Gastronomica: tracking ancient origins of modern foods, Renaissance Art, and tomato bottlenecks
If you have never had the opportunity to do so, I encourage you to give the journal Gastronomica a read. Gastronomica deals intelligently with the intersection of food and culture and for that, we are drawn to it. It is in these interdisciplinary intersections that real discovery can take place; we have placed a great deal of focus on exploring these in this blog as well.
According to the official text, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture “uses food as an important source of knowledge about different cultures and societies, provoking discussion and encouraging thoughtful reflection on the history, literature, representation, and cultural impact of food.” And it does so quite convincingly.
So, today’s blog post is a short reading list of Gastronomica articles that have inspired, informed, and entertained us here at JSTOR Plant Science. While many do not specifically deal with the world of plant science, they do often deal with the applications of plant cultivation, the factors effecting the spread of particular species over others, and how these can be firmly recorded in artistic and cultural artefacts, mores, and ritual.
- Varriano, J. (2008) .At Supper with Leonardo. Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture , Vol. 8, No. 1 (Winter 2008), pp. 75-79. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/gfc.2008.8.1.75.
I stumbled upon this article in my never-ending quest/fascination with foods (derived from plants) served at or present in major historical events as represented in art or text. I have written about this before, namely in reference to the plants present in the famed Ancient Wonder of the World, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. In this instance, I became interested in what food was being served in the Last Supper as framed by Da Vinci. What did the author believe they were eating and what were his sources for that information? Presumably, Da Vinci wouldn’t have known per se what the average dinner would have looked like in the ancient world. That is why this Varriano article is so fascinating
Varriano states when the fresco was cleaned in 1997, it suddenly became possible to see what was painted underneath. The meal that the disciples were partaking in was not lamb as originally thought, but grilled eel garnished with orange slices. He goes on to state (granted, from the abstract):
Among the thousands of pages of notes that Leonardo made over the course of his lifetime are a dozen grocery receipts that call for “peppered bread, eels, and apricots” among other things. This article attempts to relate the meal depicted in the Last Supper to Leonardo’s own dining habits as well to a recipe given in the most influential cookbook of the period, Platina’s On Right Pleasure and Good Health (1470). That Leonardo owned a copy of this book and even expressed admiration for its author is cited as evidence that the Last Supper foreswore conventional iconography in order to depict the nouvelle cuisine of his day.
Granted, not much about plants there, but fascinating nonetheless.
- Field, M. (2008). Climate Change and the Future of Taste. Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Fall 2008), pp. 14-20. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/gfc.2008.8.4.14
This article is a bit more directly applicable to plant science as it deals with climate change on the genetic development and taste of common foods. There is a particularly interesting passage on the fragility of many of the spices we know and love, including vanilla.
In the short term, it is probably best to expect that we won’t lose the flavors that have been flourishing for thousands of years, particularly those of certain nuts and robust herbs like thyme that, unlike basil, need no farm management. However, black pepper export prices in India soared last year because of weather problems. Crops like bananas, which have no seeds and so must be propagated by cuttings, do not have natural genetic variations from one generation to the next. As a result, they are not as adaptable to changes as seed-plants. Other big flavors at risk are those that involve crops that are very sensitive to pests. So, yes,
vanilla will be vulnerable, since some vanilla vines are one hundred years old and are still protected by human hands picking off bugs. Vanilla would not have reached the price that it now commands if it were adaptable to new climates and soils; in fact, a commodity’s current cost is one indicator to consider when trying to figure out how jeopardized its flavor might be (17).
These spices’ inability to adapt to new climate and soils, their very rootedness in context has driven their price and perhaps even their mystique over the years. By many indicators, vanilla is the most expensive spiece in the world after saffron. But it isn’t hard to imagine a world without these flavors due to environmental changes.
Vanilla sativa Schiede (1829)
- Estabrook, B. (2010). On the Tomato Trail: In Search of Ancestral Roots. Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring 2010), pp. 40-44. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/gfc.2010.10.2.40
This article takes a beloved fruit and works towards its genetic genesis (yes, I just used those two words together). It focuses on Roger Chetelat, the director of the C.M. Rick Tomato Genetics Resource Center at the University of California, Davis. Chetelat has one of the largest collections of tomato seeds in the world and many of these are collected in Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. Further, these are wild tomatoes, meaning that they are sturdy organisms with evolved resistance to almost all common tomato diseases and pests and handle climate change fairly well. What is equally important is that these wild tomatoes contain extraordinary amounts of beta carotene, vitamin C, sugar, lycopene, and other antioxidants. Chetelat is intent on preserving these wild tomatoes and their superior characteristics.
What I most enjoy about the article is the focus on evolution and mutation. Most modern tomatoes trace their origins to a single tomato plant that underwent a random mutation sometime in prehistory. Because of the fluke, the tomatoes it produced were plump, juicy, and many times larger that its predecessors. So, it was immediately valued and cultivated. They were taken from the Andes Mountain area and domesticated in Mexico. In short, this mutation was severed from its genetic forebears. This is referred to as a bottleneck and has many damaging effects, all outlined in the article. A very good read.
