Plant Science Bulletin archive


Issue: 2013 v59 No 2 SummerActions

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P

LANT 

S

CIENCE

Bulletin

Summer 2013 Volume 59 Number 2

 

In This Issue..............

PLANTS Recipients excel in  

botany ......p. 15

 Dr. Thomas Ranker and 

others elected to serve the 

BSA.....p. 35

The BSA  awards many for their 

contributions.....p. 36

1st Place

Triarch Botanical Images  

Student Travel Awards

Ricardo Kriebel

The New York  

Botanical Garden

 Flower of 

Miconia arboricola 

(Melastomataceae: 

Miconieae) in late anthesis

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From the Editor

                                                                                  Summer 2013 Volume 59 Number 2

PLANT SCIENCE  

BULLETIN  

Editorial Committee  

Volume 59

-Marsh

Elizabeth Schussler  

(2013) 

Department of Ecology  & 

Evolutionary Biology 

University of Tennessee 

Knoxville, TN 37996-1610 

eschussl@utk.edu

Christopher Martine 

(2014) 

Department of Biology 

Bucknell University 

Lewisburg, PA 17837 

c

hris.martine@bucknell.edu

Carolyn M. Wetzel 

(2015) 

Department of Biological Sci-

ences & Biochemistry Program 

Smith College 

Northampton, MA 01063 

Tel. 413/585-3687

Lindsey K. Tuominen 

(2016) 

Warnell School of Forestry & 

Natural Resources 

The University of Georgia 

Athens, GA  30605 

lktuomin@uga.edu

Daniel K. Gladish 

(2017) 

Department of Botany &  

The Conservatory  

Miami University   

Hamilton, OH 45011  

gladisdk@muohio.edu

Every year this is one of my favorite issues of 

Plant Science Bulletin because we get to recognize 

the accomplishments of some of our most worthy 

members.  The Merit Awardees have been elected 

to the most select group of professional botanists in 

North America.  Begun at the Fiftieth Anniversary 

meeting, 55 years ago, the Merit Award recognizes 

individuals for their outstanding contributions to the 

mission of the Botanical Society.   These are people 

whose names we recognize from their publications, 

presentations, and service to the society.  They are 

leaders at their own institutions, in the Botanical 

Society and in other scientific organizations.  

What I find more interesting, though, are the 

younger members being recognized for their 

potential.  These are graduate students beginning 

to make their mark in botanical research and being 

invested with the opportunity to help direct the 

evolution of the  Society.  They are also undergraduates 

being recognized by their mentors for their initiative, 

enthusiasm and drive to make discoveries and share 

their love of plants with others.  There is excitement 

here that can drive the Society forward through its 

second century.

Particularly striking are two trends apparent in our 

Young Botanist awardees.  The first was originally 

identified by Victor Gruelach in the first issue of 

Plant Science Bulletin. He noticed that while large 

research universities produced 29% of undergraduate 

botanists, liberal arts colleges were next at 23%.  

Some things haven’t changed much in the past 60 

years!  It’s also evident that individual mentors have 

a major impact on students.  Again, there is nothing 

new here—Past-President Neil Stevens noted this in 

1944 (Agronomy Journal 36: 324-336). Nevertheless, 

the lesson for us is that we can all make a difference 

—lets do!

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Table of Contents

Hilton Riverside, New Orleans, LA  July 27-31, 2013

www.botanyconference.org

Early Registration Ends

July 1, 2013 

Society News

Letter to the Editor ............................................................................................................34
Looking to the Future BSA Election Results ...................................................................35
BSA Award Winners .........................................................................................................36
PLANTS Program Encourages URM Students to Become Part of the  

Scientific Community .......................................................................................................45

BSA Science Education News and Notes

Society Initiatives and Members in Action ......................................................................47
PlantingScience ................................................................................................................47
Recent Publications and News Around the Nation ...........................................................48

Editor’s Choice Review .................................................................................

50

Announcements

In Memoriam Rivka Dulberger 1922-2012 ......................................................................51

Personalia

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Awards to former PLANTS participants ................53
Dr. Bruce Kirchoff Wins First Ever American Society of Plant Taxonomists  
Innovations in Plant Systematics Education Prize ...........................................................55

Stan Kosmoski,Takes home First Place with PlantingScience Classroom Project ..........56 
Karl Niklas Named Weiss Presidential Fellow .................................................................56

Missouri Botanical Garden Announces Collaboration with L’Herboretum .....................57
A Plant Anatomy Dictionary of Last Resort .....................................................................58

Reports

Early 19th-century expressions of popular botany through sentimentalism in  
American gift books and annuals .....................................................................................59

 Book Reviews

Developmental and Structural ..........................................................................................66
Ecological .........................................................................................................................68
Economic Botany .............................................................................................................69
Ethnobotany ......................................................................................................................72
Systematics  ......................................................................................................................74

Books Received .............................................................................................

76

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Society News

Letter to the Editor

To Engage, Challenge, and Excite all of our Students

Your statement in the Spring 2013 Plant Science Bulletin (http://issuu.com/botanicalsocietyofamerica/

docs/psb_59_1_2013, p. 2) that our task is to engage, challenge, and excite all of our students is a point 

well taken. It is likewise important to recognize those successes and avenues toward achieving that goal. 

Efforts to provide opportunities for underrepresented groups in the American professoriate include those 

offered by the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program. This Program offers predoctoral fellowships in a 

national competition administered by the National Research Council (NRC). Awards recognize superior 

academic achievement, a commitment to teaching and research at the college or university level, the 

promise of scholarly achievement, and ability to use diversity as a resource for enriching the education 

of all students. Among the criteria for selection are membership in an underrepresented group in the 

American professoriate, sustained personal engagement with underrepresented groups, and likelihood of 

using the diversity of human experience as an educational resource.

Ms. Jessica Orozco, Graduate Student in Botany at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, was recently 

awarded one of the predoctoral fellowships in this highly competitive program. Jessica will study the 

evolutionary history and diversity of culturally significant plants and describe the relationships between 

Native Americans and the native flora. This knowledge will be used to further conservation efforts.   

We should celebrate the successes of students like Jessica, a Native American recognized by a Ford 

Foundation Fellowship. We can also celebrate the commitment of the Ford Foundation for lending 

a helping hand to those from underrepresented groups who will come after her. Our task has been 

accomplished: she is engaged, challenged, and very excited about her research and career prospects.
---G.D. Wallace, Research Associate, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, Claremont, CA

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Looking to the Future

Congratulations to the new officers of the  

Botanical Society of America

President -Elect

Thomas Ranker

Treasurer

Joe williams

Student 

Representative 

Jon Giddens

Council Chair

Cindy Jones

Director-at-Large

Publications

Sean Graham

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Award Winners

The Botanical Society of America Merit Award is the highest honor our Society bestows. Each year, the 

Merit Award Committee solicits nominations, evaluates candidates, and selects those to receive an award. 

Awardees are chosen based on their outstanding contributions to the mission of our scientific society. 

The committee identifies recipients who have demonstrated excellence in basic research, education, public 

policy, or who have provided exceptional service to the professional botanical community, or who may 

have made contributions to a combination of these categories. Based on these stringent criteria, the 2013 

BSA Merit Award recipients are:

Dr. Lucinda McDade is a scholar, teacher, and leader of 

scientific institutions.  She is currently Director of Research 

at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, where she has also 

recently stepped in as Interim Director of the Institution.  At 

RSA she is also curator of the herbarium, a post that she 

previously held at the University of Arizona and at the Academy 

of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.  At all three institutions, 

her energy and dedication were effective in modernization and 

development of the collections.  Dr. McDade has published on 

a wide range of topics but may be best known for her work on 

detecting hybridization in phylogenetic analysis, and for her 

career of studying the systematics of Acanthaceae.  Her research 

is noted for its care and rigor.  She has also had considerable 

impact as an educator.   For seven years, she was Scientific 

Coordinator for the Organization for Tropical Studies and as 

such coordinated the educational programs in Costa Rica.  In 

addition, she has taught extensively at the undergraduate and 

graduate level throughout her career.  In her nomination letter, 

however, the role that appears again and again is her skill as a 

mentor to all her colleagues and students.  She has provided encouragement and direction.  One former 

student noted that “[i]t is Lucinda’s generosity that I am left with …”  Finally, her service to the community 

has been extensive and varied, with too many contributions to list in this short space.   To quote again from 

the letter of nomination, “what sets Lucinda apart... is her sense of community, and her tireless labor on 

project that benefit the greater good.”

Dr. Lucinda McDade

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Dr. Charles Beck is a distinguished paleontologist 

who has made remarkable discoveries in the history 

of land plants.  He discovered that the fern-like leaves 

of the genus Archaeopteris were in fact borne on a tree 

(Callixylon) with the anatomy of a gymnosperm.  This 

showed clearly that see plants must have been derived 

from free-sporing plants, and led to the identification 

of the progymnosperms, a group now included with 

gymnosperms and angiosperms in the larger clade, the 

lignophytes.   One of the people who nominated Dr. Beck 

for the award quoted Henry Andrews in saying that this 

discovery “blazed a rough trail through a dark forest 

where no recognizable path existed before.”  In addition, 

Dr. Beck is a skilled anatomist. After he “retired” from his 

position as Professor of Botany at University of Michigan, 

he continued research.  In addition, he wrote a textbook, 

An introduction to plant structure and development, now in its second edition.  Dr. Beck has also served as 

Chair of his department, Director of the Museum of Paleontology, and as President of the International 

Organization of Paleobotany, and as Chair of the Paleobotanical Section of the BSA. 

