Systematics and systematists at The New York Botanical Garden

Abstract

This paper examines systematics at The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), providing an historical backdrop but emphasizing the diversified skills of the modern systematist and some of the developments since the Garden’s centennial. It reviews some of the factors making NYBG a world center for plant and fungal systematics, including some of the giants in its history, its almost matchless resources for conducting systematics research, some of the landmarks and benchmarks the Garden’s systematists have produced, and some indicators that suggest the productivity is continuing apace at the very least. Some aspects of systematics research are unchanged or virtually so, but numerous dimensions and requisite skills have been added to the systematist’s toolbox, such that graduate students in systematics are now expected to be ‘masters of all trades.’ Outreach and service to the scientific community and the public, including direct influence on conservation, comprise a significant portion of the modern systematist’s activities. The staff and research projects of NYBG’s systematists are remarkable for their geographic and phylogenetic “coverage”: the Garden’s geographic research programs are much more global than before, and the Garden has staff researching virtually all major groups of plants and fungi. Another remarkable feature of the Garden’s team of systematists is that it has had staff working on several important taxonomic groups for many decades. Looking ahead to NYBG’s 150th anniversary, the staff will be transformed and the botanist’s toolkit will continue to expand rapidly, but the mission of documenting and conserving the plants and fungi of the world will remain the same.