The Plant Press

Living in harmony with nature: Winners, losers, and the Convention on Biological Diversity

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 2, April 2022.

By W. John Kress.

A recently published scientific paper documents the imminent decline of thousands of species of plants as a result of the degradation and deterioration of natural environments caused by human greed and recklessness (Plants People Planet; https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10252). As coauthors of that paper, Gary Krupnick and I worked to compile and analyze mountains of data on every species of plant for which we could find information about its current status on the planet.

We categorized each species as a “winner” or “loser” according to how it has responded to the “Lords of the Biosphere,” as our own species has been called by Professor John McNeill of Georgetown University. Plants that are useful to people, such as crops and plantation timber trees, or take advantage of environments altered by humans, such as invasive species, stand a good chance of surviving the current perils facing the planet, which include unrelentless habitat destruction, out-of-control climate change, rampant pollution, and escalating diseases. Such species will be the winners that survive the hazards of the Anthropocene to flourish once again in a future, perhaps hundreds or thousands of years from now, when humans will have less impact. Species that are not useful to people and inhabit threatened ecosystems or are exploited for their useful properties, such as wild medicinal plants, will be the losers. These species will succumb to human-dominated habitats, will decline in number, and may eventually go extinct.

Losers that are useful to humans tend to be overexploited wild species that may be medicinal, ornamental or used for timber. One such species is Ceratozamia kuesteriana, is a cycad threatened by habitat loss and over-collecting. Endemic to the Sierra Madre Oriental of Mexico, the one remaining population of this species numbers less than 300 plants. Credit: this image is in the public domain.

Although our conclusions were not what we were hoping for, we were not surprised by the results: among the tens of thousands of plant species we analyzed, the losers by far outnumbered the winners. No, it was not a good outcome. In fact, the result is extremely discouraging, and another indicator that humans, the world’s biodiversity, and the planet are on a dangerous and tragic trajectory if we do not change fast.

It is no coincidence that a week after this publication went to press (although certainly not because of this paper) thousands of international delegates and concerned observers met in Geneva, Switzerland, to prepare for the 15^th meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which will convene in Kunming, China, later this year. The long-anticipated meeting in Geneva, which is really three separate meetings taking place at the same time: SBSTTA-24 (called the Twenty-fourth meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice), SBI-03 (Third meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation), and WG2020-03 (Third meeting of the Open-ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework), took place over a two-week period, from March 14 -29, to facilitate long-term discussions on how to prevent further loss of biodiversity while at the same time making the benefits of Nature available for human well-being. I participated in the Geneva meetings over those 16 long days as a virtual official Observer representing the Earth BioGenome Project.

Smithsonian study finds more ‘losers’ than ‘winners’ among plants in the age of humans

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 2, April 2022.

A new analysis spanning more than 86,000 plant species from John Kress, botany curator emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Gary Krupnick, head of the museum’s plant conservation unit, finds that on this human-dominated planet, many more species of plants are poised to “lose” rather than “win.” The study was published in the journal Plants, People, Planet (https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10252).

Losers that are useful to humans tend to be overexploited wild species that may be medicinal, ornamental or used for timber. One such species is Ekman’s magnolia tree (Magnolia ekmanii), a critically endangered tree only found in Haiti that was most likely harvested for its wood to produce charcoal and building materials. Credit: Copyright Martin Reith, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

From changing Earth’s climate to destroying, degrading and altering ecosystems on a massive scale, human choices now largely dictate the environmental conditions across much of the globe and, as a result, which species of plants and animals can survive and persist and which will go extinct. Species lucky enough to be directly or indirectly aided by human activities are likely to survive and can be thought of as “winners,” while those that are pushed to ecological irrelevance or extinction by those same activities are the ultimate “losers” in evolutionary terms.

Kress encountered this concept of evolutionary winners and losers in the age of humans (known to some researchers as the Anthropocene), in the writings of John McNeill and wanted to see if it might be possible to tally the plant species that were winning and losing now and in the future.

“I actually started this project from a place of optimism,” Kress said. “I had just planted all these trees around my house in Vermont and thought to myself that maybe there are actually more winners than losers, and we are just focused on everything that’s disappearing.”

In the summer of 2019, Kress brought Krupnick into the fold to help compile and analyze the mountains of data required to put every plant species for which there was enough information into the categories of winners and losers. The researchers split the winners and losers into species that are and are not useful to humans.

In addition to these four categories, Kress and Krupnick created four others: Species that appeared likely to win or lose in the future were deemed tentative winners or potential losers, and species that do not seem to be winning or losing at present were considered currently neutral. A fourth and final category included 571 species that have already gone extinct.