Dr. Charles Beck

University of Michigan

By linking paleontology and neontology, Dr. Pat Herendeen, 

Co-Director of the Division of Plant Science and Conservation 

at the Chicago Botanic Garden, has made significant 

contributions to our understanding of the evolutionary history 

of the angiosperms, particularly the Leguminosae.  He has 

edited three symposium volumes on the family, in addition 

to producing a steady stream of careful publications on fossil 

and extant legumes.  In addition to his steady productive 

research, Dr. Herendeen has developed a truly remarkable 

career of service to the field of botany.  He has been Chair of 

the Paleobotanical Section of BSA, Editor of the Bibliography 

of American Paleobotany, and chair of the BSA Publications 

Committee.  For four years he was Managing Editor of 

Systematic Botany, and served another four years as Editor-in-Chief.  He took over the editorship at a time 

when the journal was facing considerable challenges; his efforts to steer the journal to calmer waters were 

largely behind the scenes but ultimately completely successful.  Most recently he has become Editor-in-

Chief of the International Journal of Plant Science.  In addition, he is in his second term as Program Chair 

for the ASPT, a group that constitutes nearly half the attendees at the BSA meeting each year; thus Pat’s 

efforts are seen every summer in the success of the annual meeting.  As one of his nominators noted, “… 

there can be few research active and well-respected plant scientists who have given as much service to the 

Botanical Society of America and to the broader botanical community…”

Dr. Patrick Herendeen

Chicago Botanic Garden

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Bessey Award

Dr. Shona Ellis 

University of British Columbia

Dr. Shona Ellis, Professor of Teaching and Associate 

Head of Biology, Botany Department, University of 

British Columbia (UBC).  Shona has been faculty 

member in the Botany Department since 1994 

teaching courses from Freshman Biology through 

upper division and graduate-level  Plant Anatomy.  She 

is active in the scholarship of teaching and learning 

with numerous publications and presentations in 

both basic botany (predominantly bryophytes and 

phytochemistry) and botanical education.  She was 

twice awarded the Killam teaching award, UBC’s 

highest teaching commendation, as well as an award 

from the Society of Canadian Women in Science 

and Technology for her efforts promoting women in 

STEM.   She has developed many online resources for her courses and for the general public (see http://

www.botany.ubc.ca/bryophyte).  In cooperation with the UBC Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth 

and the Science Centre for Learning and Teaching, she has developed an e-portfolio project for students.  

As all good teachers, she leads by example.

2013 J. S. KARLING GRADUATE 

STUDENT RESEARCH AWARD 

Recipient

 

Gregory W. Stull 

 

Florida Museum of Natural 

History and  

the University of Florida

Integrating genomic, 

morphological, and fossil data for 

phylogenetic and biogeographic 

reconstruction in the basal lamiid 

family Icacinaceae

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

2013 BSA Graduate Student 

Research Award Recipients 

Rafael E. Arévalo B., University of Wisconsin 

- Madison - Advisor, Dr. Kenneth M. Cameron, 

Phylogeny, Flower Micro-Morphology, and Floral 

Fragrances in Mormolyca (Orchidaceae)

Angelita Ashbacher, University of California 

Santa Cruz - Advisor, Dr. Bethany K. Zolman, 

Effects of climate change on California wildflower 

community composition: The role of plant-

pollinator interactions

John H. Chau, University of Washington 

- Advisor, Dr. Richard Olmstead, Molecular 

phylogenetics, inflorescence evolution, and 

historical biogeography in the genus Buddleja  L. 

(Scrophulariaceae)

Hanna E. Dorman, Mississippi State University 

- Advisor, Dr. Lisa Wallace, Geographical variation 

in rhizobia associated with the Partridge Pea, 

Chamaecrista fasciculata (Fabaceae)

M. Kate Gallagher, University of California, 

Irvine - Advisor, Dr. Diane Campbell, Global 

climate change induced shifts in abiotic resources 

may alter pollination success: A test with Mertensia 

ciliata (Boraginaceae)

Richard Hodel, University of Florida - Advisors, 

Drs. Pamela and Douglas Soltis, Phylogeography 

and Conservation Genetics of Neo-tropical 

Mangroves (Avicennia germinans, Laguncularia 

racemosa and Rhizophora mangle)

Susan Yvonne Jaconis, University of Cincinnati 

- Advisor, Dr. Theresa M. Culley, Susceptibility 

of Plants to Diesel-Generated Particulate Matter 

in the Environment: Effects on Plant Growth, 

Ecophysiology and Reproduction

Carrie Kiel, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden/

Claremont Graduate University - Advisor, Dr. 

Lucinda A. McDade, Pollinator Mediated Trait 

Evolution and Floral Diversification of Neotropical 

Justicia (Acanthaceae)

Rob Massatti, University of Michigan - Advisor, 

Dr. Tony Reznicek, Montane plant diversification 

on a continental scale: A dynamic barrier’s influence 

on the montane floras of Asia and North America

Kelly Matsunaga, Humboldt State University 

- Advisor, Dr. Alexandru M.F. Tomescu, The 

Beartooth Butte Formation flora of Wyoming: A 

window into Early Devonian plant diversity and 

basal lycopsid evolution

Theresa Melhem, Northwestern University 

and Chicago Botanic Garden - Advisor, Dr. Nyree 

Zerega, The Diversity and Origins of Jackfruit 

(Artocarpus heterophyllus Lam.) in the Western 

Ghats of India

Diego F. Morales-Briones, University of Idaho 

- Advisor, Dr. David C. Tank, Phylogeny and 

systematics of the genus Lachemilla (Rosaceae) in 

the Andes

Meagan F. Oldfather, University of California, 

Berkeley - Advisor, Dr. David Ackerly, Demographic 

stability in the trailing edge of a California alpine 

species

Audrey C. Ragsac, University of Washington - 

Advisor, Dr. Richard Olmstead, Is it easier to move 

or evolve? Assessing the role of biome conservatism 

in Bignoniaceae diversification

Angela J. Rein, Oklahoma State University 

- Advisor, Dr. Mark Fishbein, Enigmatic Non-

Twining Vines: Evolution and Systematics of 

Matelea subgenus Chthamalia (Gonolobinae, 

Apocynaceae)

Marisol Sánchez-García, University of Tennessee 

- Advisor, Dr. Edward E. Schilling, Systematics 

and evolution of the tribe Leucopaxilleae (Fungi: 

Agaricales)

Brandon T. Sinn, Ohio State University - 

Advisor, Dr. John V. Freudenstein, Species of A New 

Generation: The Integration of Next Generation 

Sequencing, Morphological and Distributional 

Data for Species Discovery, Delimitation, and 

Reproductive Biology Characterization

Sally Marie Stevens, Purdue University - 

Advisor, Dr. Nancy C. Emery, Testing for Local 

Adaptation and Dispersal Limitation in a Plant 

Species Endemic to the Appalachian Mountains

Maria Wang, Northwestern University and 

Chicago Botanic Garden - Advisor, Dr. Nyree 

Zerega, The Diversity and Origins of Chempedak 

(Artocarpus integer, Moraceae)

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Vernon I. Cheadle Student 

Travel Awards 

(BSA in association with the Developmental and 

Structural Section)

This award was named in honor of the memory 

and work of Dr. Vernon I. Cheadle.

Sarangi Athukorala, University of Manitoba - 

Advisor: Dr. Michele Piercey-Normore - Botany 

2013 presentation: Quantitative comparison of 

morphology and gene expression of Cladonia 

rangiferina during the interaction with compatible 

and incompatible algae” Co-authors, E. Huebner 

and M.D. Piercey-Normore

Julien Massoni, University Paris Sud - Advisor: 

Hervé Sauquet - Botany 2013 presentation: “Fossil 

calibration of Magnoliidae: thorough background 

research significantly improves reliability of 

molecular age estimates” Co-authors, Maria von 

Balthazar, Laetitia Carrive, Thomas Couvreur, 

Juerg Schoenenberger, Yannick Staedler and Hervé 

Sauquet

Kelly Matsunaga, Humboldt State University 

- Advisor: Dr. Alexandru M.F. Tomescu - Botany 

2013 presentation: “Early Devonian Drepanophycus 

from the Beartooth Butte Formation of Wyoming” 

Co-author, Alexandru M.F. Tomescu

Stephanie Ranks, University of California, 

Berkeley - Advisor: Dr. Cindy Looy - Botany 2013 

presentation: “Autorotating winged seeds: what 

they tell us about tree height in extant and fossil 

conifers” Co-authors, Dori Contreras, Charles R. 

Marshall and Cindy V. Looy

Triarch “Botanical Images” 

Student Travel Awards 

This award provides acknowledgment and travel 

support to BSA meetings for outstanding student 

work coupling digital botanical images with 

scientific explanations/descriptions designed for 

the general public (see front cover and p. 43).