Original material of Solanum lycopersicum L., aka tomato plant collected in Mexico. Verified by Iris Edith Peralta, 2001
Hanmer Lewis Dupuis: Dispatches from North Africa in the 1870s and chance conversations with a descendant Dupuis
Hanmer Lewis Dupuis' faded letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker (1871)
Every so often at JSTOR Plant Science, we receive messages from individuals with information regarding their family members, who just so happen to be plant collectors. Some of these family members are found in JSTOR Plant Science partly due to the Plant Collectors’ Database provided by the Natural History Museum, London, an erstwhile GPI partner. This database provides biographies of each collector and links this information to the institutions in which they did their work and the collectors with whom they worked. It might sound fairly straightforward, but his type of data acts as a primer to unlock the connections between all the data. We have had several individuals contact us about these plant collector records.
In this instance however, it wasn’t a collector record that led to this exchange but a lovely and faded letter from 1873 written by one Hanmer Lewis Dupuis to that icon of plant collecting and Kew Director extraordinaire, Joseph Dalton Hooker. Hanmer Lewis Dupuis wrote this letter in December of 1871 from Dar al-Baida, Morocco where he was collecting. It was dutifully kept by the great Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew as part of their Director’s Correspondence (Volume 179/516) for about 130 years and eventually digitized, ingested into JSTOR Plant Science, indexed by the major search engines, and found by a descendant of Hanmer Dupuis, who proceeded to reach out to me for more information. This is the human side of digitization, this endless process of digitizing, indexing, making available, crosslinking, and crawling. It is these connections made possible.
Hanmer’s family was good enough to provide some great background on her family member, the one Hanmer Lewis Dupuis, as well as a wonderful photograph from over a hundred years ago. The following is from her communication with me.
Hanmer Lewis Dupuis was born in 1829 quite possibly in Tripoli, where his father, Joseph Dupuis was Vice Consul. He is likely to have been named after Colonel Hanmer Warrington who was British Consul at this time and a larger than life character. Hanmer’s mother Evelina Danby (Turner) was the illegitimate daughter of Joseph Mallord William Turner, the artist.
Around 1856, Hanmer co-wrote a book with his father Joseph, ‘The Holy Places, A Narrative of Two Year’s Residence In Jerusalem‘. Hanmer’s descendant has assured me this is not a thrilling or easy read!. Hanmer eventually joined the British Foreign Office and served in the Consular Service in Algeria, Morocco, Italy, Greece, Sicily and the Ionian Islands. Hanmer married Pauline Sanchez in 1865. If anyone reading this has more information on Pauline Sanchez, please do add a comment as the family is looking for more information. They guess she is the daughter of a Spanish diplomat or merchant trade.
Hanmer was appointed Consul to Corfu in 1896. This is where he and Pauline made their home, buying a house, the Villa Dupuis. He died in 1911 and is buried in the British Military Cemetery in Corfu.
This information provided by Hanmer’s descendant helps shed light on his plant collecting activity as well, and his proclivity to write letters to the leading institution for plant collecting and identifying then and now (contested!), the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Hanmer, and this is just the author’s conjecture, certainly knows of, if not knows, Hooker. All told, JSTOR Plant Science has four letters sent from North Africa to Hooker over a course of a few years, perhaps suggesting a professional acquaintance. I provided the links to these four letters below, for further reference.
- Letter from Hanmer Lewis Dupris to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker; from Susa, Regency of Turis, Algeria; 31 March 1873; four page letter comprising of two images; folio 45
- Letter from Hanmer Lewis Dupris to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker; from Susa, Turis, Algeria; 1 July 1875; four page letter comprising two images; folio 46
- Letter from Hanmer Lewis Dupris to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker; from Susa, Turis, Algeria; 7 Oct 1876; three page letter comprising two images; folio 47
- Letter from Hanmer Lewis Dupuis to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker; from Dar al-Baida; 27 Dec 1871; four page letter comprising two images; folio 516
So, if you know more of this Hanmer Lewis Dupuis, this plant collector, author of antiqiuity, consular officer, husband, father, and forebear, please do let us know. We would love to learn more. We never doubt that there is a human side to plant collecting here at JSTOR Plant Science and it is correspondence like these that helps us remember why.
Some aggressive fungi, alfalfa, lotus plants, and phytoremediation
Holotype of Medicago sativa L. f. salaverryensis J. F. Macbr. collected by J. F. Macbride & Featherstone in 1922 in Peru.