To place plants in these categories, Kress and Krupnick combed through databases that listed endangered plant species, economically important species such as crops, invasive and weedy plants, and endangered plants that are involved in legal and illegal global trade.

In total, the researchers were able to place 86,592 species of vascular plants—a large group of plants that have vascular tissue which transport water, nutrients and other substances—into the eight categories that describe their prospects for survival in the Anthropocene. That may sound like an inconceivably large number of species, but it is actually just under 30% of the nearly 300,000 known species of vascular plants. There simply was not enough data to categorize the remaining 70% of global plant diversity, which reflects how much is left to learn about Earth’s botanical riches, Kress said.

The analysis revealed that losers currently outnumber winners, and that losers are likely to continue to outpace winners in the future if human impact on the planet maintains its current trajectory. Kress and Krupnick categorized 20,293 species of plants as losers, with the vast majority of those losing species being identified as not useful to humans. By contrast, the researchers found just 6,913 species of winners, with all but 164 of those species having some human use.

Stamp of approval: A guide to gesneriads on stamps

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 2, April 2022.

By Larry Skog and John L. Clark.

Stamp-collecting, or philately, is a time-honored hobby that has been indulged in by kings, presidents, and every-day folk since postage stamps first came into use in the 1840s. While stamp collectors or philatelists fill their collections with stamps from many countries or concentrate on a single region, others devote their time collecting special topics such as stamps showing ships, military, cats, or dogs. Some specialize in postage stamps with plants, of which thousands exist from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, thus a never-ending source of opportunity.

Streptocarpus (=Saintpaulia) ionanthus is the most popular gesneriad featured on stamps from around the world. A. Uganda stamp. B. Lithograph from Hooker (1895). C. Liberia stamp. D. Finland stamp. E. Tanzania stamp. F. Maldives stamp. G. Tanzania stamp. H. Cultivated collection of S. ionanthus from the Herrenhäuser Botanic Garden (accession number 2016-G-619). I. Netherlands Antilles stamp. (Image H courtesy of Boris O. Schlumpberger)

We recently published a 3-part series about gesneriads (Gesneriaceae) on postage stamps in Gesneriads, the quarterly journal of The Gesneriad Society (http://www.gesneriads.org). The series covers 73 stamps from 50 countries showing 21 genera and 35 species, hybrids, and cultivars. The first part dealt with New World gesneriads [in Gesneriads 71(2): 5-28. 2021]; the second part has Asian and Western Pacific gesneriads [Gesneriads 71(3): 12-30. 2021]; and the third part featured European and Africa gesneriads [Gesneriads 72(1): 4-26. 2022]. The Botany and Horticulture Library <https://library.si.edu/libraries/botany> at the National Museum of Natural History carries the journal Gesneriads, as do many local, herbaria, and university libraries.

In the articles, each stamp is shown in color, from Skog’s collection of plant stamps (or found and purchased on-line from eBay or other sources). Each stamp image is accompanied by a photo of a wild or cultivated plant of the same species or cultivar from Clark’s vast photo collection, or photos from other gesneriad growers or field collectors.

The goal of the project was to identify images of all postage stamps that feature Gesneriaceae by consulting horticultural and taxonomic literature as well as providing accurately identified photographs of the same species or cultivars from natural or horticultural populations. The authors had much help from gesneriad growers and other specialists, with more than 60 people contributing identifications of the plants on the stamps, providing images of the living plants (many were Clark’s own field photos), and information about the natural history of the species.

A summer of grape escapes: A field work photo journal

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 4, October 2021.

Jun Wen recently completed two ‘Grape Escapes’—one collecting trip to the southeast United States (August 30 – September 10, 2021) with Sue Lutz, and the other collecting trip to Texas and western Louisiana (September 19-28, 2021) with her long-time collaborator Stefanie Ickert-Bond (University of Alaska, Fairbanks). Wen and her colleagues made important collections and observations throughout the southeast (especially South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Kentucky), as well as Texas and western Louisiana, targeting grapevines (Vitis, Vitaceae), hickories (Carya, Juglandaceae), and rattlebox (Crotalaria, Fabaceae).

Jun Wen and Stefanie Ickert-Bond

While in Texas, Wen and Ickert-Bond visited the John Fairey Garden near Hempstead. Having a unique artistic design by its founder John Fairey, the Garden is a hidden treasure with extraordinary collections from Mexico. The collecting team enjoyed getting to know the Garden via an introduction from botanist Adam Black via FaceBook. The team was given a tour by Executive Director Randy Twaddle and horticultural botanist Wally Wilkins.