 The BSA Undergraduate 

Student Research Awards 

The BSA Undergraduate Student Research 

Awards support undergraduate student research 

and are made on the basis of research proposals 

and letters of recommendation. The 2012 award 

recipients are:

Gemma Dugan, Bucknell University - Advisor, 

Dr. Chris Martine, Insect selection of dioecious 

Australian Solanum

Anna Freundlich, Bucknell University - Advisor, 

Dr. Chris Martine, Effects of Invasive Species on 

Riparian Communities in the Susquehanna

Alexandra Boni, Bucknell University - Advisor, 

Dr. Chris Martine, Genetic variation within and 

among populations of dioecious Solanum in 

Northern Australia

Margarita Hernandez, University of Florida 

- Advisor, Dr. Pamela S. Soltis, Phylogeny 

Reconstruction and Character Mapping in 

Leptosiphon

Caitlin Maraist, Portland State University - 

Advisor, Dr. Mitch Cruzan, Phenotypic plasticity 

in functional traits related to water use between 

native and invasive populations of Brachypodium 

sylvaticum (false brome)

Theresa Ann Barosh, Willamette University 

- Advisors, Dr. Susan Kephart and Kathryn 

Theiss, Herbivory and Pollination: Examining 

the relationship between galling and pollinator 

visitation in Camassia (Agavaceae)

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

The BSA Young Botanist Awards 

The purpose of these awards is to offer 

individual recognition to outstanding 

graduating seniors in the plant sciences and to 

encourage their participation in the Botanical 

Society of America. The 2013 Certificate of 

Special Achievement award recipients are: 

John T. Bickel,  James Madison University - 

Advisor, Conley K. McMullen, Ph.D., FLS

Hillary M. Karbowski,  Central Michigan 

University - Advisor, Anna K. Monfils, Ph.D.

M. Madeleine Ray,  Ohio University - Advisor, 

Jared L. DeForest, Ph.D.

Krystal Payne,  Campbell University - Advisor, J. 

Christopher Havran, PhD.

Jaclyn Parker,  Weber State University - Advisor, 

Ron Deckert Ph.D.

Emily Becks,  University of Florida - Advisor, 

Pamela S. Soltis, Ph.D.

Maria Beatriz Cortez,  University of Florida - 

Advisor, Pamela S. Soltis, Ph.D.

Tyler McCann,  University of Florida - Advisor, 

Pamela S. Soltis, Ph.D.

Laurel Hoffman,  Humboldt State University - 

Advisor, A. Mihail Tomescu

Casey A. Jones,  University of Hawai’i at Manoa 

- Advisor, Don Drake

Dylan Davis,  University of Hawai’i at Manoa - 

Advisor, Don Drake

Talaya Rachels,  University of Hawai’i at Manoa 

- Advisor, Don Drake

Kobey Tokigawa,  University of Hawai’i at 

Manoa - Advisor, Don Drake

Arianna C. Goodman,  Oberlin College - 

Advisor, Michael J. Moore

Spencer Wight,  Oberlin College - Advisor, 

Michael J. Moore

Lila Leatherman,  Oberlin College - Advisor, 

Michael J. Moore

Rebecca Mostow,  Oberlin College - Advisor, 

Michael J. Moore

Jacob Edwards,  University of Tennessee, 

Knoxville - Advisor, Dr. Joseph H. Williams

Adam Ramsey,  University of Tennessee, 

Knoxville - Advisor, Dr. Joseph H. Williams

Teresa M. Byrd,  Willamette University - 

Advisor, Dr. Susan R. Kephart

Erin Banks Rusby,  Willamette University - 

Advisor, Dr. Susan R. Kephart

Anne Kathleen Johnson,  Duke University - 

Advisor, Dr. Kathleen Pryer

Stephanie Fong, University of California, Los 

Angeles  - Advisor, Dr. Ann M. Hirsch 

Genetics Section Student 

Research Awards 

These awards provide $500 for research funding 

and an additional $500 for attendance at a future 

BSA meeting.

Richard Hodel, University of Florida - Graduate 

Student Award - Advisors: Drs. Douglas and Pamela 

Soltis, for the proposal titled “Phylogeography and 

Conservation Genetics of Neo-tropical Mangroves 

(Avicennia germinans, Laguncularia racemosa and 

Rhizophora mangle)”

Sandra Mardonovich, Miami University - 

Masters Student Award - Advisor: Dr. Richard 

C. Moore for the proposal titled “Investigation 

of natural populations of Carica papaya’s 

morphological and genetic structure throughout 

Mesoamerica”

Genetics Section Student Travel 

Awards

Daniel Gates, University of Nebraska - Advisor, 

Dr. Stacey Smith, for the paper “Anthocyanin 

regulating MYB transcription factor evolution in 

four Solanaceous species” Co-author: Stacey Smith

Christine McAllister, Saint Louis University- 

Advisor, Dr. Allison Miller, for the paper 

“Environmental Correlates of Cytotype Diversity in 

Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii)” Co-authors: 

Russell Blaine, Paul Kron, Brent Bennett, Anna 

Glotzbach, Jennifer Kidson, Heidi Garrett, Blanda 

Matzenbacher and Allison Miller

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Pteridological Section & 

American Fern Society Student 

Travel Awards 

Anthony Baniaga, University of Arizona - 

Advisor, Dr. Mike Barker, for the paper “Genomics 

of Allopolyploidy and Hybridization in Selaginella 

subg.  Tetragonostachys” Co-authors: Nils Arrigo 

and Michael Barker

Laura Klein, Saint Louis University - Advisor, 

Dr. R. James Hickey, for the paper “Morphology 

and Introgressive Hybridization in North American 

Diphasiastrum

Fernando Matos, New York Botanical Garden 

- Advisor, Dr. Robbin C. Moran, for the paper 

“Systematic Studies of Elaphoglossum section 

Polytrichia (Dryopteridaceae)” Co-author: Robbin 

Moran

Tai-Chung Wu, National Taiwan University 

- Advisor, Dr. Wen-Yuan Kao, for the poster 

“Stomatal response in leaves of Marsilea crenata, an 

amphibious fern” Co-author: Wen-Yuan Kao

Ecology Section Student 

Travel Award

Melissa Ha, University of Massachusetts, 

Amherst - Advisor, Dr. Lynn Adler, for the paper 

“Pollinator-mediated interactions between 

Clarkia unguiculata and its neighbors are context-

dependent” Co-author: Christopher T. Ivey

Robert Harbert, Cornell University - Advisor, 

Dr. Kevin Nixon, for the paper “Climate niche, 

invasiveness, and allopolyploidy: The case of 

perennial Glycine (Leguminosae)” Co-author: Jeff 

Doyle

2013 PLANTS Grant Recipients

•  Richard Shawn  Abrahams, University of 

Florida, Dr. Stuart McDaniel 
•  Dayvis Blasini, Northeastern Illinois 

University, Dr. Pamela Geddes
•  Laquita Bolden, Cleveland State University, 

Dr. Barbara K. Modney
•  Bianca Bonilla, Florida International 

University, Dr. Bradley Bennett
•  Joyce Chery, Cornell University, Dr. Melissa 

Luckow
•  Jessel Gutierrez, Texas A&M International 

University, Dr. Jim Cohen
•  Elizabeth McWilliams, Oregon State 

University, Dr. Richard Halse
•  Livingstone Nganga, University of Missouri-

St. Louis, Bethany K. Zolman
•  Angelica Nunez, University of California-

Riverside, Louis Santiago
•  Crista O’Conner, University of Idaho, Dr. 

David Tank
•  Anthony Parson, Humboldt State University, 

Dr. Jacquelyn Bolman
•  Hevony Rodriguez, Texas A&M International 

University, Dr. Jim Cohen
•  Angel Rogers, Howard University, Dr. 

Hemayut Ullah
•  DeAna Smalls, Howard University, Dr. 

Hemayut Ullah
•  David Sycle II, Central Michigan University, 

Dr. Brad Swanson

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43

Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Triarch Student Travel Awards

Established by Dr. Paul Conant, and supported by TRIARCH INCORPORATED, this award provides 

acknowledgement and travel support to BSA meetings for outstanding student work in the area of creating 

botanical digital images. and combing with scientific explanations or descriptions designed for the general 

public.  See the front cover for this year’s 1st place winner!

2nd Place  

 

Meriel Melendrez 

University of California - 

Berkeley

Beautiful Strangler–

A strangler fig wrapping around 

its host

Even amid the teeming tropical diversity of a 

Costa Rican cloud forest, the strangler fig (Ficus 

tuerckheimii) stands out as striking and strange. It has 

an exclusive partnership with its pollinator, in which 

a wasp species spends nearly its entire life cycle within 

the fig. This fruit grows so abundantly that it merits 

the title “keystone species” for all of the animals 

it feeds. The animals disperse the seeds high in the 

canopy of another tree, and the strangler fig spends 

the next several hundred years slowly choking its host 

to death (as in the picture). The cycle begins again. 

Bizarre natural history aside, I became interested in 

where these trees grow. A local observation/legend 

purported that they tend to grow in clusters, so off 

I went with GPS and camera in hand. Several weeks and miles of transect later, I compared stranger 

fig occurrence to a random spatial distribution. The trees did not grow significantly clustered together 

within the Monteverde valley. However, I observed that they did not grow above 1750m in elevation, 

where the “Elfin Forest” began. High winds off the mountain crest may prevent germination of the figs, 

or even the arrival of their tiny pollinators. A different ficus species grew on the other side of the ridge. 