- Biodegradation – “Transformation of a substance into new compounds through biochemical reactions or the actions of microorganisms such as bacteria.” – U.S. Geological Survey, 2007
From that definition, I stumbled across this one:
- Phytoremediation–”the use of plants to clean up polluted soil and water resources”
For the botanists among us (not me), this concept will be nothing new, but it is capturing my fascination for the time being. The process of transforming substances through biological agents, organically, has some significant potential for environmental purposes as the article discussing the breakdown of plastics through fungi makes abundantly clear. Generally, this is done through bacterial agents in the fungi (or other biological entity) and plastic is generally not the food of choice. At least until the introduction of Pestalotiopsis microspora, which not only breaks down plastic (in landfills), but survives on it. The article in question is below:
- Jonathan R. Russell, Jeffrey Huang, Pria Anand, Kaury Kucera, Amanda G. Sandoval, Kathleen W. Dantzler, DaShawn Hickman, Justin Jee, Farrah M. Kimovec, David Koppstein, Daniel H. Marks, Paul A. Mittermiller, Salvador Joel Núñez, Marina Santiago, Maria A. Townes, Michael Vishnevetsky, Neely E. Williams, Mario Percy Núñez Vargas, Lori-Ann Boulanger, Carol Bascom-Slack and Scott A. Strobel (2011). Biodegradation of Polyester Polyurethane by Endophytic Fungi. Applied Environmental Microbiology, September 2011, 77(17).
What is remarkable is that the fungi, Pestalotiopsis microspora, is basically the first plant that anyone has found to survive on plastic alone (well, the polyurethane in the plastic) and it does so in an almost completely oxygen-free environment. Which are the kind of conditions one finds at the bottom of a landfill. Remarkable. Fungus that breaks down the plastic in landfills; that seems like quite an extraordinary evolutionary leap perhaps fueled by necessity.
This article had me looking around for other instances of biological agents breaking down hazardous elements in the environments and apparently this is quite a trend. Please forgive me those who know all about this; I just find it remarkable what plants (and fungi!) are capable of in the most inhospitable of circumstances. Life just finds a way.
Another instance is the following:
- Wang, L.; Samac, D.; Shapir, N.; Wackett, L.; Vance, C.; Olszewski, N.; and Sadowsky, M. (2005). Biodegradation of atrazine in transgenic plants expressing a modified bacterial atrazine chlorohydrolase (atzA) gene. Plant Biotechnology Journal (2005) 3, pp. 475–486.
While 99.9% of that article is beyond my meager understanding, the gist of it is that hydroponically grown alfalfa (and tobacco plants) might be able to be used to dechlorinate soil and soil water with atrazine, a controversial fairly common herbicide that has been known to cause birth defects and menstrual problems when consumed (at levels even below government-approved standards). So, turn the alfalfa and tobacco loose and let it swallow all that atrazine. I am curious to do some more research on this to see if it did indeed pan out that way as the article was written in 2005. Alfalfa is a particularly useful (and especially active) plant as made evident in this Use record from West Africa.
Another article goes as far to suggest (and once again, I would like to learn more about the success of these efforts) that plants can be genetically modified to be more thorough and efficient toxin consumers.
- Abhilash PC, Jamil S, Singh N. Transgenic plants for enhanced biodegradation and phytoremediation of organic xenobiotics. Biotechnol Adv. 2009 Jul-Aug; 27(4):474-88. Epub 2009 Apr 14. Retrieved from PubMed at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19371778.
The article introduces the third vocabulary word that I learned today, xenobiotics. Xenobiotics are chemicals found in an organism that are generally not supposed to be there, such as pollutants. In the above article, the authors suggest that plants are used to detoxify xenobiotics and can be bred to do so more efficiently. There are numerous examples of other experiments with phytoremediation, but one of my favorites is the Lotus Project at Auburn University. This project is attempting to use lotus leaves for phytoremediation purposes. The video below explains it better than I can.
I expect I will write more on this subject in the coming months as it particularly fascinating. If you want me to highlight some particular examples or experiments, please feel free to send them my way.
Aquilegia barnebyi Munz collected by Ripley and Barneby in Piceance Creek, 3 miles NW of Rio Blanco.
I had written previously about Rupert Barneby and his lifelong partner, Dwight Ripley. The article I was drawing on for that post was the following:
- Crase, Douglas (2001). Ruperti Imagines: A Portrait of Rupert Barneby. Brittonia, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Jan. – Mar., 2001), pp. 1-40. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2666532
The internet being such a social environment arranged it so Mr. Crase, the author of the above article, contacted me and inspired me to write this post, focusing on the extraordinarily talented Dwight Ripley. The Tibor de Nagy Gallery on 724 Fifth Avenue in New York City is hosting an exhibition on the Travel Posters and Language Panels of Ripley that I encourage you all to attend should you living in or passing through New York City and appreciate botanically themed art (and travel). Many thanks for Mr. Crase for providing this information.
onstellation! 1968 ink and colored pencil on paper 11 x 14 inches, from the Tibor de Nagy Gallery website
So, who was this Dwight Ripley? I will let the Tibor de Nagy website do the talking:
Dwight Ripley was a British born artist, whose work was the subject of five solo exhibitions at Tibor de Nagy starting in 1951. A polymath, Ripley was a serious botanist, the author of a volume of poetry, and spoke fifteen languages. However, it was for his artwork that he was most recognized. Six of his drawings were included in an exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s legendary gallery Art of This Century.
