Discussion for Citizen Scientists
Plants are the basis for life on Earth
- Humans have altered every aspect of planet Earth, but we fail to fully understand the natural world we inherited nor the systems people have produced to describe plant nature and diversity.
- Because we now truly manage this planet, comprehending the state of Earth’s natural history is more vital than ever.
- Professional scientists will never have the resources or capacity to make sufficient observations to document and explain the state of natural systems on which we all depend and with which we interact.
- Citizen scientists can contribute to the need for greater understanding and appreciation of this world that is home to all living creatures.
- Basic field skills and botanical understanding can equip any interested citizen to make observations, generate useful data, and collaborate with others to increase our communal knowledge about the nature and future of life on Earth.
When I was a child, most field study had become the province of professional scientists – researchers working out of Universities, or the Extension System. The day in which a dedicated amateur could make solid contributions to our understanding of nature seemed a relict of the 19th century. But over the past several decades, botanical research in the traditional academic settings has shifted from descriptive study to more technical and technology-based investigation, with a goal of generating the molecular and genetic understanding that underpins and advances knowledge.
Scientists know there remains serious need for field work – descriptive and ecologically-based studies that can provide observations and data about both natural and built communities. Gathering and reporting that kind of information is becoming the job of contemporary Citizen Scientists, most of whom will find plant naming, identification and collecting techniques are a solid and necessary basis for understanding how to work with plant information in every situation.
I would guess many people interested in natural history and citizen science already know quite a bit about plants, including plant identification. But plant names and the categorization of plants (taxonomy) are as much artifact as ,judgement, so history is a key player.
Let’s go through some main issues about plant names:
- Taxonomy, the naming of plants, is a difficult matter (apologies to T. S. Elliot), with the overriding purpose of establishing a single, globally-valid name for each recognizably distinct species (and variety) on Earth.
- Plant taxonomy differs from almost every other realm of botany in that publications never lose value or become irrelevant. It makes taxonomy a bit stodgy but even that is useful.
- Taxonomists worldwide agree on rules by which plants are named. Those rules change over time, but the system for establishing them is decades-old, and international. Even during the height of the Cold War (if you are old enough to know what that means), delegates from countries like Cuba and China participated.
- Plant naming and documentation of plant variation and distribution depend on evidence, i.e. vouchers, in the form of preserved specimens. We follow the type system, in that each plant name, in the end, is irrevocably tied to a physical specimen – termed the type for that name.
- Even as researchers continue to explain evolutionary origins for different clades and plant species, we accept the practical need for every plant to have a name that connects to historical literature. Each different plant is a specific kind (a species) within a general and definable group (a genus). Both categories, genus and species, have their roots in philosophical discussions from the early enlightenment. The resulting binomial becomes the key to accessing all published knowledge of any plant.
Think a bit about the origins and meanings of these rules. Culturally, worldwide, there have been many takes on plant knowledge and naming of plants. At one time, knowledge of plants in ancient Egyptian and Asian cultures probably greatly exceeded the level of plant appreciation in Western Europe. But we have to accept the fact that science, as we know it today, is based on European practice that emerged between 1500 and 1700.
Core to the European traditions were Greek, Latin, and Arabic teachers and texts in fields of math, astronomy, physics, medicine, and agriculture. Because plants were society’s pantry and medicine chest, physicians and farmers, informed by advances in other sciences and technologies, slowly crafted an understanding of plants that underlies botany today.
Throughout the world, there seem always to have been people who specialized in curatives. This required personal knowledge of local plants (as well as animals and minerals), in that most cures came from nature’s cabinet of wonders. And certainly there were early systems for naming or referencing plants, but specifically in Greece and the surrounding Mediterranean basin, by 300 AD, there was a written flora to useful plants. The Materia Medica, ascribed to Greek practitioner Dioscorides came into circulation and through migration to far reaches of the Mediterranean world, Dioscorides’ text became standard. And it had real legs. For nearly 1500 years. even into the the early days of true modern science, any compilation or herbal used by physicians and practitioners in Europe was a translated adaptation of the Materia Medica. We are told those herbal texts were second only to the Holy Bible in copy and print numbers.
