Eminent Botanist Research Articles

Crossing the Caucasus hunting for plants: the collection itinerary of the botanists Stéphen Sommier and Émile Levier in the summer of 1890

ABSTRACT Stéphen Sommier and Émile Levier were eminent botanists and plant collectors (but also ethno-anthropologists, geographers and photographers), best known for their scientific travels in Italy and abroad. This study accurately reconstructs the travel and collection itineraries of a trip through the Caucasus in 1890. The botanical importance of this journey is significant, with over 10,000 specimens collected, more than 1600 taxa identified, and over 250 newly described taxa based on the collected samples. The locations visited are placed in a time sequence on up-to-date georeferenced topographic maps. Furthermore, using dedicated heatmaps, we show the sites where the two explorers collected specimens that were later identified as taxa new to science. These maps will also be useful to botanists, historians, scholars and curators of natural history museums, who work with Caucasian flora and vegetation, ethno-anthropology, history of photography, and landscape.

Jack's Appendix: When did it come out?

AbstractWilliam Jack's Appendix. Descriptions of Malayan plants, by William Jack. No. 3 was a paper printed in Bencoolen, Sumatra, that included the original descriptions of Nepenthes ampullaria, N. rafflesiana, Rafflesia titan and Stagmaria verniciflua. The Appendix was not included in the Bencoolen journal Malayan Miscellanies, but it was circulated to eminent botanists, partly with the intention of establishing priority for Jack's new names. We argue that the Appendix was effectively published with distribution dating from May 1821. This takes the date of publication of the two Nepenthes species back by 15 years and makes them the earliest names to be validated for Malesian species in the genus. The Linnaean binomial Gluta renghas is among three names typified here.

A tribute to Professor Adam Boratyński: an eminent Polish botanist and scholar

A tribute to Professor Adam Boratyński: an eminent Polish botanist and scholar

The production of a physiological puzzle: how Cytisus adami confused and inspired a century\u2019s botanists, gardeners, and evolutionists

‘Adam’s laburnum’ (or Cytisus adami), produced by accident in 1825 by Jean-Louis Adam, a nurseryman in Vitry, became a commercial success within the plant trade for its striking mix of yellow and purple flowers. After it came to the attention of members of La Société d’Horticulture de Paris, the tree gained enormous fame as a potential instance of the much sought-after ‘graft hybrid’, a hypothetical idea that by grafting one plant onto another, a mixture of the two could be produced. As I show in this paper, many eminent botanists and gardeners, including Charles Darwin, both experimented with Adam’s laburnum and argued over how it might have been produced and what light, if any, it shed on the laws of heredity. Despite Jean-Louis Adam’s position and status as a nurseryman active within the Parisian plant trade, a surprising degree of doubt and scepticism was attached to his testimony on how the tree had been produced in his nursery. This doubt, I argue, helps us to trace the complex negotiations of authority that constituted debates over plant heredity in the early 19th century and that were introduced with a new generation of gardening and horticultural periodicals.

‘A Little Old‐China Mad': Lady Dorothea Banks (1758‐1828) and Her Dairy at Spring Grove

AbstractLady Dorothea Banks (1758‐1828), wife of the eminent botanist and President of the Royal Society Sir Joseph Banks, was – like her husband – an avid collector. Shortly after she married, she transformed the dairy building at the Bankses' home in Spring Grove into an exquisite china cabinet. All that remains of the collection today, however, is a manuscript describing some of Lady Banks's best wares; it explains the collection and her collecting methodologies. Focusing on the manuscript, this article considers the many ways in which, science, sociability and the practice of collecting were physically intermingled within the Bankses' country estate.

Thomas Hardwicke (1756–1835): botanical drawings and manuscripts from the Hardwicke Bequest in the British Library

Major-General Thomas Hardwicke retired following a lengthy career in India during which he amassed a considerable collection of natural history specimens and drawings. At his death in 1835, the bulk of these were transferred to the British Museum, together with various drawings, manuscripts and correspondence – the “Hardwicke Bequest”. The purpose of this paper is to review some of the material in the Hardwicke Bequest, particularly that related to botany now held in the British Library. The illustrations include the 16-volume set of “Plants of India”, a volume of Indian fungi, and another of plants of Penang. Among the manuscripts, a copy of the contents list of William Jack's hortus siccus of Malay plants presented to the Marchioness of Hastings appears to be a significant find. A manuscript copy of William Hunter's “Plants of Prince of Wales Island”, the earliest, though unpublished until 1909, flora of Penang is also notable. Hardwicke was an indefatigable describer of the plants he encountered, sending many descriptions, as well as specimens, to William Roxburgh and other eminent botanists of his day. The Hardwicke Bequest includes a large number of manuscript descriptions, notably 247 from Hardwicke's extended stay in Mauritius in 1811.