Ripley’s “Travel Posters” and “Language Panels”– two series of drawings made in 1962 and 1968, the last decade of his life — combine inventive graphic clarity with allusive puns based on popular art forms. In his “Travel Posters,” the enticing scenery has been configured from the scientific names of indigenous plants, but spun in a cursive web that suggests the wandering line of Surrealist or abstract art. In the “Language Panels,” his etymologically-driven idea of the comic strip, the drawings have been divided into mysterious quadrants that imply narratives of both discovery and danger. Colorful, unusual, and pioneering in their steadfast insistence on colored pencil, the drawings are prescient of the epistemological savvy and environmental awareness that came to characterize the era we still recognize as our own.
Mr. Crase has written another article that I greatly enjoyed, in this instance on “Dwight Ripley called “Unlikely Angel: Dwight Ripley and the New York School“. It is well worth a read to learn more about this talented man and his place within the New York School. For our botanical purposes, I will rely on the New York Botanical Garden to stress his importance to the field of plant identification
Harry Dwight Dillon Ripley, noted linguist, plantsman, artist and author, was born in London on October 23, 1908. He began his plant explorations in the 1920s in Northern Africa and Spain with Rupert Barneby whom he met at Harrow where they both attended school. They collected plants to grow at the Spinney, Ripley’s home in Sussex, as well as specimens for herbaria. The 1,138 species in their garden are identified in A List of Plants Cultivated or Native at the Spinney, Waldron, Sussex (1939). In 1939, the two men moved to California and traveled extensively in Mexico and the western United States, again collecting plants for their garden and for herbaria. Ripley wrote numerous articles about these collecting trips that were originally published in the Quarterly Bulletin of the Alpine Garden Society (U.K.). Excerpts are reprinted in Impressions of Nevada: the countryside and some of the plants as seen through the eyes of an Englishman, an occasional paper of the Northern Nevada Native Plant Society (1978). Ripley and Barneby moved to New York in 1943 and they did not return to Sussex. Their plant collection at the Spinney was auctioned in 1951 with most of the rarities going to botanic gardens at Cambridge and Kew.
As proof of his impact to plant science as well as lifelong professional collaboration with his partner, Rupert Barneby, Index Kewensislists six species named after Ripley: Cymopterus ripleyi, Aliciella ripleyi, Astragalus ripleyi, Eriogonum ripleyi, Omphalodes ripleyana and Senna ripleyi. The first three of these he co-discovered with Barneby. A beautiful example of Gilia ripleyi Barneby can be seen below, a specimen Ripley and Barneby collected in the United States in 1941. The meticulous care of the specimen composition makes a nice bridge (in my estimation) between Ripley the botanist and Ripley the artist. Many thanks again to Mr. Crase for uncovering such a nice story. If you happen to be in New York City, be sure to check out the exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery.
Gilia ripleyi Barneby
Plants for the Chinese New Year: Linnaeus, lilies, bamboos, and ancient Egyptian cemeteries
I read an interesting article on the Plants of the Chinese New Year for 2012 and their symbolic importance and thought it would be a nice post for today, January 23, 2012, the Chinese New Year (of the Dragon). Since the Dragon symbolizing good fortune in many Asian cultures, it stands to reason that many of the plants associated with this New Year are also associated with (financial) prosperity. Those born in 2012, the Year of the Dragon, are said to be bold, imaginative, and prosperous. So kudos to you all. Also bear in mind that it isn’t just the Year of the Dragon, but rather the Year of the Water Dragon, fortuitous for the plants associated with the Year of the Dragon as they will grow and prosper. Just an all-around good year for these people, I suppose.
So, I bring you the prosperous plants of this Year of the Dragon
Miniature orange trees or kumquats, Citrus japonica
These kumquats can be found throughout Asia most of the time, but especially so during New Year’s festivities as they symbolize prosperity (and are downright delicious). Below is a citrus japonica specimen , minus the actual fruit, collected in 1777 (not verified) by C.P. Thunberg from the Swedish Museum of Natural History (S), one of our finest GPI partners. All our partners are wonderful, but the Swedish Museum of Natural History is especially so, contributing over 23,000 specimens (so far) and even recording videos.
Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828) is an interesting character as well (please excuse the digression from the New Year here), being one of Carl Linnaeus’s disciples spreading the taxonomic word throughout the world. He travelled with the Dutch East India Company to Japan where he spent fifteen months studying flora and making other observations. At that time Japan was closed to foreigners, so how he managed to pull this off is beyond me. He had previously spent three years in southern Africa studying flora and we have many specimens from that expedition in JSTOR Plant Science. He also collected in Sri Lanka. He is considered to have been the greatest botanist of his day and organised large collections from a number of European countries. This kumquat plant specimen is taken from that trip to Japan.
