! interns, Nina and Leah, on a project exploring the morphological diversity and genomics of parasitic mistletoes. Both interns learned how to perform microscopy work, DNA extractions, PCR amplifications, and sequence editing, and visited the U.S. Botanic Garden to study the diversity of plants growing there. Nina focused her activities on lab work, including purification of DNA from herbarium specimens, primer design, and visualization and interpretation of agarose gel images. Leah delved into plant taxonomy, learning how to dissect flowers and interpret their inner structures, taking high quality images using a modern dissecting scope. Both Nina and Leah presented their summer projects at the YES! program community day on August 2, where each prepared an exhibition and showed mistletoes to museum visitors.

YES! interns Sarah and Maria (left to right) learn laboratory techniques to study the diversity of lichen. (photo by Smithsonian Institution)

Manuela Dal Forno worked with two YES! interns, Sarah and Maria, on the project "Lichen Diversity in the Tropics." The interns learned about lichens in general, especially taxonomic characters and chemical tests, and dove into a focus on identifying bacteria and fungi from different lichen cultures. They selected and photographed cultures, extracted and sequenced DNA, and generated culture guides for future comparisons. Maria and Sarah participated in two outreach programs at Q?rius, teaching museum visitors about lichens and their experience in the internship program. Sarah and Maria also worked alongside Julia Adams, a doctoral student from the University of California at Riverside. Adams was at the museum for 10 weeks conducting research on the systematics of the lichen Acarospora socialis from southwestern United States. During her time here, Adams worked on the taxonomy of 32 samples of this species complex housed at the US National Herbarium and performed lab work to acquire molecular data on these historical specimens.

Doctoral student Julia Adams, YES! intern Sarah, Manuela Dal Forno, and YES! intern Maria. (photo by Smithsonian Institution)

Conveyor belt project hits 2.5 million images

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 2019.

This specimen of Magnolia macrophylla (Magnoliaceae), collected in North Carolina in May 1879, is one of the 2.5 million specimens that have been imaged during the Department of Botany’s digitization belt project.

In coincidence with its four-year anniversary, the Department of Botany digitization belt project has hit 2.5 million images, a huge milestone for the department. The number of catalog records in the US Herbarium has reached 3.5 million and is growing quickly. Soon we will see a digital record for almost all of the dicots and monocots of pressed specimens, with the exception of the Poaceae (grasses). With available funding, Poaceae will be next on our agenda. See https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/botany/ for all records in our catalog, and enjoy the high-resolution images created with care by the botany digitization team.

Parasitic plants: Important components of biodiversity

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 2019.

By Marcos A. Caraballo-Ortiz

Parasitic organisms are generally viewed in a negative way because of their ability to “steal” resources. However, they are biologically interesting because their dependency on hosts for survival have influenced their behavior, morphology, and genomes. Parasites vary in their degree of necessity from a host, ranging from being partially independent (hemiparasitic) to being complete dependent (holoparasitic). Some parasites can live independently, but if they find potential hosts, they can use them to supplement their nutritional needs (facultative parasitism).

Laurel dodder (Cassytha filiformis, Lauraceae) twining around the stems of its host (Croton sp., Euphorbiaceae) on Providenciales Island, Turks and Caicos. (photo by M. Caraballo)

Parasitism is not a phenomenon unique to animals, as there are plants parasitic to other plants. Current biodiversity estimates indicate that approximately 4,700 species of flowering plants are parasitic, which account for about 1.2% of the total inferred number of plant species in the world. About half of the known species of parasitic plants belong to a single order, Santalales, which is diverse and mainly composed of hemiparasites. However, parasitism has evolved independently in 11 lineages of angiosperms comprising 27 families, some of them small and consisting of only one species. Parasitic plants have been able to colonize almost every corner of the world (except the polar regions), and many are common in lowlands and disturbed habitats. Only a few parasitic plants yield economically important products such as the sandalwood, obtained from the tropical shrub Santalum album (order Santalales). Other products are local and include traditional medicines, food, and crafts like “wood roses”. Many parasites are also considered agricultural pests as they can impact crops and timber plantations.

Origin and diversification of the sunflower family

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 3, July 2019.

A study that explores the origin and diversification of Asteraceae, the sunflower family, was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903871116). Asteraceae, composed of an estimated 25,000-30,000 species, accounts for nearly 10 percent of all flowering plants. Global in distribution, the family occupies nearly every type of habitat on Earth and is marked by a complex inflorescence exemplified by the North American sunflower, in which individual flowers are clustered to mimic a single, large flower to lure pollinators. The origins, migration routes, and patterns of diversification that led to the family's ecological success remain unclear.