Furthermore, I noted many strangler figs standing in pastures, spared by the ranchers’ chainsaws for their 

filigree beauty and function of shading cows. If pastures reverted to secondary forests, as in the 1970s, 

the mature stranglers would stand out among the saplings and appear “clustered” to the casual observer.

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Lacking garish flowers, ferns seldom gain the 

aesthetic notoriety of flowering plants. However, 

members of the Hawaiian endemic fern genus 

Sadleria (Ama’u) may counter this trend. The extreme colors displayed in this 3-foot frond of Sadleria 

cyatheoides result from the presence of pigments called anthocyanins, which function as a sunblock for the 

plant, absorbing harmful wavelengths of ultraviolet-B radiation. However, this brilliant show does not last 

long, limited to the tender stages of cell division as the frond unfurls. In this image, the display draws to a 

close, as the earliest portions of the frond that unfurl harden and flush chartreuse green. This trait equips 

Sadleria for colonizing open, UV-stressed environments such as recently hardened lava flows or upland 

tangle-fern prairies, like this one–fringing the world’s highest bog, the Alakai Swamp of Kauai.

3rd Place  

Jeff Benca

University of California, 

Berkeley 

Where Red Ferns Grow

Unfurling frond of Ama’u, 

found at the world’s highest 

bog (the Alakai Swamp, Kauai

)

To see the complete gallery of all photographic art 

submitted for the 2013 Triarch Awards see the website at:  

http://botany.org/plantimages/ConantSTA2013.php 

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45

Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

PLANTS Students and mentors at Botany 2012 in Columbus, Ohio

PLANTS Program Encourages 

URM Students to Become Part 

of the Scientific Community

 

Science will not thrive unless it is equally 

accessible to students from all backgrounds, 

including those from groups that are currently 

underrepresented. Access involves knowing about 

the discipline, understanding the culture of science, 

feeling welcome as a participant in scientific 

endeavors and as a member of the scientific 

community, and understanding job opportunities 

in the area. With the generous donation of time, 

energy, and commitment of many society members 

who serve as mentors, the current NSF-funded 

PLANTS (Preparing Leaders and Nurturing 

Tomorrow’s Scientists) program continues to carry 

on the tradition begun ten years ago to diversify 

the pool of undergraduates attending the BOTANY 

meetings.

 The PLANTS program is an outgrowth of the 

National Science Foundation Undergraduate 

Mentoring in Environmental Biology award led 

by  Karen Renzaglia (PI) and Jeff Osborn (Co-

PI), which brought underrepresented minority 

students to the BOTANY 2003-2008 meetings 

(UMEB: Increasing Diversity at the Annual 

Botanical Society of America Meetings, NSF DEB-

0227696). The BSA felt that the results of that grant 

were so significant and important to the future 

of the Society and to the botanical sciences that 

the Society used its own funds to support a small 

cohort of undergraduates to attend BOTANY 2010. 

In 2011, the BSA was awarded a five-year grant 

from the NSF (PLANTS [Preparing Leaders and 

Nurturing Tomorrow’s Scientists]: Increasing the 

diversity of plant scientists, NSF DEB-1137471) 

with  Ann Sakai (University of California-Irvine) 

and  Ann Hirsch (University of California-Los 

Angeles) as Co-PIs. 

The PLANTS program funds up to 12 

undergraduates a year from a diversity of 

backgrounds to attend the annual joint meetings 

of the Botanical Society of America (BSA) and 

other participating organizations. The goal 

of this program is to increase the number of 

undergraduates from underrepresented (URM) 

groups who attend these meetings, and to increase 

their level of academic excellence and motivation 

to pursue advanced degrees in the plant sciences. 

At the core of PLANTS is a mentoring program 

that assigns two mentors to each student, one peer 

mentor (advanced undergraduate or graduate 

student), and one senior mentor (postdoc, faculty, 

or equivalent). Mentors contact students before 

the meeting, attend social activities and scientific 

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

graduate student fellowships. 

We are beginning to see the lasting impact that 

the program has had on the PLANTS undergraduate 

participants who were juniors and seniors when 

they participated in the program in 2011. At least 

eight of the nine 2011 PLANTS recipients have 

gone on to pursue graduate degrees and careers in 

the plant sciences. They are also excelling. Several 

alumni of the PLANTS program (Kate LeCroy

2010;  James McDaniel, 2011; Jon Richey, 2011; 

Clayton Visger, 2011) were recently awarded NSF 

Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF 

GRFP) awards in 2013. The GRFP provides three 

years of support for the graduate education of 

individuals who have demonstrated their potential 

for significant achievements in science and 

engineering research. Another PLANTS recipient, 

Irma Ortiz (2011), was awarded a prestigious Ford 

Foundation Fellowship.  

As we enter Year 3 of the PLANTS program, 

we encourage all BSA members to welcome these 

students (identified by their PLANTS ribbon) at 

the BOTANY conference this summer. Consider 

attending the Diversity Luncheon on Tuesday, July 

30 in New Orleans at BOTANY 2013 where Dr. 

Muriel Poston will be our special invited speaker. 

Look for more updates on the PLANTS program in 

future issues of the Plant Science Bulletin
-Submitted by Dr. Ann Sakai and Heather Cacanindin

Congratulations to BSA members 

 

Lindsey Tuominen & Kate LeCroy  

on receiving BSA Public Policy Awards to 

attend BESC Congressional Visits Day

talks with them, and help the students network 

with other students and faculty at the meeting. 

In general, the mentors point out the broader 

relevance and application of the discipline to 

the students, encourage involvement, and pass 

on genuine intellectual excitement generated by 

attending scientific sessions together.

All students are required to attend a PLANTS 

orientation meeting and mixer and a PLANTS 

debriefing meeting at the end of the conference. 

They also attend a professional development 

workshop on how to apply to graduate school 

and the graduate school experience, the Student 

Involvement in Botany luncheon, the Enhancing 

Scientist Diversity in Plant Biology talk and 

luncheon (with mentors), the Plenary Lecture (with 

mentors), the All Society mixer (with mentors), and 

the All Society banquet (with mentors). A critical 

part of the program is attendance and discussion 

of scientific presentations by the students with their 

mentors. Optional events include the student/new 

member mixer, individual society dinners, and field 

trips. 

Before and after the BOTANY meetings, 

PLANTS participants have their own private 

Facebook group where they can share information. 

BSA staff, the PLANTS mentors, and the PIs of the 

grant keep in touch with the students as much as 

possible. In many cases, PLANTS students have 

continued to receive mentoring as they apply for 

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47

BSA Science Education 

News and Notes

Society Initiatives and 

Members in Action

Congratulations, Shona Ellis!

The Charles Edwin Bessey Teaching Award, 

recognizing substantial contributions to botanical 

education, is among the Society’s highest honors.  

Our congratulations this year go to Shona Ellis

Teaching Professor at the University of British 

Columbia.  Please see the Awards section in this 

issue for biographical information and read more 

about Shona’s work in her blog (http://blogs.ubc.ca/

shonaellis/).  

Life Discovery-Doing 

Science Conference 

“Improving Science Education 

is  Not Rocket Science.  It’s a LOT 

Harder.”  Jay Labov introduced 

humor along with key recent 

education reports and research 

in his keynote address at the 

inaugural Life Discovery-Doing 

Science Conference in March.  The 

conference complements the digital 

library developed in collaboration 

with the Botanical Society of 

America, Ecological Society of America, Society for 

the Study of Evolution, and Society for Economic 

Botany.  

The innovative active-learning approaches 

shared at the conference were suitable for high 

school to college classrooms as well as out-of-

school and online learning environments.  BSA 

members were well represented among the 

attendees and presenters.  For example, Lena 

Strewe shared about the online campus flora 

project that involves Rutgers students documenting 

the local flora and contributing to the Consortium 

of Northeastern Herbaria.  Steve Saupe and two 

undergraduates demonstrated how to create time-

lapse videos of plant for the classroom.  Kathleen 

BSA Science Education News and Notes is a quarterly update about the BSA’s education efforts and the 

broader education scene.  We invite you to submit news items or ideas for future features.  Contact:  Claire 

Hemingway, BSA Education Director, at chemingway@botany.org or Marshall Sundberg, PSB Editor, at 

psb@botany.org.

Shea described a range of questions students could 

ask about carbon accumulation, biomass, and 

ecology using a permanent plot project.  Stokes 

Baker presented examples of using digital image 

analysis, particularly with fluorescence, to integrate 

mathematics into laboratories.  Kara Butterworth 

was a panel speaker about Building Pathways and 

Partnerships between K-12 and College.  

If you missed the March 2013 conference, 

slides from the keynote, workshop, and 

session presentations are available at: 

 

http://www.esa.org/ldc/program/presentations/.

PlantingScience

As the Spring session closes, the PlantingScience 

team wishes to add our thanks to the many 

scientists who shared their passion and expertise 

with the 20 participating middle and high school 

classes.  You make a difference to how students 

experience science!  Just consider these comments:

Student responses:

Thank you very much for helping us with 

our project. we were very lucky to have such 

an awesome mentor. honestly I hope we have 

another project like this in the near future :)”  

-Greater Nanticoke Area High School Student 

 

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Thank you for your help with our experiment! We 

really appreciate your knowledge on plants... I 

will definitely consider plant biology as a possible 

career.”  -Springfield Central High School Student 

 

“We just wanna say thank you for all your help 

and comments! We’ve enjoyed working together! 

