The Plant Press

The Conservation Column

From Plant Press Vol. 7, No. 3, July 2004.

A solitary bee (Melissodes sp.) fills its hind sacs with the remaining half of a sunflower’s pollen supply. (Photograph by Edward S. Ross)

A fast-growing collective of concerned government agencies, landowners, conservation groups, scientists, and private businesses from across the continent have rallied around the critical issue of pollinator conservation to form the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC). This summer, NAPPC and the United States Botanic Garden (USBG) are co-sponsors of “The Great Pollinator Partnership” which includes an exhibit, demonstration gardens, and educational programs at the Conservatory on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

Gary Krupnick, the NAPPC Smithsonian Institution representative and a recently elected member of the NAPPC Steering Committee, worked with the USBG exhibit task force to bring Dancing with Flowers: The Pollination Connection to the Garden Terrace. Twelve pollination gardens, each devoted to a different theme, demonstrate who visits whom, when, and how. Individual gardens feature plants that attract bats, bees, butterflies, and other pollinator groups. It is designed to help the viewer understand why the future, the global economy, and the survival of fine dining depend on pollinators.

Inside the USBG West Orangerie is an exhibit entitled Dynamic Duos: Plants and Pollinators, a photographic journey that invites the public to examine closely the subtle magic that occurs when pollinator meets plant. Created from over 400 entries submitted by world-renowned photographers, these images are a tribute to the bees, butterflies, beetles, birds, bats, flies, wasps, and other species that perform the prodigious and vital work of transferring pollen. The Department of Botany staff at NMNH assisted in identifying the scientific names of several flowers that appear in the photographs. The exhibit and the demonstration gardens run until October 2004.

Comprehensive scientific documentation and assessment of current knowledge on the status of pollinators are essential to understanding pollination issues. Reports of pollinator declines have come from across the country in addition to Europe, Asia, Central and South America, Africa, and Australia. Many vertebrates and an unknown number of invertebrate pollinators are reported to have become extinct in recent decades, with other pollinators threatened with decline. In the future, NAPPC plans to address such subjects as the status of pollinator populations and communities, the threats to their health, and the socio-economic issues that affect pollinators and their beneficiaries.

Teapots on Display at the US Botanical Garden

From Plant Press, Vol. 6, No. 1 from January 2003.

The United States Botanic Garden (USBG) has a new exhibit on display in the East Gallery of the Conservatory, “Traditions in Elegance: 100 Teapots from the Norwich Castle Museum,” on view 16 January through 30 March 2003. From simple beverage to social ritual, the tea plant has inspired devotion and charmed craftsmen in many cultures. On display is a selection of 100 teapots from the world’s finest collection at Norwich Castle Museum in England. An astounding variety of fanciful, utilitarian, historical, modern, and classical teapots are presented. Also displayed is the world’s largest teapot made in 1851 for the Crystal Palace exhibition in London. The debut in Washington is the traveling exhibit’s final venue. “Traditions in Elegance” is part of an ongoing collaboration between Botany and the U.S. Botanic Garden. Plant specimens from the U.S. National Herbarium and the living collection at USBG are featured in conjunction with the exhibit. John Kress served as an advisor for the exhibit and related educational activities.

Walker Exhibit Opens in Okinawa

From Plant Press, Vol. 4, No. 2 from April 2001.

 

Yoshihiro Hanashiro, right, hosts the visit of John Kress and Deborah Bell at an exhibit celebrating Egbert H. Walker's botanical work in Okinawa, Japan.

W. John Kress and Deborah Bell were invited guests for an exhibit entitled "A Retrospect of Okinawan Scenes in 1950's and Egbert H. Walker, a Smithsonian Botanist in Okinawa", which was shown in Okinawa on February 10 ‑ March 31.  The Department of Systematic Biology’s Botany Section and the Smithsonian Archives worked for two years with the Okinawan Steering Committee who conceived of the exhibit, and Dr. Tetsuo Koyama from the Makino Botanical Garden who supervised it.

            Walker worked in the U.S. National Herbarium for 30 years, from 1928‑1958.  During World War II  he was in charge of a Serviceman’s Collecting program, which received specimens from various areas, but in particular from men in the army of occupation of Okinawa. He collected in Okinawa in the 1950's, which led to the publication of  Flora of Okinawa and the Southern Ryukyu Islands (1159 pp.) in 1976.

            Walker’s daughter Jeanne provided over 300 kodachrome slides documenting not only botanical subjects, but everyday life of Okinawa.  The color slides are some of the only known ones of their kind remaining in good condition after 50 years.  The exhibit attracted over 1,000 people a day, for the first 3 weeks.  Some who went  remembered Dr. Walker and had stories to tell; others recognized homes, friends and family in the photos displayed.

            During the exhibition period, two documentaries were broadcast on local television. One was filmed in the U.S. National Herbarium, the National Museum of Natural History, the smithsonian Institution Archives, and Virginia (including interviews with his daughter and his 97 year‑old wife Dorothy).  The other documentary was shot in Okinawa. The Egbert Walker exhibit may be displayed in Washington, D.C. in 2002. 

Exhibition of Drawings in Portugal

From Plant Press, Vol. 3, No. 3, July 2000.

The Guild of Natural Science Illustrators has accepted two drawings by Alice Tangerini, Stromanthe stromanthoides (Marantaceae) and Orchidantha siamensis (Lowiaceae), for the Annual Exhibit to be held at the Palacio de Manuel in Evora, Portugal. The exhibit runs from 30 July until 31 August, 2000.

Egbert H. Walker Okinawa Exhibit

From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1999.