But there was a problem with the Greek text, in that it held up in areas very similar in climate to Greece – from the Levant to Spain. But the temperate plants to the north, the floras of Germany, northern France, Holland, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries, are simply too different – giving botanical meaning to the phrase “it’s Greek to me.”
I have to imagine that people in the colder regions of Northern Europe had a lot of indoor time during which to ponder their texts and studies, because it is clear that as the Renaissance moved northward from its Italian origins, interest in plant science blossomed. There was no option – in those lands Dioscorides’ text was fairly worthless. Plants and circumstances in Germany, Austria, and northern France were different. People needed the authority of Dioscorides, but were forced to examine and expand the materia medica. Works such as Brunfels’ 1530 herbal and Fuchs’ 1542 included valid illustrations, drawn from living material rather than being copied iconographically. This was not isolated change, rather reinterpretation of ancient texts developed in the greater context of the printed word (Gutenberg, 1455), exploration of the New World (Columbus, 1492), and opening of a sea route to India (Vasco de Gama, 1497). The 16th century was a time of change, brewing with intellectual growth.
A century later, the scientific world had come alive with cataloging and discovery. Economically useful plants were making their way around the world; South African garden plants were cropping up in Europe. Herbals and catalogs documented these new plants, but without the advantage of standard names, or even conventions to create names. The Bauhin brothers came to the rescue, publishing their grand compilation, Pinax, in 1623, summarizing the works of herbalists. But fresh knowledge came in every new area. Robert Boyle published his studies as The Sceptical Chymist in 1661. Robert Hooke described the first cells with his his 1665 Micrographia, and by 1694 Rudolf Camerarius had documented that plants have sexual organs and lifestyles.
Gardens and cabinets were filled with exotic plants; evidence that a new system would erupt, which it did. With an air of predestination, the new order was codified through the publications and popularity of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. His system was overarching and simple. It brought such instant capacity for standardization that an almost trivial aspect, his decision to assign every specific kind of plant to a genus, and and then append a specific epithet (what we call the species name), persists as the system for naming plants today. And Animals. And other life forms.
The proof is in the pudding. Linnaeus’ seminal catalog, Species Plantarum, remains the foundation for authorized plant names today. His “L.” is the authority for thousands of taxa, mostly plants that are part of our European heritage. From Pisum sativum L. (Green Pea) to Quercus robur L. (English Oak), Linnaeus staked his claim. Note, however, that the folk at Kew’s POWO (Plants of the World OnLine) have take to recognizing earlier authors when it’s apparent Linnaeus was simply using the names they gave to a plant. So you’ll discover FNA (Flora North America) cites authors differently from POWO. I guess some might see this as an example of Wokeness.
So what is in those names?
First, a scientific plant name (a binomial, i.e. genus and species) implies a concept – it says that we know a name (which is tied to a physical specimen – a type), and that name represents something we can define as a species. Well that’s a problem. People may really disagree as to the limits of one kind (species) of plant as compared to another, because they may actually accept differing definitions as to what segregates one species from another.
In Linnaeus’ day, plants would be grouped based on pure form – visible and quantifiable characteristics that tie to a definable geographic distribution would be diagnostic. Given extensive study and experience, you, as a taxonomist would group like with like, and come up with piles of specimens and notes corresponding to an idea of identifiable species. After determining which of those have valid names, you would give new names to the remainder and voila – you have monographed the group and discriminated the various species.
The limits to that method come when characteristics are not clear cut, as with oaks, which are known to hybridize readily. Indeed, I remember someone joking that with oaks you could either name the species or name the hybrids between them all. In either case, there would never be certainty .
Most people today would probably acknowledge that reproductive isolation is one reasonable criterion for what makes a species. Plants that are reproductively part of one population (regardless how limited or widespread the distribution) that mostly remains discrete from other populations would be part of the same species. But this distinction requires extensive knowledge of populational characteristics and behavior, reproductive biology, and autecology. It is the basis for the biological species construct, but the assumptions become suspiciously theoretical in many instances.