Ретроспектива изучения растительного покрова Крайнего Севера в Ботаническом институте им. В. Л. Комарова РАН за полтора века и перспективы в XXI веке

Ретроспектива изучения растительного покрова Крайнего Севера в Ботаническом институте им. В. Л. Комарова РАН за полтора века и перспективы в XXI веке

The Shifting Ground of Nature: Establishing an Organ of Scientific Communication in Britain, 1869–1900

INTRODUCTIONIn the early months of 1869, a British astronomer and government clerk named Norman Lockyer (1836-1920) began asking his friends and colleagues to write articles he could publish in a new weekly scientific periodical.1 The new publication was not, Lockyer emphasized, a specialized scientific journal. Although he was soliciting contributions from Britain's most famous men of science and intended to print abstracts of technical papers and reports from foreign scientific societies, the journal was not affiliated with any scientific society and the audience for the new magazine was not solely other men of science. Rather, the commercial London publishing house Macmillan & Company was printing Lockyer's weekly, and both Lockyer and the Macmillans hoped the new publication would be read by educated laymen of all trades. Most of the men of science Lockyer consulted about his undertaking had at best modest expectations for the new publication. Lockyer's acquaintance Joseph Hooker, an eminent botanist and the director of Kew Gardens, pessimistically responded to the project by telling Alexander Macmillan, By all means make public my good will to the Lockyer periodical . . . [but] the failure of scientific periodicals patronized by men of mark have been dismal. I do not see how a really scientific man can find time to conduct a periodical scientifically, or brains to go over the mass of trash.2Today, Lockyer's magazine, Nature, is still published, and most would call it an unparalleled success - although not the kind of success its editor had initially envisioned. Modern readers know Nature as perhaps the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, a publication that scientists from every country in the world read, and where many hope to publish their work. Nature was the journal where James Chadwick announced the discovery of the neutron, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch revealed their 'liquid drop' model of nuclear fission, and James Watson and Francis Crick described the structure of DNA.3 But Nature's, significance is not limited to the famous papers published in its pages. Before Nature became an international indicator of scientific prestige, it rose to prominence as a site where British men of science negotiated the rules and boundaries of their community during a time when the identity of the 'man of science' was undergoing tremendous shifts in Great Britain. In the 1870s and 1880s, the generation of British men of science born after 1840 adopted Nature as a venue for publicizing their forthcoming papers and, most importantly, as their preferred forum for debating the maj or scientific questions of the day, shifting scientific discussions away from the general-interest literary periodicals their predecessors and mentors had used.Recently there has been a great deal of excellent scholarship on scientific periodi- cals and the periodical press more generally in Victorian England.4 Of particular note is the Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical project jointly organized by the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, which catalogued and analysed representations of science, technology, and medicine in the general periodical press between 1800 and 1900 in Great Britain. However, the existing scholarship on scientific periodicals has tended to focus on serials with a general or 'popular' readership and few historians have examined scientific writing intended for an audience of scientists or considered the sub-structure of the world of specialist periodicals. Historians of science tend to read specialist journals as historical sources rather than as historical phenomena in their own right; we often take the existence of scientific journals for granted, rather than view them as objects whose existence requires explanation.As a result, less scholarly attention has been devoted to either the development of specialist journals in general or to the contents of particular journals.5 There has been some influential scholarship devoted to the study of modern scientific commu- nication, including studies of journal citation patterns,6 and some scholarly attention has been focused on changes in the language of the scientific article. …

Рудольф Владимирович Камелин (к 70-летию со дня рождения)

Among the eminent botanists, who headed the Russian Botanical Society — I. P. Borodin, V. L. Komarov, V. N. Sukachev, E. M. Lavrenko, A. L. Takhtajan and R. V. Kamelin, attitude to geobotanike was very different, and very nice and it is important to note that the incumbent President of the RBS in 2000, fully supported the initiative group of geobotanical of St. Petersburg, who decided to create their professional journal «Vegetation of Russia».

Doctor Tatiana V. Egorova – in memoriam

Tatiana Vladimirovna Egorova (1.12.1930-6.05.2007), doctor of biological sciences n a member of the NBiodiversity: Research and Conservationi Editorial Board n died in St. Petersburg. She was an eminent botanist, a specialist in the systematics of vascular plants, with a special interest in the family Cyperaceae and also Juncaceae and Liliaceae, as well as an outstanding expert in the rules of botanical nomenclature.

Grace Anne Milne (Lady Prestwich): more than an amanuensis?