The two trips were among many recent grape escapes that Wen had led, setting a foundation to wrap up the taxonomic revision of North American grapes. The studies of Carya and Crotalaria are collaborative work with colleagues at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for DNA-based species identification assay development.

One in three tree species face extinction, study finds

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 4, October 2021.

Thirty percent of the world's trees are threatened with extinction, according to the new State of the World's Trees report. The report, compiling work led by the Global Tree Assessment (GTA) and launched by Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), is one of the first assessments of the world's threatened trees and is the culmination of five years of research to identify major gaps in tree conservation efforts.

Examining the globe’s 60,000 tree species, it reveals that 30% (17,500) of tree species are currently at risk of extinction. That means there are twice the number of threatened tree species globally than threatened mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles combined. 

The report reveals that globally over 440 tree species are right on the brink of extinction, meaning they have fewer than 50 individuals remaining in the wild. These species are found all over the world, from the Mulanje cedar in Malawi, with only a few remaining individuals on one mountain, to a species of alani (Melicope balloui) found only in Hawai’i that has not recently been sighted in the wild.

The report finds hope for the future, however, as conservation efforts led by the botanical community worldwide are growing. Identifying which trees are at risk and ensuring these are protected is the most effective way to prevent extinction and restore endangered species. The report reveals that at least 64% of all tree species can be found in at least one protected area, and about 30% can be found in botanic gardens, seed banks, or other ex situ collections, but further action is needed.

New species of Gesneriaceae named after Funk [Video]

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 3, July 2021.

- Adapted from Nature India.

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, India have discovered a new species of plant in Mizoram belonging to Gesneriaceae.

A newly discovered violet is named Didymocarpus vickifunkiae after American botanist Vicki Funk. (photo by N.S. Prasanna)

The discovery, they say, is the fruit of extensive fieldwork across northeast India and rigorous sifting through plant specimens in herbariums across the world.

The new plant species sheds some light on the unique evolutionary trajectory of flora in the northeastern parts of India. Such findings, the researchers say, are important in designing conservation approaches to protect the fragile ecosystems of northeast India.

Named after the late botanist Vicki Ann Funk from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), the plant (Didymocarpus vickifunkiae) is an endangered species that currently grows in three districts of Mizoram. It grows on moss-covered trees and blooms light pink flowers during the monsoons.

A new species of Pisonia birdcatcher tree discovered in the island of Jamaica

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 3, July 2021.

By Marcos Caraballo-Ortiz, Keron Campbell, and Sashalee Cross.
-Adapted from <https://marcoscaraballo.com/new-pisonia-from-jamaica/>

The diverse Caribbean islands are now home to a new species of tree. In Jamaica, botanists have described a new species of Pisonia, a genus better known as “birdcatcher” trees.

Tree of Pisonia jamaicensis growing on the summit of a limestone hill in Jericho, St. James Parish, Jamaica. (photo by K. Campbell

Pisonia jamaicensis and published in the Journal of Plant Taxonomy and Geography (Webbia), only grows in the central and western mountains of Jamaica. Unlike other members of the genus, the tree is uncommon and even endangered at some localities.

This species adds to the rich biodiversity of the island that records an endemism of over 30 percent with respect to seed plants.

Jamaica is located in a region that is a biodiversity hotspot, and even though the island has been botanized for centuries, this discovery indicates that there is work yet to be done.

Botanists who found this tree in past years confused it with other more common species, including the Water Mampoo (Pisonia subcordata) from the coasts of Puerto Rico and Lesser Antilles.

Art by Alice Tangerini: Pogostemon guamensis Lorence & W.L.Wagner

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 2, April 2021.

Illustrating this new species of Pogostemon required some intricate back and forth with the authors Warren Wagner and Dave Lorence as well as careful dissection of the few pressed specimens sent from Kaua`i. Alice Tangerini found images on the web of patchouli (Pogostemon cablin) which helped to reconstruct positions of the leaves and flowers of the new species. Interpretation of tiny hairs on the flower and calyx were crucial and aided by closeup images of Lorence’s initial dissection of the flowers. The final inking was done in Tangerini’s home, then scanned and labeled and figures manipulated in Photoshop back in her office at the National Museum of Natural History. This drawing was the first one completed after the museum restricted access to staff in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic but set the process in place for all following illustrations done since then.

“E.D.” and the elusive Bidens

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 2, April 2021.

By Julia Beros.