Searching for the holy grail, botanists have always felt that once we understand the genetics of plant groups, it will be possible to correlate species with evidence of genetic relatedness and separation. Such work, though increasingly possible and accomplished, doesn’t help the field biologist who needs a practical way to identify plants so as to tie their observations to the kinds of plants encountered. For all we know about the plant world today, the simple need to understand how we can identify and talk about different kinds of plants remains paramount.
For Andrea Cesalpino, in the sixteenth century, the task of identifying plants looked so daunting that he compared it to going to war agains ‘legions of monstrous Plants.’ In De Plantis (1583), the first of early modern efforts to systematize the plant kingdom, Cesalpino declared that plants must be organized into categories “just like the battle line of an army,” for otherwise “some plant might by chance escape our notice, and, in a way equivalent to those soldiers which at times move on to different groups, a plant can be placed in a category to which it does not belong.’” from T. M. Kelly, 2012. Clandestine Marriage, Botany & Romantic Culture
And at that level, things have not changed so much. You need to know the plants in your area, which means you will want to know what resources exist that can help you identify those plants. In the best of worlds, you would have access to a comprehensive, up-to-date, and practical flora. Floridians have relied on sequentially-updated treatments. Alvan Wentworth Chapman, living and working out of Apalachicola, compiled and printed the first edition of his Flora of the Southern United States in 1860, followed by an 1889 2nd edition and (at the end of his life) an 1897 3rd edition. We then might have adopted J. K. Small’s Flora of the Southeastern United States (1903). In the late 20th century, the most useful treatment would have been Radford, Ahles, and Bell’s Manual of the Flora of the Carolinas (1964, 1968). And today, we have various sources, Wunderlin and Hansen’s Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida, Flora of Florida & the ISB Atlas, on-line floras by the Weakley team, as well as more popular publications, such as Hammer’s Guide to Florida Wildflowers. But I get ahead of myself.
Floras are funny. They have to work for you, so the proof is in the pages. Floras propose to help you decide the identity and potential distribution of a plant by “working the keys” and reading the descriptions. A Flora is really a catalog or encyclopedia of plants for a given area. It it includes keys, those are puzzles, paper calculators meant to be manipulated to send you to the right place in the catalog. And it is arcane. When you open a flora to use the keys, you enter a binary world, marching through paired choices to get to a family, and then to a genus, and finally to your goal – a species. The hardest part of most keys will be the entry levels, where you have to wade through all sorts of necessarily vague choices to get to the right track that (in Florida) would take you to the correct one of 5,000+ taxa. It never really gets simple.
Unfortunately, beginners have the great challenge in this regard because the more you know about plants, the more you can skip the hardest part. It’s like getting a bye in a tournament.
The good thing is that cheaters prosper – it is totally fair to use any resource available that gets you to the correct identification for a plant, thus connecting you to the world of information about that plant.
When someone (or some local flora with good photos or drawings) gets you to the right identification, then you can go straight to the written description in the flora. Eventually, you will have working knowledge that helps make the keys make sense. A great way to gain a sense of Jepson or Munz is to look up a common plant you may know well – like Quercus agrifolia. Read the description. Examine the illustration. Go to the key. Reverse engineer it, examining the plant and tracing the choices backward. This exercise is a supreme revelation, payback for that assist you got from photos and guides. Would you have been able to work the key through to the end? Where did you find issues that might have caused problems?
I found this revealing. Munz’s first choice (dichotomy) in his Quercus key separates the Black Oaks from the White Oaks – with the opening line: “Bark dark, not scaly” as contrasted with “Bark Light, scaly.” The scaly part works when I compare Quercus agrifolia to Quercus engelmannii, but the dark bark vs. light bark doesn’t make much sense to me. Moreover, the bark of Q. agrifolia near Monterey, CA looks very different from Q. agrifolia bark in Pasadena. Jepson makes the same break (between Black Oaks and White Oaks), but the opening salvo is “Cup scales thin” as contrasted with Cup scales generally thick. If you know little about oaks, and have no other oaks for comparison, the choices are unanswerable. However, if you think you know the plant, the key and descriptions become infinitely useful. The flora becomes an instrument to help you confirm identification. And it becomes more useful over time, as you begin to understand what the author was seeing and how those observations play out in words.
