American Botanists Research Articles

‘Lady Guardians’ of the Royal Society of Horticulture of Portugal, 1898–1906

In the second half of the nineteenth century gardening flourished in Portugal’s public sphere, having considerably expanded beyond the private realms of palaces and villas. Envisioned as a sophisticated branch of knowledge, horticulture became a hub for citizen science, commercial activities, public education, and civic events. This was a context that fostered and advanced women’s involvement and status as gardeners, horticulturists, and educators, a development influenced by popular Portuguese perceptions of women as protectors. The Royal Society of Horticulture of Portugal (founded in Lisbon as “National” in 1898, decreed “Royal” in 1900), instantiated this enmeshment of perception with status by designating women members as ‘Lady Guardians’ while promoting their participation, especially as competitors and jurists in the society’s flower exhibitions. The women of the society offer a window into the more general identities and professional statuses of women horticulturalists as ‘guardians’ in a generalized sense: they included landowners, writers, gardeners, and family business owners, with many assuming greater responsibility in widowhood. At a time when women’s participation in science was highly constricted, horticulture as a field, and the Royal Society of Horticulture as its premier institution, constituted a remarkable opportunity for women to be publicly engaged and recognized for their expertise as amateur botanists alongside their male counterparts. This article’s analysis demonstrates that women horticulturalists in Portugal were a quite heterogenous group, consisting of women from the highest ranks of the nobility, participating alongside women from further social ranks, inclusive of the aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and urban middle classes. Their participation in the society not only afforded them opportunities locally and civically, but also internationally, as will be illustrated by a few careers that reflect how education, travels, and professional engagement demonstrated the broad reach of Portuguese women’s horticultural activities.

Duchowni w historii botaniki w Polsce

Clerical persons conducted a variety of botanical research in Poland and Polish lands. The purpose of this article is to describe their achievements in this field of science. No comprehensive study of the clergy’s contribution to the development of this branch of science has been made so far. The study is based on the biographies of botanists and amateur botanists from The Biographical Dictionary of Polish Botanists which is being prepared for publication. The Dictionary comprises 1,773 biographies, including 69 clerical persons. Among these 69 people, the largest group form Catholic priests (21), followed by Jesuits (12, including 1 ex-Jesuit), Protestant clergy (6), and Piarists (6, including 2 ex-Piarists). The fewest were archbishops and subdeacons (1 person each). Among the botanists active in Poland and Polish lands, no clergy of non-Christian denominations were identified. The share of clergy in the total number of botanists was not substantial. They were in the majority only during the period when medical botany flourished (from the mid-14th century to the last quarter of the 16th century). Among the many branches of botany, floristics was most often practiced by the clergy, with as many as 36 people publishing works in this field, followed by ecology (14 people), popularization of botany (7 people), and phycology (5 people). Other branches of botany were less frequently practiced: medical botany and systematics – by 4, ethnobotany, phytogeography, physiology, mycology, nature conservation, and paleobotany – by 3, history of botany and pteridology – by 2, and anatomy, bryology, cytology, dendrology, lichenology, morphology, botanical engraving – by 1 person. With the increase in the number of botanists and the rapid development of experimental-laboratory branches of botany, the importance of clergy in the development of plant science in Poland has started to decline.

Digitization of the Greenland Vascular Plant Herbarium as a Unique Research Infrastructure to Study Arctic Climate Change and Inform Nature Management

The Greenland Vascular Plant Herbarium at the Natural History Museum of Denmark represents the largest collection of botanical specimens from Greenland and includes some of the oldest known specimens collected in the Arctic, as well as voucher specimens collected over time from important botanical expeditions. High-resolution digital images for all specimens in this collection have recently been obtained and accompanying specimen label data have been transcribed. Digitizing this invaluable botanical collection from Greenland allows us to make nearly 170,000 Arctic plant specimens available online to researchers, amateur botanists, nature managers and advisers, as well as the general public. Improved access to this museum collection will facilitate global change research and nature management in Greenland’s rapidly changing Arctic environment and will help promote the value of digitizing Arctic specimens maintained in natural history collections worldwide. Current and potential applications of Arctic herbarium material in climate change studies, and the biases and limitations of such herbarium material for these studies are discussed.