We’re sad that this project is finished.”  -Bonhoeffer 

College Student

Teacher responses:

Student: “Mrs. Parfitt could we do a secondary 

experiment because we wonder what would happen 

if….” That’s what I’m talking about!  -Mrs. Parfitt

 

“Thanks for all of your help; this has been the best 

session yet for brainstorming and interaction 

between student teams and mentors…. Some 

students moaned when I  told them this would 

be the last week for PS.  Thank you for taking 

time to work with my students.”   -Mrs. Indriolo  

 

“…Know that I truly appreciate all you have done 

to challenge, question, and excite my students. This 

is a group of inner city kids who have never done 

anything remotely like functioning in a sterile lab 

environment, so the experience and the foundation 

we have laid for them in the scientific process is 

something they would never have received anywhere 

else in my District.”   -Mr. Kosmoski

This spring we hosted a number of 

videoconferences for classes and several mentors.  

We also offered a star project award for teams with 

exemplary aspects of their projects.  Team members 

receive a certificate and t-shirt.  Check out winning 

star projects from nominations this spring at http://

tinyurl.com/caktwtb

Recent Publications and 

News Around the Nation

Scientific Societies Supporting 

STEM Faculty

What do we know about how STEM faculty 

programs offered by scientific societies are 

structured and their effectiveness?  That question 

is addressed in The Role of Scientific Societies in 

STEM Faculty Workshops report, which expands 

on the 2012 conference that brought together 

leaders of seven programs and two education 

researchers.  Comparisons across the biology, 

geosciences, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, 

and physics programs are informative, as are the 

future directions and advice for other disciplinary 

societies.

http://www.aapt.org/Conferences/newfaculty/

upload/STEM_REPORT-2.pdf

 

Perspectives on the Broader 

Impacts Criteria

Have you written or reviewed proposals 

submitted to the National Science Foundation 

lately and noticed the 2012 changes to the Broader 

Impact Criterion?  Perhaps you wondered just what 

kinds of broader impact activities were proposed 

under the original view of Criterion 2 and what 

the new view of the broader impact criterion might 

mean. 

Two recent publications offer perspectives.  In 

the February 2013 issue of Frontiers in Ecology 

and the Environment, Nadkarni and Stasch call for 

new mechanisms to make grantees accountable 

for broader impacts activities and pathways for 

positive feedback (http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/

ecological-society-of-america/how-broad-are-

our-broader-impacts-an-analysis-of-the-national-

science-685vxS1nkD).  Their analysis of projects 

funded by the NSF Ecosystems Studies Program 

(2000-2010) revealed that most proposed to reach 

audiences close to academics through teaching 

and training activities.  In the March 2013 issue 

of  BioScience, Frodeman and colleagues pick up 

that thread and exhort individual scientists and 

collaborative groups to view the new broader 

impact criteria as an opportunity to go beyond 

supporting graduate students and developing 

websites (http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1525/

bio.2013.63.3.2?af=R&).  What are your views on 

effective broader impacts and how they can be 

developed and sustained?

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

 

Monday

•  Public Participation in Scientific Research: 

Emerging Resources for Botany, Symposium 

organized by Austin Mast, Sarah Newman
•  Herbarium Digitization for Research, Teaching, 

and the Public, Symposium organized by Eric 

Ribbens
•  Yes, Bobby, Evolution is Real, Symposium 

organized by Marshall Sundberg, Joseph 

Armstrong
 

Tuesday

•  Broadening Participation – Recruiting and 

Retaining Outstanding Scientists in the Botanical 

Sciences, Symposium organized by Anna Monfils, 

Ann Sakai
•  Enhancing Scientist Diversity in Plant Biology 

Luncheon (ticketed event)
•  Changes in the STEM Classroom. What do we 

need to do? Roundtable organized by Phil Gibson
And, of course, there will be the Teaching Section 

presentations and posters, PlantingScience mixer.  

Check the website for schedule updates.

Final Next Generation Science 

Standards Released

After extensive community comment and 

review, the Next Generation Science Standards 

(NGSS) have been released in their final form.  The 

executive summary describes reasoning behind 

a major design shift to organize the standards 

around the dimensions of Disciplinary Core 

Ideas, Scientific and Engineering Practices, and 

Cross Cutting Ideas:  coupling science practices 

with content gives the learning context.  And it 

reflects how science is actually practiced.  For more 

background behind the standards and to download 

PDFs of the standards arranged by Disciplinary 

Core Ideas, visit http://www.nextgenscience.org.

Upcoming Opportunities to 

Enhance Teaching and Learning

Attend the Society for the Advancement of 

Biology Education Research 2013 National 

Meeting, July 11-14 in Minnesota.

http://saber-biologyeducationresearch.

wikispaces.com/home

Join the PULSE community of educators 

working toward change in undergraduate life 

science education.

http://www.pulsecommunity.org

Don’t miss BOTANY 2013: 

Celebrating Diversity! 

July 27-31 in New Orleans 

http://www.botanyconference.org

An excellent line-up of education, outreach, and 

training offerings awaits:

 

Sunday

•  Workshops on genomics, visual learning, 

botanical art, citizen science, virtual herbaria, 

graduate school and beyond, writing, publishing, 

and more.
•  Restoring the Bayou, Botany-in-Action 

Service Project
•  Celebrating diversity in the understanding of 

science: Botanists as ambassadors to a spectrum 

of humans, Plenary Address by Nalini Nadkarni

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50

Editor’s Choice Review

Transformation is Possible if a 

University Really Cares. 

Mervis, J.  2013.  Science 340: 292-296.

You may remember the “Regional Botany Special 

Lecture: Science Education for the 21st Century: 

Using the tools of science to teach science” during 

the Botany 2008 meeting at the University of 

British Columbia (PSB 54(3): 95)  https://botany.org/
plantsciencebulletin/psb-2008-54-3.php#news2)

.   

In that presentation Carl Wieman, Nobel laureate 

in Physics, offered some of the “tricks of the trade” 

he had been experimenting with to improve student 

learning.  In this introduction to a Special Section on 

“Grand Challenges in Science Education,” Mervis 

describes Wieman’s efforts to convince universities 

(faculty, departments, and administrators) to start 

being scientific about STEM education.  Those of 

you following “The History of Botanical Education 

in the U.S.” know this “Vision” is an old story (PSB 

57(4): 134-158; 58(3): 101-131), but “Change” hasn’t 

happened yet!  Wieman is trying hard to change 

that.  If you’re still teaching your courses the way 

you were 10 years ago, I challenge you to read this 

article as a scientist, skeptically, but considering the 

evidence.  Then follow your conclusion.  As Susan 

Singer is quoted in the article, “…we should stop 

doing STEM talent selection and start doing STEM 

talent development….”  For more information on 

Wieman’s educational efforts,  see:
http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/.

Keeping a Digital Eye on Nature’s 

Clock: Students Use Digital Cam-

eras to Monitor Plant Phenology.  

Magney, T., K. Eitel, J. Eitel, V. Jansen, J. 

Schon, R. Rittenburg, and L. Vierling. 2013.  

The Science Teacher 80: 37-43.

Tracking the emergence of leaf flush, flowering, 

or other phenological variables has been a part of 

plant studies for centuries.  New tools and citizen 

science projects allow students to participate in 

phenological studies.  This article outlines how 

high school students have used digital cameras and 

ImageJ software to study seasonal changes in leaf 

color.  It could easily be adapted to younger or older 

students.

Integrating Inquiry-Based Teach-

ing with Faculty Research.  

Kukami, T.  2013.  Science 339: 1536-1537. 

Opportunity knocks – in this case, re-design of the 

introductory biology laboratory courses presented 

the author with the chance to involve students in 

research on ecological interactions among Mimulus 

aurantiacus, its pollinators, and the microoganisms 

that inhabit its nectar.  A Science Prize for Inquiry-

Based Instruction, this essay illustrates how to 

include local resources and your research interests 

into laboratory courses in ways that enhance 

student learning and departmental offerings.
http://www.sciencemag.org/
content/339/6127/1536.full?sid=ace97844-fcee-
4140-a74c-6d644e5faf7d

Seed Storage Proteins as a System 

for Teaching Protein Identification 

by Mass Spectrometry in Biochem-

istry Laboratory.

Wilson, K. A. and A. Tan-Wilson.  2013.    Bio-

chemistry and Molecular Biology Education 

41: 79-86.

The authors describe a laboratory designed for 

undergraduates to identify soybean seed storage 

proteins by mass spectrometry and to deduce 

post-translational modifications that occurred 

on germination.  Online mass spectral data and 

tutorials supplement the laboratory module.

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51

ANNOUNCEMENTS

In Memoriam

Dr. Rivka Dulberger (Tel Aviv University) was 

a leading expert on the reproductive biology of 

flowering plants, particularly those with sexual 

polymorphisms. Sadly, her life ended on December 

7, 2012 in Tel Aviv after a long and productive 

career.  She was a scientist, teacher, wife, mother, 

grandmother, friend and mentor who throughout 

her career maintained a fascination for the biology 

of flowers. Here, we provide a short account of her 

scientific contributions and remarkable life. We are 

grateful to her son Dan for providing information 

about her early life and wartime experiences. 

Rivka was born on May 7, 1922, 

in  the  village  of  Briceni, Moldovia (formerly 

Romania).