Chinese Sacred Lilies, Narcissus tazetta
Another plant that fortuitous in the Year of the Dragon is one of my favorite binomial taxonomic names ever, the Chinese Sacred Lily, aka Narcissus Tazetta. The Chinese sacred lily is not even a lily. It is called shui xian hua (水仙花) in Mandarin, which can be translated as water goddess flower. The botanical designation is Narcissus tazetta v. chinensis and the specimen presented here is from GPI partner, the Linnean Society of London Herbarium (LINN), thus further proving that Linnaeus’s imprint is felt throughout the plant world.
The Narcissus Tazetta species does seem to have originated in the Mediterranean region, so it would be interesting to do some further research on how it made its way into China, or if this was merely a common species found in particular environmental conditions. At least one variation of the species, Narcissus Tazetta L., was present throughout antiquity judging by its presence in Roman artifacts (Van Siclen, 1987).
Also, correspondence found in JSTOR Plant Science indicates that this plant was present in Egypt as well (Plant list presented by Jesse Haworth Esq. to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; from Woodside, Bowdon, Altrincham, Cheshire; c. 31 Aug 1888; six page list comprising six images; folios 400-404), at least in the cemeteries of ancient Egypt, specifically in the cemetery of Hawara, Egypt. There are four pages to the plant list, including flowers of Narcissus tazetta, berries of Solanum dulcamara, petals of Rosa sancta, seeds of Laurus nobilis and Linum humile. I will need someone from the Global Plants Initiative (GPI) to confirm if cemeteries are indeed common spots for plant collecting, but until then I will just classify this one as oddly eccentric. So, from the cemeteries of ancient Egypt to New Year’s celebrations in China, the odyssey of one pseudo-lily.
Lucky Bamboo, Dracaena sanderiana
Another instance of an imported plant of prosperity, the Lucky Bamboo plant is native not to China, but rather to the rainforests of Cameron and tropical West Africa. It can also be found throughout Indonesia. It was eventually imported and marketed to China as lucky bamboo as it does have a long association with the practice of feng shui (all those straight lines of the plant are indeed hard to resist). It also fits in nicely with the Year of the Water Dragon as it is considered a good example of both a wood and water element. Three stalks of the lucky bamboo indicate happiness, five for wealth, and six for health. Like in many other Asian nations, including Korea where I am writing from today, the number four is avoided as it sounds like the word for death, a decidedly un-dragonlike lack of prosperity (assuming you equate death with a lack of prosperity).
It is also not a bamboo, but rather a resilient lily variety. Which makes sense considering the previous entry, Narcissus Tazetta, was labeled a lily, but was in fact something else. It is resilient in that it can grow with little sunlight, conditions commonly found in tropical rainforests. Most of the time, you will see these plants as gifts in pots.
Poncirus Trifoliata, aka the Flying Dragon
There are many other plants that have associations with prosperity and the Year of the Dragon, including, Poncirus (Citrus) trifoliata, aka the ‘Flying Dragon’, one of the few on this list specifically native to Asia (China and Korea). It is sometimes known as the Chinese Bitter Orange, but it is not actually citrus. It differs from citrus fruits in that it is deciduous (plants that shed their leaves for parts of the year), compound leaves (a fully subdivided blade separated along a main or secondary vein, a characteristic of an advanced plant) and pubescent, downy (think fuzzy, like peaches) fruit.
It also has some good medicinal uses as the leaves have traditionally been used to treat allergic inflammation through the chemical properties of neohesperidin (a derivative of which is an artificial sweetener) and poncirin. Further, and perhaps you didn’t want to know this (but if you are reading this far, I assume you are resilient), but a liquid extraction has proven to suppress weight gain in rats. If you don’t think this will be on the market soon as a weight loss supplement, think again. I will keep my eyes peeled in the markets in Seoul. The leaves of the plant are also used to treat gastric disorders.
Taken from the Biodiversity Database of the Washington, D.C. area. Click on the image to go their website.
To learn more, consider reading
- Zhou H.Y., Shin E.M., Guo L.Y., Zou L.B., Xu G.H., Lee S.-H., Ze K.R., Kim E.-K., Kang S.S., Kim Y.S., (2007). Anti-inflammatory activity of 21(alpha, beta)-methylmelianodiols, novel compounds from Poncirus trifoliata Rafinesque. European Journal of Pharmacology. 572 (2-3): 239-248.
All of this being said, ultimately the point of this post is to wish everyone the happiest of Chinese New Years and much prosperity in 2012. May the Year of the Dragon be as kind to you as it has been to these plants.
Current Issues Roundup
Another feature I want to offer is periodic news-oriented posts wherein I can highlight some current issues in the worlds of botany and forestry. This first story comes from the nomenclature conference held in conjunction with the recent International Botanical Congress. It was decided that as of this month, Latin descriptions will no longer be necessary when classifying new plants, algae or fungi. The idea is to facilitate recording of the world’s biodiversity before it is lost to habitat degradation.It …
So, ultimately, the questions I pose to GPI and anyone else willing to discuss are
- How does a naming convention in English (as well as Latin) accelerate taxonomic work? I assume it does (it does make sense), but I would love to hear an expert explain why.