Rethinking the Ph.D. dissertation in botany: Widening the circle.

Rethinking the Ph.D. dissertation in botany: Widening the circle.

The Sociological History of Transforming TDWG to Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG)

Thirty-seven years—why celebrate this prime number anniversary of the founding of the Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) in 1985? Because we wanted to look at the history of TDWG through its people (and coincidentally, 37˚C is considered "normal" human temperature, so why not?). Records from 1985's inaugural meeting at the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques in Geneva, Switzerland, 28–30 September show that it was attended by 12 representatives of the botanical community. Although the attendees were listed by salutation (i.e., Dr., Prof., Mr.) and by first initials along with surnames, the group was all male, composed mainly of European and American botanists with doctorates. How has TDWG morphed over these 37 years from a group of geeky botanists in the early days of museum computerization and six years before the World Wide Web was introduced to the public, to the organization known today as Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG)? TDWG has always been an open and community-driven organization with decisions made by consensus. Anyone can become a member, individuals as well as institutions (including government agencies, non-governmental organizations, programs, and projects). Everything TDWG produces comes from the expertise, collaboration, and support of its members—people and organizations who create, manage, integrate, and analyze biodiversity information. Today's TDWG looks very different from the one in 1985, but the seeds of the organization were there, even then. While this presentation is about TDWG's history as an organization, its focus will be on the heart of TDWG: its people. We would like to show how the organization has evolved in terms of gender balance, inclusivity actions, and our engagement to promote and enhance diversity at all levels. But more importantly, where do we—as a community—want to go in the future?

SPECIES DELIMITATION IN NICOTIANA SECT. SUAVEOLENTES (SOLANACEAE): RECIPROCAL ILLUMINATION LEADS TO RECOGNITION OF MANY NEW SPECIES

SummaryIn this volume of Curtis's Botanical Magazine, we increase the number of species recognised in Nicotiana sect. Suaveolentes to 38, up from the 21 recorded in the Flora of Australia published 39 years ago, but we estimate the final number is likely to exceed 60. We examine the reasons why so many unrecognised species exist. Several Australian and American botanists have previously specialised in Nicotiana but did not detect such diversity. We have carried out many fieldtrips, seen most known species in the wild and have grown these accessions from diverse areas side‐by‐side in cultivation to avoid basing decisions about species characteristics on features heavily influenced by environmental plasticity. In the end, we conclude that it is a mixture of focused and extensive fieldwork and more recent genomic, genetic and karyological studies combined in the process of reciprocal illumination, that has enabled us to describe so many new species. We also briefly focus on the topic of why Nicotiana is so species‐rich in Australia.

Plant hunting: exploring the behaviour of amateur botanists in the field

Plant hunting: exploring the behaviour of amateur botanists in the field

Facebook groups as citizen science tools for plant species monitoring

Abstract Social networks offer communication channels through which people share huge amounts of primary data that can be used for scientific analyses, including biodiversity research. To understand to what extent data extracted from social networks could complement data collected for scientific purposes, it is necessary to quantify the bias of such data. We analysed which plant traits increased the probability of a wild‐growing plant species to be photographed and posted to a social network based on the data from an unstructured citizen science tool; a Facebook group focused on the vascular flora of Sicily (Italy). Then, we compared botanical data collected by this Facebook group members with data collected by scientists in 6,366 vegetation plots sampled across Sicily, stored in the EVA database. Our results suggested that data proceeding from the analysed Facebook group were affected by various sampling biases, which differed from the biases inherent to other types of biodiversity data such as those from vegetation plots. Facebook users recorded a higher proportion of red‐listed and alien species than vegetation scientists. Therefore, social networks can provide a valuable complement to the data collected by scientists for research purposes. Synthesis and applications. Despite Facebook does not support geotagging and interface for data access and analysis, it is an invaluable source of biodiversity data that could complement those collected by professional researchers. The main advantage of data from social networks is their high dynamism, as they report large amounts of species occurrences in almost real time. Therefore, citizen science data from a Facebook group where the records are curated by expert volunteers can be used (a) for monitoring population dynamics of threatened and alien species; (b) as a source of additional data on rare species occurrences, particularly for plants that are attractive for amateur botanists, such as orchids; (c) for early warning systems of potential new invasions; and (4) for phenological studies, especially at the beginning of the flowering season.