 

She attended high school in the city 

of  Czernowitz, in southwestern Ukraine.

 

In July 

1941 the Nazis took over Czernowitz  from the 

Soviets and established a ghetto from which 50,000 

Jews were deported. In October 1941, together 

with hundreds of thousands of other Jews, Rivka 

and her family were forced to walk 250 km from 

Czernowitz to Bersad, a notorious camp with little 

food or shelter.

 

Rivka endured 27 months of extreme 

physical and mental hardship in the camp and lost 

family members. While managing to survive under 

the most cruel and inhumane conditions, Rivka 

met another prisoner – Ascher Dulberger – who 

would later become her husband. The two were 

Rivka Dulberger  

1922-2012

partners until his death in 2006.

 

In March 1944 

Bersad was liberated by the Red Army and, of 

the approximately 21,000 people who entered the 

Nazi camp, 18,000 perished. Although this horrific 

experience shaped many aspects of Rivka’s identity 

and gave her a strong and independent personality, 

like many survivors she rarely spoke about her 

wartime experiences.  After WWII, Rivka and 

Ascher lived in Bucharest where she completed her 

first degree in biology. In 1950 they married and 

immigrated to Israel and are survived by their son 

Dan and grandchildren 

Itay and Tair.

Rivka received her Ph.D. in 1967 from the Hebrew 

University in Jerusalem. The thesis “Pollination 

Systems in Plants of Israel” was conducted under 

the guidance of the renowned plant evolutionist 

Professor Daniel Zohary.  In 1951 Rivka started 

working in the Tel Aviv Biological-Pedagogical 

Institute, which five years later served as the basis 

for the Faculty of Life Sciences in the newly formed 

Tel Aviv University. 

Rivka remained at Tel Aviv 

for the remainder of her career and was known 

as a passionate teacher of classes in morphology, 

taxonomy and systematics for 40 years.

 During 

this time 

she published over 30 papers and 

book chapters, many of which were in top-tier 

journals. Rivka’s publications were imaginative and 

characterized by a careful attention to detail that 

often revealed important insights on reproductive 

mechanisms. In particular, her training in structural 

botany and skills in microscopy resulted in many 

novel observations that allowed her to relate floral 

form to function.  She trained a handful of graduate 

students at Tel Aviv and provided valuable advice to 

many others, both in Israel and overseas. All valued 

her detailed knowledge of the morphology and 

physiology of flowers and her willingness to freely 

share her ideas. 

Rivka Dulberger is most well known for her 

studies of the floral polymorphism heterostyly. 

Populations of heterostylous plants contain 

two or three style morphs (mating types) that 

differ reciprocally in stigma and anther height. 

Her major contribution to this area, based on 

experimental studies of Linum and members of 

the Plumbaginaceae

1,2

, was to focus attention on 

the important role of physical and biochemical 

interactions between pollen grains and stigmatic 

papillae in governing incompatibility reactions. 

She proposed that topographical complementarity 

between these structures’ functions to promote 

compatible crosses and reduce incompatible 

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

pollinations. Her work on heterostyly was 

novel because it integrated morphological, 

developmental and physiological facets of the 

polymorphism in an effort to understand the 

adaptive significance of ancillary pollen and stigma 

characters in the syndrome. Her review on the 

functional significance of floral polymorphisms

3

 

represents the major synthesis on this topic and 

should be required reading for anyone interested in 

heterostyly.   

In addition to working on heterostyly, Rivka also 

made important contributions to our understanding 

of several other problems in floral biology. These 

included the genetic basis of gender polymorphism 

in  Silene

(with Auguste Horovitz), pollination 

mechanisms in various legumes, including Cassia

5

, 

and the function of andromonoecy in Solanum

6

She was also the first to discover late-acting 

ovarian incompatibility in dimorphic Narcissus

7

This finding made during her thesis research and 

subsequently published in Evolution  set the stage 

for much subsequent work by other laboratories 

on floral polymorphisms in the genus. In the mid 

1970s, Rivka spent a productive research leave at 

the University of California, Berkeley working with 

Professor Robert Ornduff on the problem of the 

function of mirror-image flowers (enantiostyly). 

Their publications on the South African genera 

Wachendorfia

8

 and Cyanella

9

 stimulated later work 

on this intriguing floral polymorphism. Indeed, it 

is notable that Rivka was often the first to identify 

interesting reproductive systems, and her studies 

frequently provided basic information that became 

the foundation for subsequent work by others.       

According to her son Dan, plants were Rivka’s 

great love and all the pictures in the family home 

were botanical in nature. However, she also had a 

passion for literature and music and impressively 

spoke seven languages (Hebrew, Russian, German, 

Yiddish, English, French, and Romanian).  We 

both had the great pleasure to get to know Rivka 

personally at important stages in our careers and 

these interactions were influential. SCHB was a 

graduate student at Berkeley when Rivka visited. 

Earnest discussions on the function of traits in the 

heterostylous syndrome left a lasting impression 

and led to Rivka’s sabbatical at the University 

of Toronto with him in the late 80s.  LMW was 

a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University 

in Jerusalem in the mid 1990s and during this 

period interacted with Rivka frequently to discuss 

science as well as life in Israel.  These discussions, 

sometimes arguments, could be very challenging 

as Rivka loved to question orthodoxy and had an 

unswerving directness that one rarely encounters 

in North American culture. Nevertheless, a verbal 

jousting match with Rivka about science or politics 

was never personal and she was an enduring friend 

and generous mentor to us both. We will miss 

her greatly, and botany in Israel has lost one of its 

earliest and most valued pioneers.

Literature Cited

1. Dulberger, R. 1987. Fine structure and 

cytochemistry of the stigma surface and 

incompatibility in some distylous Linum 

species. Annals of Botany 59, 203-217.

2. Dulberger, R. 1975. Intermorph structural 

differences between stigmatic papillae and 

pollen grains in relation to incompatibility 

in Plumbaginaceae. Proceedings of the Royal 

Society of London Series B188, 257-274.

3. Dulberger, R. 1992. Floral polymorphisms 

and their functional significance in the 

heterostylous syndrome. In: Evolution and 

function of heterostyly (ed. S.C.H. Barrett). 

Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

4.  Horovitz, A., & Dulberger, R. 1983. The genetic 

basis of gender in Silene vulgarisHeredity 51

371-376.

5. Dulberger, R. 1981. The floral biology of 

Cassia didymobotrya and Cassia auriculata 

(Caesalpiniaceae). American Journal of Botany 

68, 1350-1360.

6. Dulberger, R., Levy, A. & Palevitch, D. 1981.

Andromonoecy in Solanum  marginatum

Botanical Gazette 142, 259-266.

7. 

 Dulberger, R. 1964. Flower dimorphism 

and self-incompatibility in Narcissus  tazetta

Evolution 18, 361-363.

8. Ornduff, R., & Dulberger, R. 1978. Floral 

enantiomorphy and reproductive system of 

Wachendorfia paniculata (Haemodoraceae). 

New Phytologist 80, 427-434.

9. Dulberger, R., & Ornduff, R. 1980. Floral 

morphology and reproductive biology of 4 

species of Cyanella (Tecophilaeaceae). New 

Phytologist 86, 45-56.

-Lorne M. Wolfe, Georgia Southern University 

-Spencer C. H. Barrett: University of Toronto.  

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53

Personalia

Congratulations to Kate LeCroy and James McDaniel, Jon Richey, Clayton Visger, all BSA members 

who are winners of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Award! These are past PLANTS program 

participants and we are extremely proud of them.

Kate LeCroy

I plan to study how climate warming may disrupt the 

dynamics of pollination communities. How will climate 

change alter insect pollination? This question has not 

been fully empirically answered from a community 

perspective. Plant species with overlapping phenologies 

may indirectly interact via shared pollinators, and these 

interactions can have negative (competition -,-; e.g. 

for pollinator visits or increased heterospecific pollen 

transfer) or positive (facilitation +,0; +,+; e.g. simultaneous 

facilitation or sequential facilitation) effects. Disruption 

of these interactions can have consequences for quantity 

and quality of pollen received and thus could affect 

reproductive fitness. Previous research also projects altered 

pollinator phenology or pollinator loss, which could further 

exacerbate disruption of these interactions. I will analyze 

pollination quantity and quality in manipulated plant 

communities that reflect projected scenarios of climate 

warming for plants and pollinators. This research will be 

conducted in the serpentine seep communities of northern California, an ecosystem type that is highly 

vulnerable to biodiversity loss. My experimental work will answer the call to solve outstanding questions 

concerning how climate change will affect plant phenological overlap, plant-pollinator interactions, and 

plant fitness.

James McDaniel

As a graduate student in Ken Cameron’s lab at the University 

of Wisconsin-Madison, I have started collecting preliminary 

data on the genus Porroglossum within the orchid subtribe 

Pleurothallidinae. My original intent was to work with the 

genus  Zootrophion; however, I have quickly discovered that 

the rarity of this genus in the wild and cultivation makes it 

impractical to work with. As a result, I have switched gears to 

the genus Porroglossum, which is more accessible in regards to 

gathering data. Porroglossum is fascinating because the plants 

have an active labellum that, when stimulated by an insect, snaps 

shut. This mechanism allows Porroglossum to entrap insects as 

a means of ensuring that pollination occurs. Of the 48 species 

in the genus, I have DNA from ca. 75% of them from which I 

have successfully amplified three gene regions: nrITS, trnL-F and 

ycf1. My plan is to construct a fully resolved phylogeny for the 

entire genus using Maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods. 