You will begin to realize that a great flora helps in other ways, by highlighting diagnostic characteristics in a description for example. And a good key will give as many useful clues as possible.
So where do things stand? Are there good floras for plants around the world. Surprisingly, there is no such thing as a world flora. In fact, work is only now underway for a consolidated flora of North America. Unfortunately, that flora will exist only in time to document the great extinction human activity has precipitated.
BACKGROUND: A Summary of Botanical Discovery in Florida: For a complete discussion of plant discovery in Florida, seek out Wunderlin, Hansen and Beckner’s ‘Botanical Exploration in Florida’, a 65-page essay included in Volume 1 of Flora of Florida (Wunderlin & Hansen, 2000).
From a taxonomic perspective, the botanical boundaries inherent in historical references to “Florida” are not as absolute as current political boundaries. With settlement and control shifting from millennia of occupation by native peoples through Spanish plundering to British colonization to American farming and nationalization, we have to appreciate that the native flora isn’t circumscribed by political boundaries, and neither do early records and reports.
The first botanically-significant (published and widely-known) works regarding Florida’s native plants appeared in the 18th century (i.e. years beginning with 17..) Though none of his collections were indisputably made in what is, today, the state of Florida, Mark Catesby, in his Natural History of the Carolinas, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, sometimes gets credit for the earliest treatment of plants clearly Floridian. He was not first, however, when it comes to studying the Southeastern Flora, or plants of the Caribbean.
Plant curiosities, those of economic value, and any plant of medical potential were early favorites in Europe. By 1542 Europeans had heard of native peoples drinking tea made with Ilex vomitoria, and Monardes (eponym Monardia) had described Sassafras in his emerging Historia by 1565. By 1576 Clusius (eponym Clusia) was growing specimens of Sarracenia purpurea and l’Obel (eponym Lobelia) had described our native plant later named Sarracenia flava. Joseph Ewan (1969) documents 30 native North American plants under cultivation in European gardens by 1600, including Agave virginica, Apios americana, Asclepias, Diospyros, Helianthus, Juglans, Liriodendron, Rhus typhina, Sabatia stellaris, Sarracenia flava & S. purpurea, Sassafras, Taxodium, and Tradescantia virginiana. Original descriptions of nearly 300 species in our native flora are credited to Linnaeus, most of which would have been cataloged in his 1753 Species plantarum. That hardly any of these plants originated in Florida proper is inconsequential; they are important representives of the regional flora.
Riding waves of Imperialism, British plantsmen had keenly sought plants from the New World, many of which arrived through explorers centered in Philadelphia, Virginia, and South Carolina. John Tradescant (the Elder, along with his son John Tradescant, the Younger, might be considered the Britain’s founding horticulturists – eponym Tradescantia). By 1628, Tradescant the Younger had made the first of several collecting expedition to Virginia, such that in 1634 the Tradescants cataloged 40 Virginia plants in their growing cabinet of curiosities (The Ark). They heralded a wave of interest in plants, stoking botanical studies by important early botanists John Ray, Robert Morison, and Leonard Plukenet, whose publications were foundational to Linnaeus’s work a century later.
Contemporary to Morison and Ray, we can’t ignore Joseph Pitton Tournefort. Working from his position in Paris’s Jardin des Plantes, Tournefort (in his 1794 opus, Eléments de botanique…) is credited as having cleaned up botanical nomenclature, simplifying and clarifying the names of thousands of plants, as well as explaining his approach to how plants should be grouped in genera. Along with the Bauhins, Ray, and Plukenet, Tournefort created the rock on which Linnaeus would build his castle of botanical nomenclature.