Sitting on a 5-acre green space and playground in Cooper’s Poynt Waterfront Park in Camden, New Jersey is a public art piece called Camden Turntable. SLO Architecture used discarded plastic bottles and facemasks to build Turntable. (photo by Andreas Symietz)

Here is a new lawn of grass; which means here also are clovers and violets, arabidopsis, interloping purslane, a line of cherry trees, stalky earthbound lamiales, some broadleaf plantains, sagewort, and some type of vetch. “My brother operates that type of crane at his job,” he begins as he points across the grassy lawn to fields of industry, spotted with clusters of these cranes sprouting upward as they lattice the sky with their branching arms appointed with yellow hooks that sway gently in the wind. The points hang downward like the achened barb awns of Bidens bidentoides, burrs ready to claw their way into a new spot of dirt.

Bidens bidentoides along a freshwater intertidal shore. (photo by Timothy G. Howard, courtesy of New York Natural Heritage Program)

“He once saw a new guy lift a shipping container up for the first time,” the story continues, “but he forgot to lock it properly and it tipped in the air. One by one, brand new BMW cars came sprinkling out.” He bobs his head in dismay at the very story he has surely told before and continues on his walk around the park leaving our conversation as seamlessly as he entered. I look out to the edge of the bike path and watch the waves of the Delaware River like pleats unfolding as they enter New Jersey. Now the site of a 5-acre green space and playground, Cooper’s Poynt park in Camden, was once the site of a jail, and before then a site of growing industry in a push to increase the use of these ports. And before that this was the site where Elias Diffenbaugh plucked a branching cluster of yellow-topped Bidens bidentoides just before their achenes could sprinkle to the ground. While on site installing a public art piece invoking the history of the changing ports and illegal industrial dumping, attracting the attention of park-goers and passersby, I wondered too about the ecological history of this site defined by urbanization: how has this landscape been defined by botany?

“Beggarticks,” or just Bidens, is an estuarine composite genus with a wide temperate and tropical global distribution. Bidens bidentoides is an increasingly rare species confined to just a straggling few pockets of tidal marsh in the Northeastern United States: the Delaware estuary, the Hudson estuary, and (somewhat debatably) the Chesapeake estuary. In a genus with a diversity described as “chaotic,” B. bidentoides itself made its way through three name revisions, described first by Nuttall as Diodonta bidentoides, then revised as Coreopsis by Torrey and Gray, and finally landing in Bidens under Britton’s description. A plant that grows in mostly disturbed areas, often observed growing among detritus and decaying wood, this species is distinguished from other local ones by its lack of ray florets, simple lanceolate leaves, and antrorsley barbed awns (Smith 2014). As its seed dispersal is adapted to local diffusion near the parent plant, B. bidentoides’ greatest threat is habitat destruction. Clusters of remaining plants remain isolated from each other as well, diminishing the gene diversity which could heighten the vulnerability of this species to extirpation.

Rare lichen unique to Florida discovered in museum collections, may be extinct

From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 2, April 2021.

-Adapted from the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Scientists have found a new species of fleshy verdigris lichen, thanks to DNA analysis of museum specimens. Misidentified by its original collectors, the lichen is only known from 32 specimens collected in North and Central Florida scrubland between 1885 and 1985. Now the hunt is on to find it in the wild – if it still exists.

Heart lichens belong to the genus Cora, whose name is derived from the Latin prefix for “heart,” a reference to the shape of their lobes. (photo courtesy of Robert Lücking)

The lichen, named Cora timucua in honor of Florida's Timucua people, is critically endangered, even more so than the federally protected Florida perforate reindeer lichen, and possibly extinct. Researchers are holding out hope that C. timucua may persist in undisturbed pockets of the state's dwindling pine scrub habitat, though recent searches came up empty.

If Cora timucua still exists, it is most likely living in pockets of undisturbed pine scrub habitat in Florida’s Ocala National Forest, pictured here, and O’Leno State Park, researchers said. (photo courtesy of Dani Tinker, CC BY-NC 2.0)

"The million-dollar question is 'Where is this lichen?'" said Laurel Kaminsky, a digitization manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History and co-author of the study. "The optimist in me says it's still out there."

Kaminsky said the sparse information recorded by the lichen's collectors makes it difficult to retrace their steps. More widespread in the early 20^th century, C. timucua was collected only from the Ocala National Forest and O'Leno State Park after 1968, two of Florida's last remaining scrub ecosystems. Citrus groves and urban developments have replaced up to 90 percent of the state's sand pine scrub.

"If it's anywhere, it's going to take a lot of looking in very specific habitats to find it," Kaminsky said.