Abstract Grace Anne Milne, born in 1832, was the eldest child of James Milne of Findhorn in Morayshire and his wife Louisa Falconer, sister of the eminent botanist and palaeontologist Hugh Falconer. A marriage to George McCall in 1854 was short-lived. Widowed within 18 months and also losing her infant son, bereavement was followed by some years of depression. At this stage in her life an interest in geology was kindled by her uncle, who had been forced to give up his post in India because of the state of his health. From 1858 she travelled abroad with Falconer and subsequently resided with him in London until his death in 1865. During this period Grace both organized his household and acted as his secretary and companion. His regular and frank letters to her, about his scientific ideas, demonstrate that the relationship was more than one of domestic convenience. In 1870 Grace married Joseph Prestwich, a friend of Falconer and a London wine merchant who spent all his spare time ‘geologizing’. They lived at Shoreham near Sevenoaks in Kent and, between 1874 and 1887, lived for part of the year in Oxford after Prestwich's appointment as professor of geology at the university. With Prestwich's encouragement, from 1874, she began to publish novels, travel articles and scientific papers, as well as helping him in the preparation of his own lectures and diagrams. Her six Chapters on Geology were published in 1880 as well as other articles on subjects such as Scottish scenery and the Channel Tunnel. Most were published in magazines, such as Leisure Hour and Every Girl's Magazine , designed for a readership from the prosperous middle classes. Her interest in geology meant that she was able to play a full part in Prestwich's life, helping him with his work and travelling with him on his geological adventures. She was a geologist in her own right and held in high regard by the Fellows of the Geological Society.

JOSEPH A. CUSHMAN AWARD

DR. ZHENG SHOUYI Dr. Zheng Shouyi received the Joseph A. Cushman Award for outstanding contributions to the field of foraminiferology on November 3, 2003. Dr. Bilal U. Haq presented the award during the Cushman Foundation’s awards ceremony at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Seattle, Washington. His summary of Dr. Zheng’s career accomplishments, adapted from his presentation, is given below. Dr. Zheng Shouyi, recipient of the Cushman Foundation Award, is China’s leading foraminiferalogist, an academician and a senior research scientist at China’s premier Institute of Oceanology of the Academy of Sciences in Qingdao. Professor Zheng has spent a lifetime researching the foraminiferal faunas of the China Seas and has produced an impressive body of publications documenting these faunas. Zheng Shouyi was born on May 20, 1931, in Manila, Philippines. She received her early school and university education in the Philippines, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Commercial Education and in Education from the University of the East. Her abiding interest in biology encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, under the advisorship of the eminent Philippine botanist, Dr. Gregorio Velasquez. During this time she came to know Professor J. J. Graham of Stanford University, who was collaborating with Ms. Priscilla Militante of the University of Philippines on the foraminiferal fauna of the Puerto Galera Area, northern Mindoro, Philippines. It was in their laboratory that she was first introduced to the beautiful and diverse morphology of the foraminifera under the microscope. She says that it was “love at first sight” which inspired her to pursue the study of foraminifera. In 1956, Dr. Zheng heard the call from her motherland for intellectuals to take part in the reconstruction of the country and decided to return to China. She …

Rachel Littler Bodley: A Charter Member of the American Chemical Society and Revolutionizer of Chemical and Medical Education for Women

Rachel Littler Bodley was an important contributor to the study of chemistry and the work of women in science. In 1862, she undertook the cataloging of an extensive plant collection at Cincinnati Female Seminary. Her work was praised by many eminent botanists of that time. In 1865, Bodley became a professor of chemistry at Woman’s Medical College. While at that college, her work and student addresses revealed her belief in the possibilities of synthetically made “cures.” In 1874, Rachel became dean of Woman’s Medical College. During 1874, Bodley proposed that American chemists meet at Joseph Priestley’s birthplace to celebrate his discovery of oxygen. Her suggestion led to the formation of the American Chemical Society. She was elected as a charter member of the society and was its only female member until the 1890s. In 1880, Bodley became a member of the Franklin Institute and lectured there on household chemistry. In 1881, she wrote and published The College Story, a survey on the lives of women in the medical profession. It was the first survey of its kind done by a woman. Rachel was a devoted Christian and promoter of foreign medical mission work among students, colleagues, and others. Her leadership and foresight allowed Woman’s Medical College to become one of the foremost women’s medical institutions in America. Her diligence and encouragement made the work of single women as Christian missionaries both possible and extremely productive. Her achievements helped to better the possibilities for women in the medical field and in the world. Finally, the American Chemical Society had its birth from an idea that Rachel Bodley proposed.

Wildflowers of the fairest cape: the wildflowers of the Western Cape, South Africa: where to find them and how to identify them

The Cape Floral Kingdom is one of the most botanically rich areas on earth. This guide by two eminent botanists details 652 of the most common or conspicuous wildflowers to be found there. Descriptions of families and genera as well as the species fill this scientifically accurate, highly readable text.