Excitement over American plants increased over the following decades, with important collections and reports from John Bannister (who explored in Virginia from 1678 to his death in 1692) leading to a disappointing decade of paultry collections. But several naturalists were about to enter the scene. Two people who came to know and correspond with each other soon would revitalize study of the Southeastern flora. Mark Catesby, financed through a modest inheritance, travelled with his sister to Williamsburg in 1712. Around 1715, John Clayton immigrated to Virginia, where he served as pastor and, eventually, a county clerk. Both made important plant collections. Catesby, following a series of travels through the coast and to the Bahamas, returned to England, where he dedicated his remaining years to illustrating birds and plants he had documented in the New World, his Natural History of the Carolinas, Florida, and the Bahamas, which appeared in series from 1730 to 1743.
Clayton collecting locally, sent his notes and collections to Catesby, who redirected the material and correspondence to Jan Fredrick Gronovius in Holland, a student of Linnaeus. That collaboration led to Gronovius (with considerable feedback from Linnaeus) publishing Flora Virginica in 1739, a seminal treatment of our flora, but tainted by a failed collaboration, in that Gronovius based the Flora on descriptions and material from Clayton, but printed the work with no permission and little regard to Clayton’s contribution. The spring herb Claytonia constitutes Linnaeus’s recognition of John Clayton’s work; his collections were eventually acquired by Joseph Banks and are curated today in London’s Natural History Museum.
Around the time Clayton was sending material to Gronovius, he was visited by the next significant naturalist to document our flora, John Bartram. Bartram, and later his son William, both Quakers, were the first Americans who based their livelihood on plant collections, working from the family farm on the west banks of the Schuylkill River, across from downtown Philadelphia. A close associate of Benjamin Franklin, Bartram’s correspondents and supporters in England included Peter Collinson, Phillip Miller, John Fothergill, Hans Sloan, and eventually George III, who appointed him King’s Botanist for North America.
This appointment coincided with the 1763 inception of British control over the territory of Florida, an epoch that though short-lived (20 years), proved a significant move to development and study of the area, connecting the new territory to Georgia and South Carolina. British settlement was rapid, including incentives for plantations and farmers, as well as consolidation of an East Florida “King’s Road” from Georgia, through St. Augustine south to New Smyrna (Volusia County), as well as establishment of Pensacola as the capitol of West Florida (Escambia).
Appointment as Botanist to the King animated 66-yr old John Bartram, who garnered support from East Florida’s British Governor, James Grant, that allowed John and and son William to embark from a landing on the St. John’s River (a few miles west of St. Augustine) on 20 December 1765. Their goal, to explore the languid river, which runs north some 315 miles from its source in marshes and lakes southwest of Melbourne, falling only 30 feet over that distance.
At age 66, John Bartram’s chronicled the 10-month expedition, from the time he set out from Philadelphia on 1 July through his arrival in Charleston to join son William in Charleston to the destination in Florida and back. His notes, published in part by various authors, were given full contextual treatment by Francis Harper (1942) as Diary of a Journey through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida from July 1, 1765 to April 10, 1766.
But others were busy also. Wealthy and influential London linen merchant and active naturalist, John Ellis, who held an appointment overseeing British interests in West Florida maintained active correspondence with American residents, particularly William Clifton (eponym Cliftonia), a government agent in Pensacola, and Alexander Garden, an influential naturalist in Charleston. Significantly, Ellis kept active engagement with the uber-botanist of the day, Linnaeus, consulting with Linnaeus in his naming of the curious Venus Flytrap (a plant known for a decade but only described once living specimens were brought to London by the enterprising and self-serving William Young) as well as naming of a striking Asian plant honoring Garden (eponym Gardenia). It was Ellis who, in 1770, described Illicium floridanum from materials forwarded by Clifton, though the Bartrams had discovered and documented the plant from East Florida in their 1766 travels.
During the 20-year British control of Florida, civil engineer Bernard Romans, a keen naturalist, was employed in various projects (until he joined the American rebels in 1776). It was Romans who persuaded Ellis to underwrite establishment of an agricultural research garden in West Florida, a project that lost traction by 1777.