Dr. Egbert H. Walker, a Department of Botany staff member for 30 years beginning in 1928, will be honored in an exhibit planned for spring 2000 in Okinawa, sponsored by the “A Retrospect of Okinawan Scenes” steering committee of the Okinawa Prefectural Government and Ryukyu Shimpo Newspaper Co., Ltd. Dr. Tetsuo Koyama, Director of the Museum of Bioresource Sciences, Nihon University, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan is the researcher.

Filming in conjunction with the project took place in the department, NMNH and SI Archives in May 1999. A small reception was held in the Castle, where the former Governor of Okinawa, Dr. Hiroko Sho, presented a letter to Secretary Heyman thanking him for the Smithsonian’s assistance in making Dr. Walker’s slides and archives available. Also in attendance were the initiator of the project, Mr. Katsuo Nakamoto, president of Nakazen Herbal Medicine Co.; Mr. Tomohiko Tamaki, director of Okinawa Cable Network TV; Mrs. Jeanne Houghton, Dr. Walker’s daughter; and Dan Nicolson and Deborah Bell representing the Department of Botany.

During World War II, Dr. Walker was in charge of the Serviceman’s Collecting Program, and collected over 7,000 plants in the Okinawa area himself. Responses from personnel in the services came from various areas, but in particular from botanists in the army of occupation in Okinawa. This led to Walker’s publications on Important Trees of the Ryukyu Islands (1954) and the Flora of Okinawa and the Southern Ryukyu Islands (1976). His 300+ kodachrome slides have retained good color quality, and are of particular interest to the exhibit committee as they represent perhaps the only color slides of Okinawa taken in 1951.

Several years ago a former serviceman called from the visitor’s desk in NMNH inquiring about specimens he had collected in Okinawa. We found the accession documentation through the Donor File in the Office of the Registrar, and to my delight, it contained a list of determinations by Egbert Walker. I don’t know who was happier about finding the collections mounted and filed in the herbarium, the donor or me! There is an appropriate quote by Dr. F. Ray Fosberg in an obituary of Dr. Walker (Taxon 41: 618-620. 1992): “Any perceptive botanist who works extensively in the general Old World collections in the U.S. National Herbarium can scarcely fail to appreciate the prevailing good order and evidence of care he finds there, largely the work of Egbert Walker over many years.”

[by Deborah Bell]

Margaret Mee

From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1999.

The traveling exhibition, Margaret Mee: Return to the Amazon, documents the life and work of Margaret Mee (1909-1988), and bridges the worlds of art and natural science while confronting the global issues of rainforest destruction and preservation. Appearing at the National Museum of Natural History from May 28-August 20, the exhibit was co-organized by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Washington, D.C. is the seventh and last stop for the show which has previously attracted audiences in Texas, California, Tennessee, Minnesota and Illinois. The exhibit is curated by Ruth L.A. Stiff, the curator of North American exhibitions at Kew, and author of the illustrated book, Margaret Mee: Return to the Amazon (RBG Kew, 1996, 201 pp.). The exhibition features Mee’s artistically striking and botanically accurate watercolors. It also includes examples of her field sketches, diaries, a portion of a video interview, and a large model of a bromeliad with many of the organisms dependent on it for their existence.

Mee trained as a painter at Camberwell School of Art in London and originally became an art teacher. While in her 40’s, in 1952, she moved from England to Brazil with her husband Greville, and became interested in painting the plants of the Amazon, especially orchids, bromeliads and other species with exotic flowers. It was then that she became enraptured with the rainforest, inspired directly by the experiences of an earlier traveler, the famed Richard Spruce, who had sent specimens to William Hooker at Kew. Subsequently she made fifteen journeys in Brazil, paralleling in general the journeys of Spruce, to sketch and paint the plants as they grew in their natural habitats. She also brought back living specimens.

As her concern for the conservation of the Amazon grew, she increasingly began to place her floral subjects in a forested background instead of against a plain white background as she had originally done. Some of these later paintings are also on display. The exhibit seeks not only to present to the visitor the beauty and scientific accuracy of her art, but also to educate the public about the conservation of irreplaceable ecosystems, and the biodiversity, pollination mechanisms, botanical research and other current scientific efforts in the Amazon.

During her journeys in Brazil, Mee discovered several new plant species, some of which were later named in her honor, and she rediscovered others that had not been seen by scientists for decades; in her paintings and diaries are documented some species now thought to be extinct. As the years passed, she observed the increasing encroachment of human activities which caused alteration of Amazonian habitats at an alarming rate. Margaret Mee was one of the first to speak out for, and act on behalf of, conservation of the rainforest and its inhabitants.

On her fifteenth and final venture into the Amazon, Mee finally realized her dream of capturing on paper an event few people have seen: the anthesis of the moonflower, Selenicereus wittii (Cactaceae), whose white flowers open for only one night of the year, and only by moonlight under the right conditions. In 1988 this exceptional explorer, botanical painter and conservationist who had survived years of hazardous journeys in the Amazon, who had influenced, inspired and contributed to science, art and conservation, was fatally injured in an automobile accident in England. Her legacy lives on in her accomplishments.

In addition to the National Museum of Natural History, lenders of material for this exhibition include the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; the Margaret Mee Amazon Trust; Fundacão Botanica de São Paulo; and private collections.

[by Shirley L. Maina]

Red Alert Exhibit

From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 5, September 1998.

A new temporary exhibition, Red Alert, will open on September 18 in the Museum’s Constitution Avenue lobby, highlighting the IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants and the Department of Botany’s plant collections. Red Alert will focus on the rapid extinction of plants worldwide as chronicled by the Red List, a recent publication that details 34,000 threatened or extinct species of vascular plants (see The Plant Press No. 3). Herbarium specimens of extinct and threatened plants from the U.S. National Herbarium will be displayed, as well as a variety of dried and wet collections. Living plants from the department’s research greenhouses will also be featured each month. The exhibit will continue for six months.