Joseph Dalton Hooker: Traveller and Plant Collector

Sir Joseph Hooker is remembered as an eminent Victorian botanist and one of Charles Darwin's closest collaborators. Many gardeners and lovers of rhododendrons know of his plant collecting expedition in the Himalayas, but few are aware of his participation in Sir James Clark Ross's epic voyage to Antarctica in 1839-43, of his to Syria and Lebanon in 1860, to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco in 1871, and to the Rockies and California in 1877. At some risk to his own safety and health he discovered many new species of plants introduced a number of attractive flowers into British gardens. Hooker was also an amateur artist who obsessively sketched landscape, flora and, occasionally, people and buildings. Ray Desmond has written a fascinating biography of a remarkable man.

The Lichen Collections of Merritt Lyndon Fernald and Elmer Drew Merrill, Two Eminent Botanists from Maine

The Lichen Collections of Merritt Lyndon Fernald and Elmer Drew Merrill, Two Eminent Botanists from Maine

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Botany

This dictionary is a reference work on all aspects of the study of plants. With more than 5000 entries, it should be valuable to students, amateur botanists and naturalists, and everyone with an interest in plants and their environments. Many of the entries have been taken from the "Oxford Dictionary of Natural History", but each one has been scrutinized thoroughly and, where necessary, amended or rewritten to adapt it to the new dictionary. A substantial number of new entries have been added in the areas of ecology, plant physiology, biochemistry, cytology, and genetics, and other subjects covered include biogeography, evolution, Earth history and the Earth sciences. There are also brief biographical notes on some of the most eminent botanists of the past. The dictionary provides world-wide coverage of taxonomic groups and takes full account of recent taxonomical revisions. One-third of the entries are devoted to taxa, from bacteria and fungi to the main groups of flowering and non-flowering plants.

Distribution of Floristic Richness and Its Conservation in Sri Lanka

Abstract: The angiosperm flora of Sri Lanka, which has been comparatively well studied by many eminent botanists for over two centuries, has a rich endemic component and also exhibits strong affinities to that of peninsular India Some of the 15 floristic regions recognized in the island have exceptionally rich, highly localized floras. But increased forest disturbances over the years have taken a heavy toll. A plea is made to conserve at least one sufficiently large forest reserve in each floristic region. A meaningful conservation program has been launched in the Sinharaja MAB Reserve; similar programs are urgently needed for other protected areas of the island.

The Identity of Clerodendrum eupatorioides Bak. from Cameroon

Summary. Clerodendrum eupatorioides Bak. is Eremomastax speciosa (Hochst.) Cufod. (Acanthaceae). Whilst examining Clerodendrum in connection with an account of the Verbenaceae for the Flora of Tropical East Africa I noted that Huber (1963:442) mentioned he considered the plant described by Baker as Clerodendrum eupatorioides doubtfully belonged to the genus. I examined the type of this and a glance is enough to see that the specimen is an 'Acanth'; the shrinking of the basal part of the petioles, the cystoliths on the leaves, leaf shape and calyx structure give it away at once. It is very surprising how many eminent botanists have examined this without realising what it was. The fact that no other specimen had ever been associated with it is now explained. A few minutes established its identity with an Acanthacea widespread in Africa and the synonymy is set out below in full; as far as I am aware the information has not previously been brought together before, nor is any Flora likely to present it in the future.

The wellcome materia medica collection and herbarium as research aids

It is the purpose of this article to indicate the size and scope of the little known Wellcome Materia Medica Collection and Herbarium and to outline its value not only to the medical historian and ethnobotanist but also, to a lesser extent, to the phytochemist interested in drug plants.2 The materia medica collection, which numbers nearly 6,000 specimens, was started about 1905 by the late Sir Henry Wellcome and was continually enlarged until around 1940. From 1931 to 1942 most of the specimens were checked and authenticated by the eminent botanist/ pharmaeognosist David Hooper who also arranged the collection on a geographical basis. The specinmens have been obtained from three principal sources: i) other collections such as those from the University of Edinburgh (doniated in 1927), and the Royal Botanical Society (which ceased to exist in 1932); ii) by the Museumn staff on foreign travels (nearly 400 Indian drugs, for examnple, were collected between 1910 and 1935, and over 200 Persian drugs in 1933); iii) donations by missionaries, explorers, and others interested in the work of the Museum. As a result of these activities, there are now extensive collections of African, Chinese, Indian, and Persian (1) drugs and substantial numbers from Afghanistan, Angola, Burma, Italy, Morocco, Somaliland, South America, Spain, and Tibet. There are smaller collections from many other parts of