Seeds That Float

A well-known anecdote describes how a young William Le Baron Jenney, traveling the Pacific in 1850, was taken by the construction of bamboo and palm houses in the Philippines. Jenney, and those that historicized him, attributed his experimentation with steel-frame tall buildings in Chicago later in the nineteenth century to these early impressions of bamboo framework with palm-woven panels. This paper proposes a contextualization of Jenney’s inspiration alongside the work of two American botanists active in Guam and the Philippines between 1890 and 1920 in order to understand the creation of analytical categories and the texture of academic imperialism. Elmer Drew Merrill and William Safford recorded their encounters with plant-based architecture in the tropics during a period of violent imperial transition. These vignettes of viewership reveal how unstable claims about a changing environment were validated through the interpretation of plants animated through human interaction as building materials rather than inert timber.

Acta Plantarum, more than a forum: a new national floristic distribution database completes the numerous online IPFI facilities

Citizen science projects are able to collect massive amounts of data engaging thousands of motivated volunteers. Moreover web-based communities are a powerful way to promote citizen involvement. This paper describes Acta Plantarum (www.actaplantarum.org), an open source project born in 2007, aiming at the study of spontaneous Italian flora and hosting one of the most popular floristic web-based communities in Italy. Participation in the project is free and takes place, upon registration, by posting pictures and contributions in a discussion forum. This represents the heart of the website together with IPFI (Index Plantarum Florae Italicae), a complete nomenclatural database of Italian flora species created to archive all the botanical information. Over the years, thanks to the participation of amateur botanists from all Italian regions, a relevant amount of floristic records has been accumulated in Acta Plantarum. A new utility now allows the retrieval of floristic records stored in the forum through automatic and semi-automatic functions. As of 30 June 2020, Acta Plantarum had 1,793 active members and 74,188 floristic records were automatically or manually extracted, covering about 70% of the specific and subspecific taxa occurring in Italy. An appropriate validation process ensures reliability of data that can be extremely useful to the general audience, policy makers, amateur and professional botanists. Acta Plantarum results confirm the fundamental role of amateurs to develop large floristic databases and to increase floristic knowledge both at local and national level.