- What are the disadvantages to such an approach?
- Does this have any effect on taxonomic dissemination? In short, can English based taxonomic research be as easily and accurately distributed and slotted in with past findings? I assume they can, but would love an expert’s opinion.
Thanks for this post, Xylem Up!
When Biologists Get Bombed: How to survive conservation science and field calamities
Crotalaria subdisperma Baker f. collected in Kibali-Ituri, between Aru and Mahagi (Congo) at 1650 m.
This is an interesting article I stumbled across in JSTOR and it has a lot of application to the particular breed of conservation science specific to war zones, or areas where human conflict has left it impossible for humans to tread. I am thinking specifically about the DMZ as I have written about before, but there are many many other examples of this type of de facto conservation. What this article does nicely is humanize the process of conservation science in dangerous areas. What is more amazing is that the article essentially makes the claim that the goal is not to avoid practicing field work in dangerous areas, but rather do it more cautiously. First, the article:
- Milius, S. (2000). When Biologists Get Bombed. Science News , Vol. 158, No. 5 (Jul. 29, 2000), pp. 78-79. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3981434.
Milius turns her attention to the Ituri Forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where botanists have been dodging more than bullets for years. One case details the neighboring war in Rwanda spilling over the border into Congo. Concerned that the 3000 specimens collected in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, some irreplaceable, could be damaged or destroyed, the collectors hid them in individual houses and buried important documents to keep them safe. “Rampaging soldiers” looted the research data, but most of the specimens and data, being hidden, was safe. Milius then focuses on the situation in South America with the economics of the coca and poppy plants. Ultimately, one is left with the conclusion, as the author suggests, that these areas are better re-engineered as virtual DMZs where human contact is kept to a minimum.
So, is the DMZ model one to intentionally engineer? Can preservation be incorporated into the very fabric of the place itself by deincentivizing human interaction? An interesting article and not the first time we have heard of botanists experiencing mortal danger in pursuit of preservation and classification.
As we know from some of these posts, the business of collecting and conservation can be a dangerous one. Ralph R. Stewart’s “How did they die?” is one of the best (as in most graphic) accounts of the various downfalls of botanists in the field and I have mentioned it before in a post.
- Stewart, R. (1984). How Did They Die?. Taxon , Vol. 33, No. 1 (Feb., 1984), pp. 48-52. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1222028
Some excerpts from the text to demonstrate the nature of danger in plant collecting. When possible, I have linked collectors to the their collected materials in JSTOR Plant Science:
In the 1830′s and 1840′s when Kirilov and Karelin were exploring in Sibiria they had to travel with 50 Cossacks. The local people hated foreigners and considered them to be spies. In the Philippines in 1916, A. D. E. Elmer (1870-1942) a professional plant collector told me that it was not safe for foreigners to travel in the wilds but that he could do so because the natives will not hurt a crazy person and that he was considered to be a madman because no one in his senses would pick little useless plants from tree trunks or from the ground and take them away. In Amboina, however in 1917 Dr. C. B. Robinson made the mistake of going into the forest alone. Head hunters who had never seen a white man killed him.
Alfredia nivea Kar. & Kir. (1841) collected along with, presumably, the 50 Cossacks.
Another excerpt which demonstrates more the range of possible ends for many of these botanists. I suppose it is good to know that the French weren’t guillotining botanists strictly because they were botanists.
A number of botanists were drowned in rivers. A surprising number were murdered. Two were enslaved, one in Ceylon and one in North Africa. Two botanists are said to have been guillotined in the French Revolution, not because they were botanists. A few disappeared without a trace. Frederick Miller, an Alsatian, went to Mexico to collect and was never heard from again. In 1818 an entire French expedition to the South Seas under the command of Philippe Picot, Baron Lapeyrouse, disappeared between Fiji and the Solomon Islands. They may have perished in a typhoon.
So tread easy, you collectors of plants. Travel safe and avoid the following if at all possible:
- Biermann, Adolph (x-1879/80), Curator of the Calcutta Botanical Garden was killed by a tigress when walking in the garden.
- Chalmers, James B, a missionary from New Zealand to the Hebrides is the only plant collector I have heard of who was killed by cannibals.
- Douglas, David (1799-1834), trained at Glasgow, a pioneer explorer and collector in the Northwest of N. America, for whom the Douglas fir was named, died in Hawaii from falling into an animal trap already occupied by a bull.
- Dutreuil de Rhins, Jules Leon (1846-94), explored between Leh in Ladakh and Chinese Turkestan, 1892-94. His party lost a horse and he made the mistake of blaming some local people for stealing it and was murdered.