Floral diversity of tribes in the Asteraceae family. A recent study suggests the family originated in the Late Cretaceous Period in South America and later migrated to Africa where it diversified rampantly. (A) Barnadesieae; (B) Famatinantheae; (C) Stifftieae; (D) Mutisieae; (E) Hecastocleideae; (F) Pertyeae; (G) Cardueae; (H) Vernonieae; and (I) Heliantheae. (Image courtesy of PNAS)

Using phylogenetic analysis of nearly 1,000 genomic locations in around 250 species, Jennifer Mandel (University of Memphis) and colleagues, including Vicki Funk (Smithsonian Institution), found that the family likely originated around 83 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous Period in southern South America. The earliest diversification out of South America may have occurred around 50 million years ago, during a period of dramatic climate change. Subsequently, the family rampantly diversified during the middle-to-late Eocene epoch, 42-37 million years ago, a period marked by global cooling, resulting in more than 95% of existing species.

Biogeographical analysis suggests that the family migrated to North America, south and central Africa, and Asia, with ancestral range estimates suggesting different possible dispersal routes out of South America. Regardless of the route, the family's prolific diversification and global colonization likely began once it reached Africa around 42 million years ago.

According to the authors, the findings illuminate the evolutionary processes underlying the wide reach and vibrant diversity of a major group of flowering plants.

-Adapted from EurekAlert

Designing a state-of-the-art taxonomic research workstation

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 3, July 2019.

As botanists develop more knowledge the science of taxonomy becomes increasingly complex. Between 1753 and 2016, the number of known plant species has risen from about 6,000 to 390,000, an average increase of nearly 1,500 species each year. Over 2,000 new species were discovered in 2015. The number of specimens held globally in herbaria has also increased. There are now over 3,000 herbaria around the world holding nearly 400 million specimens.

A large number of specimens are still being collected and these all need to be identified, digitized and included in revisions, with some undoubtedly being new species. (photo by Elspeth Haston)

Any taxonomist working now therefore has an immense and expensive task of gathering information about the species that they are studying, involving travel to various herbaria or the risk of damage or loss to specimens if they are sent on loan. With about 10-20 percent of flowering plant species still to be described, it is estimated that about half of these have already been collected and are held in herbaria around the world.

Scientists need to find solutions to making collection information more widely accessible in order to speed up the research process given the scale of the challenges they are facing. In many cases, a high-resolution digital image of the specimen with electronic collection data attached will enable researchers to carry out much of the basic work. By digitizing botanical collections, herbaria can provide these resources to taxonomists in every part of the world.

New heights for bryophytes

From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 2, April 2019.

By Julia Beros

From the Smithsonian Castle to the National Museum of Natural History, the fifth floor to the third, the Bryophyte collection at the U.S. National Herbarium has seen many homes, but is now settling into a more permanent and modern residence. With many specimens still in newspaper and shipping boxes, it is high time that these collections get some extra attention. Through a Collections Care and Preservation Fund (CCPF) award for fiscal year 2017, the Department of Botany received funds to curate and rehouse two groups of specimens: the bryophytes and the algal wet collections.

Edgar Mearns, a naturalist and ornithologist, collected more than 3,000 natural history specimens, including this unidentified moss from British East Africa (now Kenya), during the historic Smithsonian-Roosevelt African expedition of 1909-1910. (photo by Miguel Montalvo)

A bit like packing for a big move, Smithsonian contractors Karen Golinski and Zuvayda Abdurahimova have begun to clear out and inventory the bryophyte cases to prepare and accurately evaluate the collections, which include all of the mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. Beginning just this past October, much has already been discovered about the Smithsonian’s long tucked-away bryophytes.

With a legacy set in place by curator emeritus Harold Robinson and his predecessor Bob Ireland, the bryophyte collection has been longing for further curation in the current decade. Though they have not yet been counted, there are an estimated 125,000 total bryophyte specimens in the herbarium, with approximately 10,000 specimens housed in the off-site Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland.

Treasures abound among the bryophytes, including a handful of specimens collected by naturalist Edgar Mearns for the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African expedition of 1909-1910 (while Theodore Roosevelt, in search of specimens for the new Natural History Museum, hunted elephants, Mearns, a naturalist and ornithologist, fervently collected more than 3,000 natural history specimens during this historic expedition). Aside from material collected under the auspices of Smithsonian sponsored expeditions such as the Roosevelt Expedition, the bryophyte collection at the US Herbarium also houses a great many exchange vouchers, including numerous specimens from Wilfred Schofield’s many explorations of the Pacific Northwest. For Bryologists across the globe, the information housed at the Smithsonian has been largely shrouded and overlooked because of its inaccessibility and lack of exposure, and thus the collections have been massively understudied, while the research potential in these collections is huge considering that many are still unidentified.