With return of Florida to Spanish control, the greatest progress in study of the regional flora remained centered in Charleston. In his late 20s, Thomas Walter immigrated from Britain. Working as a merchant, Walter was able to acquire a rice plantation, where his studied the local flora. By 1787, Walter had compiled and written a study (in Latin) of the regional flora, which he entrusted to botanist John Fraser. It was Fraser who transported the manuscript to England, arranging for the 1788 publication of Flora Caroliniana. Walter’s treatment, which used Linnaean binomials, stands as the first regional flora, treating over a thousand species (many of which were new to science) in over 400 genera. Specimens Walter collected are housed at the British Museum (BM).
Following the American Revolutionary War, French science became influential, a brief trend that collapsed following the 1789 French Revolution. The most productive effort was the life work of André Michaux, and his son François Andre. Michaux arrived in North America in 1785 as an emissary of the French crown, with financial support and connections established throughout the East coast. His plan involved establishing nurseries, first in New Jersey, but ultimately near Charleston, for cultivation and propagation of plants he and his associates collected and believed of economic value. Having lost support from France, Michaux sought support, somewhat successfully, to continue his work, all along shipping crates of specimens and seed to France. Returning to France in 1897, Michaux began compiling descriptions and illustrations for two publications, a treatment of oaks printed in 1801 and Flora Boreali-Americana, published in 1803, the year following his death. Despite having spent barely any time in the boundaries of present-day Florida, Michaux was an expert field botanist and is responsible for earliest circumscription of many woody plants, as well as wildflowers, such as Zigadenus glabberimus, Platanthera cristata, Malaxis unifolia, Ludwigia virgata, Parnassia caroliniana, Andropogon ternarius, Aristida stricta, and Sarracenia psittacina.
Tight on the heels of Michaux, the Florida flora benefited from studies by Frederick Pursh, a German immigrant responsible for what some people consider the first North American flora (Flora americae septentrionalis, 1813), Thomas Nuttall, an English native who made extensive field study throughout the US, publishing numerous studies, as well as his 1818 The Genera of North American Plants…., and Constantine Rafinesque. Pursh had little impact on Florida wildflowers, having first identified the plant we now call Balduina uniflora. Nuttall was more influential, responsible for species descriptions of Calamintha coccinea, Platanthera nivea and P. integra, Helenium brevifolium, Lygodesmia aphylla, Berlandiera subacaulis, Warea amplexifolia, and Palafoxia integrifolia, as well as many others. Rafinesque published widely and irradically, describing a good handful of species in our flora. Among wildflowers he first described Helenium amarum, Helianthus hirsutus, Drosera filiformis, Sabatia breifolia, Trillium maculatum, Isotria verticilata, Spiranthes lacera, Sarracenia leucophylla, and Aslcepias viridiflora, as well as establishing the genus Agalinus (one of 2,700 genera he proposed over the course of his publications.)
Charleston continued as a center for botanical studies into this period through the work and influence of Stephen Elliott, an educated, landed, and influential naturalist. Elliott described at least 30 plants that are part of the Coastal Plain flora, consolidating his work in 1824 with publication of A Sketch of the Botany of South-Carolina and Georgia. Elliott commemorated an associated, the young naturalist James MacBride (himself credited as having compiled the first list of Long Leaf Pine associates (mss.) with the mint genus Macbridea
After several decades of field collecting and study on the continent, with establishment of the the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia, and following the mold of homegrown naturalists, American-born botanists would emerge during the remainder of the 19th century. Collectors of note in Florida during the first half of the century include Nathaniel Ware (eponym Warea) and Harvey Bryan Croom (Croomia), whose specimens went to established botanists such as Nuttall, and later to John Torrey, as well as Howard Allen, Silas Burrows, Gilbert Hulse, Melines Leavenworth, Edward Leitner (eponym Leitneria), and John Holbrook, whose names you might recognize from various specific epithets.