Digitizing the Carl Linnaeus Collection at the Swedish Museum of Natural History: A New JSTOR Plant Science Video
We are proud to add this video filmed by the good people at GPI partner the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. In this video, our partners walk us through the process of digitizing the incredibly important (and I must say, incredibly exciting to see when completed) materials of the father of modern natural taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus (1707-1788). I have written about Carl Linnaeus before (well, indirectly) in this blog (it is hard to avoid him when discussing Plant Science), but his impact on the profession could not be overstated. He spawned legions of disciples who traveled to the far reaches of the Earth collecting specimens and attempting to categorize them in taxonomies. If you want to see his impact up close and personal, I suggest searching for Linnaeus and look through some of the records that come up for his imprint on all things plant taxonomy. Below is text drafted up by the team at the Swedish Museum of Natural History themselves:
The Linnaean herbarium contains specimens that once belonged to Carl Linnaeus (a.k.a. Carl von Linné, senior) or specimens that once belonged to Carl von Linné (junior) and specimens cultivated at the Linnaean garden (Hort. Ups.). The specimens were distributed in several ways and ended up in (S)and it is one of the oldest separate collections housed here.
Linnaeus introduced the binominal-nomenclature and the publishing of Species Plantarum (1753) is important for plant nomenclature. This among other works has made Carl Linnaeus one of the most famous swedes.
The collection contains some 4500 specimens and is second only to the collections at the Linnaean Society in London. Although there are only a small number of type specimens in the Linnaean herbarium, it is still a very important collection in a historical and botanical perspective. Previously, specimens have only been accessible to specialists and guided groups, and on microfiche taken back in the 1960s.
By digitizing the Linnaean herbarium, the accessibility of this collection will greatly increase. We started in the summer of 2011 and so far digitized more than half of the collection. In this movie you get an introduction of the digitization and the collection history. Thank you for nice performances made by Åsa, Karin and Johan. Camera assistance: Dennis and Johan.
I love these types of videos as they demonstrate what the nitty gritty of digitization looks like; painstaking amounts of time spent slowly and delicately scanning each and every page. Well done to the Swedish Museum of Natural History. Below is Carl Linnaeus’s handwriting. Besides being the father of all plant taxonomy, he has extraordinary penmanship. Kudos to Carl!
Fig leaves, Biblical/post-Renaissance modesty, and the Levant
Ficus carica L., family MORACEAE from Copenhagen University (1763) collected in Yemen.
Today we turn our attention to Biblical antiquity (are those contradictions?) and the role of a particular plant in demonstrations of modesty, art from antiquity, and the role of Catholic modes of etiquette in response to the extravagances of Renaissance-era art. All of this is personified in the role of the ubiquitous fig leaf. The Common fig, Ficus carica, is a tree that grows to about 19-20 feet. It is from the genus Ficus and from the family Moraceae. More importantly, it was (and still is) prevalent throughout the modern Middle East, the setting for much Biblical activity.
Figs are thought to have been first cultivated in Egypt. They spread to ancient Crete and then subsequently, around the 9th century BC, to ancient Greece, where they became a staple of the Grecian diet. Figs were held in such esteem by the Greeks that they created laws forbidding the export of the best quality figs. Figs were also revered in ancient Rome where, according to Roman myth, the wolf that nurtured the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, rested under a fig tree. During this period of history, at least 29 varieties of figs were already known (see more).
The first real use of the fig leaf in the metaphorical sense was the Book of Genesis, which has Adam and Eve wearing fig leaves to hide their nakedness after they eat the forbidden fruit and become ashamed of their nakedness. One might think they might look for something more substantial than a fig leaf, but due its ubiquitousness in the Middle East, perhaps the fig leaf was the first thing they could find. Immediately, one becomes plagues with questions over how they got it to stay in one place, whether through the crafting of a rope or string or even with some adhesive of some sort, but that is a concern for another post. For our purposes, we see evidence in this narrative of religion using metaphor rooted (get it?) in the natural world, in this case plants. The fig leaf becomes the personification of covering something distasteful. This was partly in response to Greek and Roman notions of nudity that celebrated the heroic nude as a desired state of being.
This ‘fig leaf’ syndrome is hard to miss if one has studied Western art (at all). We see it right through to the Renaissance, where a certain flourish and liberalism appears and the figures suddenly become nude again (think Michaelangelo’s David at this point). But then the Council of Trent is formed in response to this liberal depiction of nudity (granted not just because of that, but nudity, or at least a return to orthodoxy, was certainly on the agenda) and eventually we have ecclesiastical representatives scouring the European artistic world painting or adding fig leaves to nudes. It is hard to shake a culturally generated metaphor, even though the seat of Catholicism had shifted well away from the Middle East where the fig tree was prominent.
Perhaps amusingly in light of modern sensibilities, we see evidence of this debate over nudity in the early 20th century as this article suggests:
- A Plea for the Fig-Leaf: With Contrasting Pictures Pro and Cons (1905). Brush and Pencil , Vol. 16, No. 4 (Oct., 1905): pp. 125-129, 131-139, 141-145, 148. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25503899
As mentioned prior, the real reason the fig leaf is so prominent in Biblical antiquity (now, I am just going to pretend like that is a real term) is its sheer ubiquitousness in the ancient Levant, The Levant (Arabic: بلاد الشام) the geographic and cultural region of most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and often parts of Turkey and Iraq. Figs (and dates) were as important a food source as could be found in the Levant as well as a major source of economic, and in turn political, power. Figs, for the common resident of the Levant were important sources of fiber, potassium, and manganese. Potassium found in figs, in particular, is known to lower high blood pressure.