From there, I will use the phylogeny to address ecological and evolutionary questions. Ultimately, I plan to 

discover the mechanism(s) responsible for active movement in the labellum, shed light on pollinator-plant 

relationships, characterize floral fragrance profiles using GC/MS, and test clade hypotheses set forth by 

Carl Luer in his monograph Icones Pleurothallidinarum IV.  

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54

Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Jon Richey

My research interests are carbon cycle perturbations, 

variations in atmospheric CO

2

 throughout Earth’s history, 

climate sensitivity, and the use of fossil plants to explain 

aspects of the carbon cycle. I am using a botanical method 

known as Stomatal Index (SI) to look at variation in CO

2

 

at the Albian-Cenomanian Boundary. Stomatal Index is the 

proportion of epidermal cells that are stomata (gas exchange 

pores) in the leaves of plants. SI varies inversely with CO

2

 

levels because at high atmospheric CO

levels,

 

an individual 

plant can maintain a high level of photosynthesis while 

minimizing H

2

O loss by having fewer stomata. Epidermal 

cells and stomata are counted in modern materials, such 

as fossil, subfossil, and herbarium specimens, which are 

then compared to known CO

2

 levels from when they were 

collected, and plants subjected to greatly elevated CO

2

 levels 

in growth chambers.  From these data, a graph of changes 

in SI vs. changes in atmospheric CO

is produced and an 

equation is generated that describes this relationship. I 

have recently obtained fossil cuticle (the waxy covering 

of the epidermis of leaves which is highly decay resistant 

and can be recovered in rock dating back to the first land 

plants) from the only continental rock sequence currently known to preserve Ocean Anoxic Event 1d, 

a carbon cycle perturbation event that marks the Albian-Cenomanian Boundary. I will calculate SI in 

this fossil cuticle, which will be plugged into the equation derived from modern material to infer CO

2

 

levels throughout this event. The late Cretaceous is thought to be an analog for Earth’s future climate 

given current climatic trends. In addition, Ocean Anoxic Events have been relatively common during hot 

climates of the geologic past such as the Cretaceous, and Ocean Anoxic Event 1d is analogous in some 

ways to the current injection of large amounts of CO

to the atmosphere by humans. Due to these facts, my 

research will yield important data to assist in the fight against climate change.

Clayton Visger

For my dissertation I will be exploring the evolutionary 

consequences of whole genome duplication within the Pacific 

Northwest genus  Tolmiea  (Saxifragaceae).  Tolmiea  appears 

to have undergone a single autopolyploidization, which 

resulted in a primarily allopatric distribution of the diploid T. 

diplomenziesii  and autotetraploid,  T. menziesii.  To assess 

the role autopolyploidy has played in this natural speciation 

event differences in niche, physiology, and gene expression 

between the diploid progenitor and tetraploid derivative will 

be evaluated.

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55

Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Dr. Bruce Kirchoff Wins First 

Ever American Society of Plant 

Taxonomists Innovations in 

Plant Systematics Education 

Prize

UNCG Biology Professor, Dr. Bruce Kirchoff, 

was recently awarded the first ever “Innovations in 

Plant Systematics Education” prize by the American 

Society of Plant Taxonomists. Dr. Kirchoff won 

for his “innovative application of research in 

cognitive psychology to teach plant identification 

skills” and his “record of pedagogical research 

and use of technology to interact with students.” 

The award letter goes on further to say his work 

“is an exceptional example of combining science 

and education effectively. It is a wonderful model 

for our membership in this inaugural year of the 

award.” Dr. Kirchoff will be honored at the annual 

American Society of Plant Taxonomists banquet at 

the BOTANY 2013 meeting. 

Dr. Kirchoff sees tremendous value in visual 

learning, and he helps his students harness its 
power

 to learn biology.

Here is an example: In his plant diversity class, 

students must master the intricate life cycles of the 

algae, fungi and land plants. Instead of having his 

students memorize the details of these cycles, he 

has created standardized ways of representing them 

visually, and software to teach these representations. 

“Don’t memorize – picture the life cycle,” he tells his 

students. The picture is a schema that summarizes a 

large amount of information.

Trying to memorize the individual parts of the 

cycle can drive students nuts, he says. Where does 

the gametophyte go? The archegonium? What 

about the carposporophyte? And this is just the 

beginning. Visual learning provides a better way.

In some ways his software is like using flashcards 

to help memorize and learn—but it’s much more 

effective.

“I am teaching my students to think visually,” he 

says, to build up and see patterns in their minds 

eye. When they can “see” the pattern, they can work 

back to the facts. The pattern is a visual summary 

of the facts.

With research centering on plant structure and 

development, and on visual learning, Kirchoff has 

been a member of UNCG’s biology faculty since 

1986.

His work with visual learning has led him to 

become an entrepreneur. The UNCG Office of 

Innovation and Commercialization advised him 

on starting a company around his proprietary 

software. The UNCG Teaching and Learning 

Center (now the FTLC) funded some of its initial 

development. As a result, the software technology 

is offered free to any course at UNCG. Any faculty 

member who’d like more information may contact 

him at kirchoff@uncg.edu, and more information 

is available at http://www.metisllc.com/.

In another class he has created a version of the 

software that teaches plant recognition. “You learn 

to identify plants using the same part of your brain 

that you use when you look at faces,” Kirchoff says. 

Students can see and learn the plants at home, on 

their own time. They come to class prepared to 

learn at an advanced level, and they do better on 

their exams.

The software can be used in any class, wherever 

visual learning is appropriate.

Classes at the Wagga Wagga campus of Charles 

Sturt University in Australia use the software. 

Medical residents in neuropathology at Stanford 

Medical School use it. Dr. Catherine Matthews 

(Education) and Ann Somers (Biology) are 

developing a version as part of their NSF-funded 

HERP  project. Leaders of a Science Olympiad 

team in Honolulu are using it. UNCG chemistry 

professor Dr. Mitchell Croat is developing a version 

for organic chemistry, and using it in his classes.

These techniques also have use outside the 

sciences. Kirchoff asks, is a work of art—even 

an abstract piece—to be seen as a whole, or as 

composed of parts? “The answer is… both.” The 

parts interact to create the whole, but they are 

only parts—they only have their form and place 

in the work—because they are “of the whole.” This 

is the part–whole relationship in art. The same 

relationship occurs in organisms.

The great German poet and scientist, Goethe, 

saw this clearly, and it influenced all of his work. He 

coined the term “morphology,” which is the study 

of the structure of living things, and Kirchoff’s field 

of study. Goethe basically said that organisms are 

like works of art. There is an integral wholeness to 

the organism. They are composed of parts, but they 

are not just the parts.

Is what he teaches like the visual expertise 

described in the book “Blink”? Yes, the first 

chapter of that popular book dovetails with what 

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56

Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

he is hoping to achieve. The idea is to be able to 

be both quick and accurate, with one look. Visual 

experts do this, and he is teaching his students to 

do it too. “Using the software, we can get the instant 

recognition effect with only a short amount of 

training.”
-Used with permission BCampus Weekly 

Stan Kosmoski, 

K-12 classroom member.

Stan took home 1st place at the Hillsborough 

County, Florida, Tech Fair for an exhibit about 

the Planting Science project online this spring 

and with Edith and Arjan in the Netherlands. The 

prize is an indefinite loan of a Windows 8, HP 

Elite Pad 900 for classroom use.  He reports that 

he has been asked to write a lesson plan for the 10 

middle schools in the STEM initiative for Planting 

Science this summer and he is looking for partner 

schools to do mirror modules (although the actual 

experimental design may be different) so sister 

schools can Skype when completed to share their 

research. Note: Sibling schools need not be in a 

different country (although that is really fun!!!!) 

 

Please  contact Stan at skosmoskijr@yahoo.com 

if you, or a middle school teacher you know, are 

interested in becoming a sibling school so he can 

add you to the lesson plan this summer. 

Karl Niklas Named Weiss 

Presidential Fellow

 Karl Niklas  has been named a Stephen H. 

Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell. The Weiss 

Presidential Fellowship is awarded for excellence in 

teaching and advising undergraduates. The award 

is named for Stephen H. Weiss ’57, former chair of 

the Cornell Board of Trustees. The recipients will 

be honored by the Cornell Board of Trustees in the 

Spring of 2013.

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57

Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

MISSOURI BOTANICAL 

GARDEN PROGRAM ANNOUCES 

COLLABORATION WITH 

L’HERBORETUM

 

Partnership Allows Sacred Seeds 

Program to Expand to Europe  

(ST. LOUIS): Sacred Seeds,  an international 

non-profit that supports plant conservation and 

addresses the rapid loss of biodiversity and cultural 

knowledge, has extended its reach to Europe 

through collaboration with L’Herboretum whose 

international headquarters are in Saint-Ay, France.  

Sacred Seeds is a network of plant gardens devoted 

to preserving plants of medicinal and cultural 

significance. The program is administered by the 

Missouri Botanical Garden’s William L. Brown 

Center.

Sacred Seeds also works to foster the traditional 

uses and knowledge of these treasured plant 

species, honoring their sacred roles in indigenous 

communities.  Currently, the program connects 28 

gardens in 13 countries on six continents.