But as hinted above, the most prominent taxonomists at a national level would have been John Torrey and his younger associate Asa Gray, who wrangled a fleet of associates, including Florida’s own Alvan Wentworth Chapman as a loose taxonomic confederation. While Torrey and Gray attempted to compile a North American flora, Chapman was busily communicating with them, forwarding duplicates of specimens, collaborating with local naturalists, studying regional plants, and publishing his own efforts, Flora of the Southern United States, in three editions, 1860, 1889, and 1897. While Chapman was responsible for describing over 80 species new to Florida, Torrey and Gray, individually or as a pair added an more than an equal number. Of course, Chapman, Torrey, and Gray were not the sole contributers to understanding Florida’s plants during the 19th century. For those details read the Wunderlin, Hansen, and Beckner chapter, Botanical Exploration in Florida, in the first volume of Flora of Florida (2000), where names such as John Loomis Blodgett, John Darby, Alfonso Wood, Edward Lee Greene, Lucien Underwood, and Charles Mohr take on real meaning.
With the exception of Chapman’s, until 1900, few publications of national significance were based on collections made in Florida. That was about to change, with what may be the most productive era particular to Florida, with emergence of the botanical studies at New York Botanic Garden. Founded through the considerable efforts of Nathaniel Lord Britton and his spouse Elizabeth Knight Britton, NYBG would become a systematic powerhouse rivaling the Harvard-centered cadre that had consolidated around Torrey and Gray during the 19th century. Mentored by Britton, a tight community of field botanists was born, each assuming a core role. In adulthood, George Valentine Nash fell into thrall of Britton and the emerging institution, basing his early botanical studies on a pivotal collecting vacation to Eustis, Florida, collecting for several months within a radius of 12 miles.
The powerhouse emerging from Britton’s mentorship, however, was John Kunkell Small. Perhaps no botanist had so embraced Florida as fully as Small.
Some Useful Field Techniques:
Handlens
If you have not used a handlens (loupe), then you might enjoy trying out this basic skill. Most people who haven’t used one probably look at handlenses as non-functional. I mean how can some little piece of glass inside a metal ring do much?
It may be useful to look in the mirror at the size of your own iris, pupil, and cornea. They do a lot for such modest size. Or inspect the ocular on a microscope – it is really about the same size, with the same power as a handlens. And anyone who is into cameras will tell you that the best depth of field is achieved with the smallest aperture (opening). So get your hands on a loupe – a simple 10× or 15× lens will be fine. You can find one on the web, through forestry or biology supply houses, or in stores that specialize in geology and gemstones.
The real trick to a handlens is knowing how to use one, which means understanding how it works. Like any magnifying glass, a handlens has a focal point that is established based on the shape of the glass. Any object you wish to examine will need to be positioned at that focal point, and oriented such that a reasonable amount of light strikes the specimen. I do this by: 1. holding the object (a flower, perhaps) in one hand, 2. holding the lens in the other hand (between my thumb and index finger), and 3. resting my lens-holding-hand on the base of the hand holding the specimen. This way I am able to hold the specimen and handlens both very still, with the handlens at the focal distance from the specimen.
There is not an absolute distance for how close you place this handheld microscope to your own eye – that is determined by which distance is most perfectly comfortable for filling your eye with the view coming through the lens.
A big deal is trying to get over the temptation to close the other eye, just like you feel the need to do when using monocular microscopes. Closing the other eye becomes annoying. Once you have used the handlens a bit, you will learn to concentrate on the image through the lens and ignore light from the other eye.
Plant pressing
Pressing plants seems so old-fashioned. And it is. But amazingly, pressed plants retain their scientific purpose and value, and the process of collecting and pressing plants remains a useful skill and learning experience. Having spent two years of my life collecting plants on a full-time basis, I can bore you endlessly with details and tricks of the trade. But my goal here is to provide a quick-start guide to making a nice and useful pressed plant specimen.
Let’s start with the product. Go on-line and search “herbarium” or “pressed plant specimen” and you will see that over the centuries standards have evolved. There are also instructions, such as Guidelines for Collecting Herbarium Specimens of Vascular Plants, by Natalie Iwanycki that is posted on the Canadian Royal Botanical Gardens website (www.rbg.ca).