A Place for Volunteers in Field Sciences

A Place for Volunteers in Field Sciences

Culture, Context, and Community in Contemporary Psychedelic Research

Culture, Context, and Community in Contemporary Psychedelic Research Brian D. Earp (bio) and David B. Yaden (bio) Psychedelics require cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study, and we were happy to see a contribution from the field of medical anthropology. Such a study holds the promise of characterizing the ways in which psychedelics are situated in contemporary societies, both within and beyond research and clinical contexts. Here, we offer some friendly criticism of the target article by Noorani (2021) while also highlighting various points of agreement and looking ahead to future research in this field. Noorani’s article is structured around an organizing theme of “containment.” The term is not formally defined, but functions more as a poetic metaphor, allowing the author to explore various ways in which psychedelics challenge conventional boundary-drawing: treatment versus enhancement (Earp, 2018; Earp & Savulescu, 2020b), medical versus recreational, scientific versus “spiritual” (Cole-Turner, 2015; Smith, 1964), and so forth. Noorani is right to call attention to, among other things, the therapeutic setting—understood here as a kind of ‘container’ for psychedelic experiences—while also casting a critical eye over the background conditions within which those experiences take place. One relevant set of background conditions concerns the psychedelic research community itself: that is, the clinical scientists, therapists, and (other) academics who are often seen as driving the so-called Psychedelic Renaissance (Puente, 2020; Sessa, 2013). Amidst calls for vigilance in maintaining rigorous standards in research and caution in clinical applications (Yaden, Yaden, & Griffiths, 2020), analysis of the wider social context of this research is imperative. Science, including psychedelic science, is not conducted in a cultural vacuum, but is rather shaped and informed by the often-implicit values and assumptions of the scientists themselves, as well as the institutions within which they conduct their research (Douglas, 2009). Just as importantly, it is shaped by omission: the voices, perspectives, experiences, and contributions that are ignored or suppressed or left out (often those of women and people color) (George et al., 2020; Williams, Bartlett, et al., 2020). Noorani tackles both issues, at least in part: he tries to tell an untold story by giving a “behind the scenes” look at the contemporary psychedelic research community, albeit one that is focused primarily on some of that community’s more prominent members. [End Page 217] To make sense of this research community, Noorani draws on his experience as a trainee in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, the institution where most of the recent wave of experiment-based psychedelic studies has been conducted. The author supplements this experience with an ethnography involving interviews with, and personal observations of, members of what he terms “the psychedelic community.” But the community invoked here is broader than the “research community” of scientists and clinicians we have just described. For Noorani, it seems to refer to really anyone with an interest in psychedelics or MDMA, whether privately or professionally, who may or may not know each other personally, and whose values and priorities may not be, and often are not, aligned. So, for example, in characterizing the “the psychedelic community,” Noorani lumps together research scientists, academics, and therapists with, among others, those whom he describes as “neo-shamanic healers,” “hippies,” “Yippies,” “New Agers,” “amateur botanists,” and “party-goers.” The extent to which members of these different groups can be said to form a coherent “community” (as opposed to, say, sometimes attending similar workshops or conferences) is tenuous. In fact, there are two senses of community that seem to be invoked in the target article. The first refers to a group of people who have a shared set of characteristic values or social norms: their history, formative experiences, self-understandings, or socio-political positioning typically tie them together in an organic fashion, often resulting in a collective identity or sense of purpose. The latter sense is conceptually weaker: it refers to a theoretical assemblage of individuals, possibly clustered into different factions, who may, in practice, have little in common apart from a selected high-level property (e.g., having an interest in psychedelics). The author, at times, seems to slip between these two different senses to imply that the “psychedelic research community”—as we have understood that...

500 Flowers by Roger Camp

Recognizing the contribution art has had in the Mayo Clinic environment since the original Mayo Clinic Building was finished in 1914, Mayo Clinic Proceedings features some of the numerous works of art displayed throughout the buildings and grounds onMayo Clinic campuses as interpreted by the author.

Green Pioneers: Raising awareness of invasive plants for all ages

When researchers and managers are asked to rank the issues that prevent adequate control of invasive species, lack of public awareness is at the top of the list (Dehnen‐Schmutz et al. 2018). It is therefore imperative to raise the general public's awareness of the potential risks of introducing alien species into the wild. Green Pioneers, a citizen science project funded by the Flemish Government, (Fig. 1) aims to address this issue in Belgium, across age groups. The project aims to Create awareness on invasive species, highlighting how invasions can be avoided and how to mitigate their impact. Improve communication between citizens and scientists on conservation and invasive plant species. Augment the quality and quantity of data on invasive species. Create awareness on invasive species, highlighting how invasions can be avoided and how to mitigate their impact. Improve communication between citizens and scientists on conservation and invasive plant species. Augment the quality and quantity of data on invasive species. The project is developing three kinds of activity, specifically to attract a broad demographic: - 'Young Pioneers', by developing tools for teachers in science, technology, engineering and mathemathics for school children from 12-15 years old. - 'Online Pioneers', through our online citizen science platform DoeDat.be, by helping with the transcription of label information on herbarium specimens, - and 'Visiteers', by inviting companies and working age people to help us in the collection and to inform them about invasive species. Finally, we will be organizing a BioBlitz in spring 2020 at Meise Botanic Garden where we will celebrate plants and all our Green Pioneers, while also spreading the message of invasive plant awareness. During our 48 hour BioBlitz, scientists, volunteers and citizens are workig together to survey the biodiversity of our Botanic Garden. Ultimately, Green Pioneers aim to encourage recording of alien species by amateur botanists and create a generation of responsible gardeners who understand the consequences of releasing invasive alien plants into the wild.