And the fig leaves, those harbingers of all things shameful (in Biblical cultures), have been shown to have antidiabetic properties and can actually reduce the amount of insulin needed by persons with diabetes who require insulin injections. In one study, a liquid extract made from fig leaves was simply added to the breakfast of insulin-dependent diabetic subjects in order to produce this insulin-lowering effect. Take that, Adam and Eve. Also, figs are one the rare fruits that have significant amounts of calcium and they are shown to lower levels of triglycerides in the bloodstream. Not bad at all.
According to a Use record submitted by GPI partner Kew, just about every part of the fig plants is used for something, including for ornamental and religious ceremony. The plant itself is used for its aromatic properties. It goes without saying that the fruit is the valued bit (although I did say it earlier). Quite a hefty punch for such a ‘shameful’ plant.
Benjamin J. Falk's portrait of strongman Eugen Sandow (1867-1925) and the ubiquitous fig leaf.
I was on a bit of a usage stats tear here, so my apologies to our more dedicated botanical readers. Regular programming will resume quite soon. Since the last post was on the usage statistics for 2012 for this blog, I thought I might shift into another area of social communication that has proven surprisingly (not a strong enough word, really) popular are the short videos the Global Plants Initiative (GPI) have been making to discuss their practices, processes, field trips, facilities, and staff.
I have written about this before (ad nauseum), but to review we sent five GPI partners five Flip cameras (now, to my dismay, a discontinued product) and asked them to film short videos outlining some of their work, their cities, their colleagues. They send me the video via FTP and I edit it together (in some cases, it is completely done by the time it reaches me) and then upload it our Vimeo page and take the embed link from the Vimeo page and upload it to the JSTOR Plant Science site as well. It then joins the 30+ videos we have and rotates in and out of the homepage on a daily basis. Click on the image below to go directly to the Vimeo page.
What was meant as merely a community building effort has blossomed into a dynamic mechanism for collaboration and communication for many in our GPI community. There is something about a visual medium such as video that corresponds well to field sciences (this is just an assumption, one that this project was originally based on), a practice based on process and in situ scientific study.
The videos resonate somehow to the tune of over 530,000 views since we launched this in mid-2010. If taken as page views, these 530,000 visits would constitute about 20-25% of our total page views during that same stretch. About 150 countries have seen the videos at least once, which speaks to some saturation (despite limited bandwidth). We average anywhere between 1500-5000 views per week, depending on the academic calendar.
Not a bad foray into social media. The drawback of using video is obviously it limits your audience to those with sufficient bandwidth, a concern for our project and our initial focus on Africa. Unlike the JSTOR Plant Science site itself, the usage statistics are skewed towards Industrial North countries and the first African nations to enter the mix are Namibia at #28 and Nigeria at #29. Nigeria is #10 on overall JSTOR Plant Science usage. This is a considerable disadvantage to using video.
There is also something about Vimeo that seems to flesh out videos a bit better than YouTube, in our opinion. We chose Vimeo over YouTube strictly because we had some personal experience with it and it presented cleaner than the oft-muddied experience of YouTube (nothing against YouTube). I would be interested to hear if anyone had similar experiences with Vimeo over YouTube. Regardless, there you have it. I will write about our social media policy, our successes and (considerable) features in future posts in case any organization reading might want to give it a go (or at least learn from our mistakes).
More importantly, some of the most popular videos all-time:
1. Dr. Siro Masinde of the East African Herbarium at the National Museums of Kenya discussing various medicinal plants. Dr. Masinde, with these two videos, accounts for about 70,000 out of a total of 530,000 views. His instructional, conversational style is popular and I have personally received anecdotal evidence that teachers have used these videos for classroom instruction.
2. Greatest first two weeks: KATH Field Trip into the Himalayas
The National Herbarium and Plant Laboratories of Kathmandu, Nepal (KATH), our first Asian GPI partner, gave us some fantastic footage on a recent plant collecting expedition high into the mountains of Nepal, complete with Sherpas, leeches, and bumpy roads. It was a hit when released to the tune of approximately 16,000 views for the first four videos. It could have something to do with how amazingly friendly these people are as well as demonstrating the role of field work in the discipline(s) of plant science. Very few of the videos for GPI capture this level of intimate detail; completely humanizes the work they are doing.
3. Greatest institutional representation: The Darwinion Institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Besides having the greatest stage entrance of any of the videos, the Darwinion Institute of Buenos Aires tops the scales with their 4 videos at 93,000 total views (out of the 530,000 views for all the videos). These videos are a great tour around the facilities, a good chance to meet the staff, and witness one of the loveliest libraries I have ever seen. If you only watch one of the videos, be sure to watch the casual, yet confident entrance of one Manuel Belgrano, Darwinion biologist and long-time friend of the Global Plants Initiative project.