With plants coming in all sizes and 3-D configurations, why in the world would botanists have decided that every plant must conform to a shape and thickness that will allow you to mount it on a sheet of paper about 12 × l6 inches. The answer is simple. In the world’s herbaria, there are tens of millions of such specimens. Botanists trade, borrow, and use them in myriad ways. Specimens have to match some kinds of standard so that everyone can properly handle, store, and ship them. It is absolutely that functional.
What this means is that when you press plant specimens, it is useful to realize that someone will have the job of making your specimen fit on a standard piece of paper with room for a label. It is also important to remember that notes need to accompany this voucher, notes that record information that will be lost otherwise, such as characteristics of the plant (size, shape, flower and fruit color, aroma, etc) and habitat, specific location, and date. To do this you will want some simple materials…
- a notebook (go analog, with a bound notebook and a sharp pencil)
- some standard newsprint, folded in half
- two boards, about 12 × l8 (3/8” plywood, edges sanded to eliminate splinters)
- two small luggage straps, or some system you figure out.
This gives you a notebook and a “field press.”
Back at home or school, you will need to set up a mechanism for drying the newly-flattened plants. There are choices. But let’s go through a simple collecting procedure first.
In the field, select some particular plant you wish to collect – perhaps for identification, or to document what is growing in a location, or even for decorative purposes (plant specimens can be very handsome). Collect a nice spray/small branch, with foliage and flower or fruit. You can collect purely vegetative specimens, but their value is fairly limited. In general, people collect plants that are up to something. And in many cases, without the flower and/or the fruit, identification may be dicey.
Set your field press in a level spot and pull out one of the newspaper sheets. Position that sheet on top of the press, with the opening edges nearest to you. On the leading edge of the newsprint, write the number you have assigned to this collection in your field notes (or if you do not use field notes, write everything there (location, date, specifics, etc). Now open the newsprint and lay your specimen onto the sheet such that it is contained within the area of that half page. Arrange the specimen so that flowers are visible and both upper and lower leaf surfaces show. You will need to trim things back, fold parts around, and make some serious compromises to get larger plants to conform to your wishes. And there are lots of standards and techniques for bulky, woody, and fleshy plants (like palms and cacti). Try to make it attractive.
Assuming you have a plant that allows itself to be pressed in a straightforward manner, once things are arranged, simply close the top half of the newsprint, hold the sheet by its closed front edges, and slip the press board from underneath, setting the board deftly on top of the specimen. It is done. You can continue to add specimens right now, or go ahead and tighten the straps and take off for another location.
If a lot of walking is in store for the day, you may want to leave the press somewhere (even back at home) and collect plants in a plastic bag or container. This will usually keep material fresh enough to so that it can be pressed later in the day. But delicate blossoms will be damaged.
Now you have a stack of pressed and very moist plant material that must be layered in a drying press and gently dried. You can use the same boards to construct a drying press, but you will need spacers (through which warm air can circulate) and probably some blotters (felt mats that will help protect your spacers and cushion the specimens). With those materials, you “build” your drying press, sandwiching the newspaper-held specimens between blotters, and separating these between spacers (usually either corrugated cardboard or aluminum). The only real issue here is that the corrugations need to run parallel to the short edge of the press, because the filled and tightened press is going to sit on its long edge over a gentle heat source (often simply an incandescent light bulb, though those are disappearing).
You can purchase costly plant driers, but most people concoct something – often just a box that holds the press and some heat source beneath it. I use a small, fan-driven electric heater, which is very successful. The only goal is to funnel heat so it comes up through the press, rather than passing around it. If your corrugations allow heat to move through nicely, simple specimens will dry in one to three days. The quicker you get specimens into a dryer, the more fluid your air movement, and the more gently you run the heat, the better will be the color retention of the final specimen.
CITATIONS
Harshberger, John W., 1917. William Young, Jr., of philadelphia, Queen’s Botanist, Torreya 17: 91-99
Kinch, Michael P. 1986. The Meteoric Career of William Young, Jr. (174201785) Pennsylvania Botanist to the Queen, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 110: 359-384
Link to this Page: https://botanyincontext.com/the-basis-for-plant-names/