El conocimiento florístico actual del Noroeste de México: desarrollo, recuento y análisis del endemismo

Antecedentes: El conocimiento florístico del Noroeste (NO) de México tuvo un gran impulso por parte de botánicos norteamericanos hasta la primera mitad del siglo XX.Pregunta: ¿Las exploraciones botánicas realizadas, histórica y recientemente en el área de estudio, son adecuadas para documentar de forma robusta su composición y estructura florística?Sitio de Estudio: El NO de México incluye los estados de Baja California, Baja California Sur y Sonora.Métodos: Los autores son los responsables de los herbarios incluidos en la compilación (BCMEX, HCIB, SD, y USON), cada uno dedicado a documentar la flora de las tres entidades de interés desde hace tres décadas Los datos florísticos fueron obtenidos principalmente del recuento de las bases de datos de los herbarios avocados a esta región (aprox. 110,000 registros), además de la incorporación de información de bibliografía previa e información reciente, producto del trabajo de campo de los autores. Las bases de datos consultadas se componen de 27,117 sitios de colecta.Resultados: La base de datos final obtenida se compone de 5,865 taxones a nivel de especie y categorías menores. Por entidad, Sonora es la más biodiversa con 3,762 taxones, Baja California tiene 2,583 y Baja California Sur consigna 2,070. Al compararse con el centro y sur del país, el NO Mexicano es relativamente pobre en especies, pero la proporción de taxones endémicos es relevante. Este último análisis muestra dentro de la región a 941 especies, de las cuales 294, 391 y 79 se encuentran restringidos a Baja California, Baja California Sur y Sonora, respectivamente; y 177 se comparten entre las entidades. La región comprende 18 géneros endémicos, incluidos en 10 familias.Conclusiones: Con base en la compilación del presente estudio se puede considerar la existencia de una excelente plataforma de conocimiento florístico para esta región, pero aún existen áreas geográficas, que incluyen todo tipo de topografía, todavía inaccesibles que pueden incrementar la flora total y endémica. Ante los riesgos actuales, es prioritario establecer programas de protección para sus especies exclusivas, ya que gran parte de las mismas tienen una distribución restringida.

NonWest by North

What is at stake in traditional botany and how has it historically swept aside even the most eminent of botanical artists such as Marianne North (1830–1890)? In three sections, this article explores themes of plant sexuality, colonisation and the relationships between botany at the metropolitan centre and at the empire’s peripheries. Marianne North and Julia Margaret Cameron’s amateur science and experimentation are the subject of the first section. Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and North’s views of relationality rather than Malthusian conflict are addressed in the second. Finally, as two amateur botanists and important plant specimen collectors for Kew, William Colenso (1811–1899) together with Marianne North provide case studies for the complexities of colonial classification.To what has been written about contemporary ‘botanical conflicts’, this article adds an analysis of the historical legacies of colonial science’s systems of control, against which indigenous and feminist botanical painters, as well as those interested in plant sentience and other forms of radical environmental art, continue to struggle. It is an anachronistic reinterpretation of Marianne North’s interest in Charles Darwin’s theories of conflict in relationships between species in On the Origin of Species (1895) that reassesses the relationships of power, contest and sexualities with reference to the ‘plant turn’ in philosophy and critical theory (as theorised by Natasha Myers, Carla Hustak, Michael Marder, Michael Pollan, et al), as well as contemporary art. This article is about the conflict between central patriarchies and peripheral establishments of natural science, between Indigenous and colonial botany and its artistic representations.

