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.
2011 in review
Although the stats seem to be a bit low in comparison to what I am pulling from Google Analytics, I must admit that I am a bit impressed by WordPress’s deep plunge into the world of data visualization. These are the visits and views to the JSTOR Plant Science blog for 2011. I hope everyone has a wonderful 2012!
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 15,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
The DMZ After Kim: What Change in North Korea Could Mean for One of the World’s Richest Wildlife Refuges
Abies nephrolepis Maxim found in the Murang District of North Korea, collected in 1895.
Today we bring you a recent article from Time Magazine’s Ecocentric Blog on a topic we had written about before, the DMZ between North and South Korea as nature preserve.
Not coincidentally, this article was brought to my attention precisely because Ecocentric is linking to us as a source describing the number of species found in the DMZ (adding further impetus to fact check my posts as much as possible). The JSTOR Plant Science post in question was the Korean DMZ as Nature Preserve, which discussed a bit of the history behind the separation of the two Koreas and how that has preserved a swath of land right across the 38th Parallel in one of the most dangerous places in the world for humans and one of the safest for the other living organisms found there.
The Ecocentric article in question is The DMZ After Kim: What Change in North Korea Could Mean for One of the World’s Richest Wildlife Refuges and it is a good read as it describes how the recent death of Kim Jong-il and his replacement by his son, Kim Jong-un. Worried that regime change and development in both the North and the South might adversely affect the natural habitat of the DMZ, many are calling for official recognition of the area as a protected reserve. Ecocentric says more:
A survey released in 2010 revealed that many species found in the DMZ are almost extinct in other parts of South Korea, where postwar development and population growth has all but paved over the nation. The DMZ has become a vital resting place for birds along the East Asia Migratory Flyway, including the beautiful and endangered Manchurian cranes and Siberian herons. As Kim Ke Chung of the DMZ Forum—an organization dedicated to preserving the zone as a wildlife reserve—told the New York Times in 2004:
The DMZ is the last major vestige of Korea’s natural heritage. It’s probably the only good thing to come out of the Korean War and cold war. So we have to preserve this as a nature reserve.
Indeed, that’s exactly what scientists like E.O. Wilson and environmental philanthropists like Ted Turner have called for, pushing the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) to make the DMZ a World Heritage site. Earlier this year South Korea filed an application with UNESCO to turn part of the DMZ into a “biosphere reserve,” similar to national parks like Yellowstone in the U.S. UNESCO is scheduled to discuss that application at a meeting next June, though North Korea would presumably need to be on board as well, since they have at equal claim to the land.
Now of course there’s the possibility that North Korea—which has remained frozen in time for so long—could change very, very quickly. And that’s why protection for the DMZ needs to come sooner rather than later. Land bordering the southern part of the DMZ has already been developed—though the pace slowed somewhat in recent years as relations between the two Koreas deteriorated—and peace would almost surely mean more residents, farms and roads. If détente is established between the two Koreas and the fortifications and mines are finally removed inside the DMZ, it could mean disaster for the wildlife that live there.
It will be interesting to see whether it is indeed possible to protect this land if the Koreas reunite symbolizing as it does such rigid division (and valuable real estate), but hopefully the endangered species are preserved as much as possible. If you are as interested as I am in this topic, I managed to find a few more articles describing the particularities of the DMZ as a preserved environmental treasure:
- Kin, J.H. (1998). The Korean DMZ: A Fragile Ecosystem. Science , New Series, Vol. 280, No. 5365 (May 8, 1998), pp. 808-809. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2896454.
- Kim, K.C. (1997). Preserving Biodiversity in Korea’s Demilitarized Zone. Science , New Series, Vol. 278, No. 5336 (Oct. 10, 1997), pp. 242-243. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2894707.
- Higuchi, H. et al (1996). Satellite Tracking of White-Naped Crane Migration and the Importance of the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Conservation Biology , Vol. 10, No. 3 (Jun., 1996), pp. 806-817. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2387103
Pearl Harbor, Coral Reefs, Reflective Surfaces, and FDR
As we come to the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, that day of infamy that signaled American’s entry into World War II, it seemed prudent to discuss a bit Pearl Harbor as not only a place of historical remembrance, but also a botanical and ecological novelty onto itself. Before we get into that, I just had to share a few articles that predate December 7, 1941, but factor a bit into the events of that day.
First of all, we have the (free) articles authored by Franklin D. Roosevelt himself when he was not the President, but the Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the First World War (1914-1918). FDR more or less lays out the importance of the Navy and hence the future importance of Pearl Harbor.
- Roosevelt, F.D. (1915). The Future of the Submarine. The North American Review , Vol. 202, No. 719 (Oct., 1915): pp. 505-508. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25108611
- Roosevelt, F.D. (1918). Attention, Patriots! The Navy Needs Eyes. The North American Review , Vol. 207, No. 748 (Mar., 1918): p. 473. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25121828
Pearl Harbor itself had been on the minds of American military and civilian planners well before Franklin Roosevelt began his buildup of the American Navy, judging by this (free) article from 1898.
- Littlehales, G.W. (1898). The United States Mid-Pacific Naval Supply Station. Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York, Vol. 30, No. 4 (1898): pp. 277-280. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/197099.
Littlehales, like many before him, established the ecological and geographical particulars of the area that became Pearl Harbor and drew some rather detailed maps which he included in the article. Littlehales briefly mentions the natural outline of the Harbor area, but provides precise fathom readings (depth) of the various areas of the Pearl River and the Harbor. What the author does mention, in some detail, is the ever-present coral and the depths at which it can be found (not a naval person, but assuming that has something to do with mooring really big boats there).
It wasn’t the Navy alone that was interested in the Hawaiian Islands and Pearl Harbor in particular, though. Botanists and plant collectors were there as well. In force. And they noticed some peculiarities of the Hawaiian coral coast. Coral beaches are highly reflective surfaces and therefore reflect quite a bit of light at all times of the day (save for cloud cover), which actually retards the growth of plants on the islands. According to Vaughan MacCaughey of the Torrey Botanical Society in 1918 (right around the time FDR was asking for more sailors and submarines),
the internodes become shorter and the plant more condensed as the intensity of the light increases, while the leaves attain their maximum size at a certain medium intensity of illumination. This latter is owing to the fact that moderate light stimulates the growth of the leaves, whereas intense light retards it. (487).
So the coral, as a reflective surface, stunts the growth of the plants on terra firma. Also from the above article is an interesting classification system that MacCaughey uses to compare the Hawaiian Islands to other Pacific island groups. The description of Polynesia, in which Bikini Atoll is located, is especially prophetic for events (33 events to be precise) 40 years later. 
The coral, by the way, is actually relatively healthy and robust despite the presence of large numbers of non-endemic species that were introduced into the Pearl environment during the buildup of the navy base prior to World War I and the events of World War II. According to Wolanski, there have been several studies to determine the number of species in and around Pearl Harbor (including one study that solely attempted to document the organisms introduced solely by the USS Missouri during her time at Pearl Harbor in World War II-this was the ship on which the official surrender of Japan was signed). Overall, the point being that Pearl Harbor is ecologically strong, but certainly greatly effected by human activity.
Further to these coral effects, Pearl Harbor is well represented in JSTOR Plant Science with specimens and materials collected all prior to World War II. Plant collector J.E. Tilden, aka Josephine Elizabeth Tilden, seems particularly active in this regard both in the Hawaiian Islands and throughout the Pacific. The example below (spirited notetaking) is one of Tilden’s own.