The Wikiplantbase project: the role of amateur botanists in building up large online floristic databases

The Wikiplantbase project: the role of amateur botanists in building up large online floristic databases

ApLeaf: An efficient android-based plant leaf identification system

To automatically identify plant species is very useful for ecologists, amateur botanists, educators, and so on. The Leafsnap is the first successful mobile application system which tackles this problem. However, the Leafsnap is based on the IOS platform. And to the best of our knowledge, as the mobile operation system, the Android is more popular than the IOS. In this paper, an Android-based mobile application designed to automatically identify plant species according to the photographs of tree leaves is described. In this application, one leaf image can be either a digital image from one existing leaf image database or a picture collected by a camera. The picture should be a single leaf placed on a light and untextured background without other clutter. The identification process consists of three steps: leaf image segmentation, feature extraction, and species identification. The demo system is evaluated on the ImageCLEF2012 Plant Identification database which contains 126 tree species from the French Mediterranean area. The outputs of the system to users are the top several species which match the query leaf image the best, as well as the textual descriptions and additional images about plant leaves, flowers, etc. Our system works well with state-of-the-art identification performance.

Ecological studies of polyploidy in the 100 years following its discovery.

Polyploidy is a mutation with profound phenotypic consequences and thus hypothesized to have transformative effects in plant ecology. This is most often considered in the context of geographical and environmental distributions-as achieved from divergence of physiological and life-history traits-but may also include species interactions and biological invasion. This paper presents a historical overview of hypotheses and empirical data regarding the ecology of polyploids. Early researchers of polyploidy (1910 s-1930 s) were geneticists by training but nonetheless savvy to its phenotypic effects, and speculated on the importance of genome duplication to adaptation and crop improvement. Cytogenetic studies in the 1930 s-1950 s indicated that polyploids are larger (sturdier foliage, thicker stems and taller stature) than diploids while cytogeographic surveys suggested that polyploids and diploids have allopatric or parapatric distributions. Although autopolyploidy was initially regarded as common, influential writings by North American botanists in the 1940 s and 1950 s argued for the principle role of allopolyploidy; according to this view, genome duplication was significant for providing a broader canvas for hybridization rather than for its phenotypic effects per se. The emphasis on allopolyploidy had a chilling effect on nascent ecological work, in part due to taxonomic challenges posed by interspecific hybridization. Nonetheless, biosystematic efforts over the next few decades (1950s-1970s) laid the foundation for ecological research by documenting cytotype distributions and identifying phenotypic correlates of polyploidy. Rigorous investigation of polyploid ecology was achieved in the 1980s and 1990 s by population biologists who leveraged flow cytometry for comparative work in autopolyploid complexes. These efforts revealed multi-faceted ecological and phenotypic differences, some of which may be direct consequences of genome duplication. Several classical hypotheses about the ecology of polyploids remain untested, however, and allopolyploidy--regarded by most botanists as the primary mode of genome duplication--is largely unstudied in an ecological context.

The Royal Horticultural Society's 1864 botanical competition

The Royal Horticultural Society's botanical competition of 1864 aroused an early stirring of concern for the need for botanical conservation in Britain. Competitors were required to submit a set of pressed plants collected from a single British county and although the organizer's intention was to encourage study of British plants amongst “all classes”, this laudable aim provoked an angry response from both professional and amateur botanists who claimed that it would encourage the extirpation of rare taxa. A compromise was reached and the competition rules were modified to restrict the number of plants that could be submitted and to discourage the collection of those that were rare. An analysis of the 39 medallists shows that they were equally divided between men and women and that the women were likely to be young, affluent and unmarried but that the men were drawn from a much wider demographic and social class. It is concluded that the fears of damage by large numbers of unprincipled competitors were unfounded but that the aims of the Royal Horticultural Society were also largely unmet with the majority of competitors being from professional backgrounds rather than the artisans who were to be encouraged.