“L’Herboretum is one of the leading forces in 

international plant conservation, and its garden 

in Saint-Ay is a treasure of French ethnobotany,” 

said Thomas Newmark, founder of Sacred Seeds. 

“L’Herboretum is the first European partner in 

the Sacred Seeds network, and we are thrilled to 

be collaborating with the visionary leaders of this 

great association.”

“The staff at L’Herboretum clearly has a passion 

for ethnobotanical knowledge on both a local and 

global level.  They make an ideal European hub for 

sharing the need to preserve threatened knowledge 

and plants, and for celebrating the innovation and 

dedication of conservationists around the world,” 

said Ashley Glenn, a research specialist at the 

William L. Brown Center.

L’Herboretum, through The Herboretum 

Network of gardens, is the leading botanical 

association in France and is dedicated to conserving 

medicinal, cosmetic and sacred plants. It maintains 

a 22-acre garden on the heart of the Loire Valley 

and is an historic landmark.  Leading scholars and 

business leaders have joined in The Herboretum 

Association, and it enjoys the patronage of The 

Alban Muller Group, a leading specialist in natural 

extracts in France.  Alban Muller, President of The 

Alban Muller Group, expressed his enthusiastic 

support for the collaboration with Sacred Seeds.   

“Sacred Seeds has an exceptional international 

network of Sacred Seeds Sanctuaries, and together 

with L’Herboretum’s network we will have 

participating gardens around the world.   Both 

organizations feel the deep responsibility to protect 

the biodiversity of life, and we have pledged to share 

knowledge, skills, and resources to more rapidly 

achieve our shared missions.”

Sacred Seeds is managed at the William L. Brown 

Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden, one of the 

largest and most active botanical research institutes 

in the world. Visit  www.sacredseedssanctuary.

org to learn more. The William L. Brown Center of 

the Missouri Botanical Garden is dedicated to the 

study of useful plants and the relationships between 

humans, plants and the environment. Scientists 

strive to conserve plant species for the benefit of 

future generations.

The Missouri Botanical Garden is one of 

the three largest plant science programs in the 

world. The Garden’s work focuses its work on 

areas that are rich in biodiversity yet threatened 

by habitat destruction, and operates the world’s 

most active research and training programs in 

tropical botany. Garden scientists collaborate with 

local institutions, schools and indigenous peoples 

to understand plants, create awareness, offer 

alternatives and craft conservation strategies. The 

Missouri Botanical Garden is striving for a world 

that can sustain us without sacrificing prosperity 

for future generations, a world where people share 

a commitment to managing biological diversity for 

the common benefit. Learn more at  www.mobot.

org.

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58

Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

A PLANT ANATOMY 

DICTIONARY OF LAST RESORT

One of the refreshing surprises of teaching a 

specialty course is to cross paths with a student who 

is coming from a different place and who provides 

a...well, novel perspective.  Don Casadonte is a 

doctoral student in music whose interest in what 

makes a good clarinet reed brought him to Plant 

Anatomy.  After hearing snickers from students 

all quarter from his area of the lab, I confronted 

him and he fessed up to having compiled a list of 

“informal” definitions of terms from an outsider’s 

point of view.  What follows are some of the more 

printable and less groanable of his creations, 

including his snappy preamble.  The responsibility 

for all the groans that remain is strictly his, as I, the 

teacher, just played the part of the straight man.

We offer for your perusal a selection from the 

previously unavailable (indeed unwritten) book 

Knock Wood: A Plant Anatomy Dictionary of Last 

Resort.  One may wonder why this is a dictionary of 

last resort, but after a quick scanning of its contents, 

we’re sure you’ll agree with us that this is indeed 

the last place to go to resolve your anatomical 

difficulties.  Nevertheless, we hope that you enjoy 

this excerpt and remember the famous words of the 

plant, which exclaimed on seeing its first fly, “That 

looks like `a gnat to me’...”.
-Contributed by Fred Sack, University of British 

Columbia

•  Phyllotaxis   What you’re required to do 

every year by April 15.
•  Siphonostele  An activity a gasoline thief 

engages in.
•  Idioblast  A party thrown the night before 

a final exam.
•  Rhytidome  The opposite of a Leftidome.
•  Auxin  The city where the University of 

Exas is located.
•  Eukaryotic  What you say to an otic when 

you want them to transport something.
•  Stone Cell  A drunk tank.
•  Plastichron

TM

  A rubber clock for those 

hurried people who wish they could stretch 

time just a bit.

•  Anomalous secondary growth  Razor 

stubble.
•  A-pical cells  Extra large cells that taste 

good on hamburgers.
•  Mesophyll  Opposite of mesoempty.
•  Bulliform cell  The place to lock up people 

who think they’re Teddy Roosevelt.
•  Callus  The most often used word by the 

director of the Plant Follies of 1942.  See 

also Don’t Callus...
•  Phellogen  A “manly” drink.  Opposite of 

Galogen.
•  Storied wood  A tree that’s heard it all.
•  Slime body  Noun. See also mud wrestling.
•  Axillary “Bud”  The C.B. nickname for 

the first person to be inducted into the 

Truck Driver’s Hall of Fame.
•  Casparian strip  What the friendly ghost 

does before taking a shower.
•  Companion cell  Tonto’s tent.
•  Diarch  What you do after being hit by 

lightning.
•  Pistillate  The usual reason why people 

lose gun fights.
•  Prop roots  Scenery for Tarzan.
•  Sapwood  A really stupid tree.

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59

class culture. While scholars of botany and scholars 

of 19th-century gift books and annuals attribute 

floral imagery and floral gift books as a sentimental 

continuation per usual of this period (1825-1865), 

there is a manifestation of popular botanical 

culture (botanical literature) within the identity 

of gift books that is overlooked by this assertion. 

Furthermore, this botanical literature is a valuable 

component for connecting the target audience of 

gift books (young women) to botanical study as 

much as allowed by their “delicate sensibilities.”

 

Key words: American Antiquarian Society; annual; 

botanical history; botanical literature; gift book; 

Library of Congress; popular botany; women in 

science; 19th-century botany

 

The United States experienced the wildly popular 

literary phenomenon of “gift books” and “annuals” 

between 1826 and 1865. These mass-produced 

books were usually comprised of an attractive 

collection of sentimental (highly emotional) short 

stories, sketches, poems, essays, illustrations, 

and songs. Gift books and annuals were typically 

Early 19th-century expressions of 

popular botany through sentimen-

talism in American gift books and 

annuals

Kathryn A. LeCroy

Departments of Biology and English 

Birmingham-Southern College  

Birmingham, AL 35254

E-mail: 

KAL142@pitt.edu

DOI: 10.3732/psb.1200001

Submitted 22 October 2012.

Accepted 22 April 2013.

ABSTRACT

Through my study of 19th-century American gift 

books and annuals, I conclude that botany, the first 

socially acceptable science for American women’s 

study, permeated media beyond traditionally 

assumed origins such as textbooks, field manuals, 

and lectures, but that it was embedded in the 

sentimental language of gift books written for 

young women in early middle- and upper middle–

Reports

Figure 1. Photographs of American gift books and annuals 1825-1865, used with permission from the Library of 

Congress (A, B, D, E) and the American Antiquarian Society (C, F).  (A) Front cover, The Iris, est. 1820-1840. 

(B) Frontispiece of The Iris, est. 1820-1840. (C) Colored plate. (D) Front cover, The Hyacinth, 1846. (E) Frontis-

piece, The Young Lady’s Companion, 1844. (F) Presentation page, The Lady’s Book of Flowers & Poetry, 1842.

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60

Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

and educators who asserted the goodness of 

botany. Communications that praised the benefits 

of studying plants have been termed “botanical 

literature” (Keeney, 1992). This botanical literature 

pervaded many outlets of media, including but 

not limited to newspapers, children’s textbooks, 

sermons, university courses, visiting lecturers, 

and essays. The messages in botanical literature 

emphasized the important reasons for botanical 

study:  gentility, utility, and piety.  Botanical literature 

championed these aspirations and was pervasive in 

the popular media.  Indeed, from an account of 

14,200 Americans who were highly active in the 

botanical community from 1800 to 1850, 11,000 

identified themselves as “cultivators,” meaning 

those who pursued botany for other reasons beside 

scientific progress (Keeney, 1992). The results 

of this survey suggest this “botanical literature” 

that championed the goodness of botanical study 

reached a large audience and impacted American 

education and culture, emphasizing the importance 

of botanical study concomitant to the reason of 

scientific advancement.

CULTURAL ASPIRATIONS BEHIND 

BOTANY AND GIFT BOOKS: 

GENTILITY, UTILITY, AND PIETY 

Both Elizabeth Keeney, a historian of science, and 

gift book scholar Richard Thompson respectively 

credit the increase in attractiveness of practicing 

botany and the growing market for gift books to the 

overwhelming American drive to create a cultural 

identity of a refined, pious, and accomplished 

people.  In particular, gift books and botany largely 

targeted women audiences. Gift book scholars 

consider these books an important symbol of a 

cultural aspiration that championed refinement and 

good taste by affirming clear lines between class, 

race, religion, and gender; these poems, essays, 

sketches, stories, and embellishments were all 

snapshots of current American perspectives of the 

beautiful, the right, and the good (Bushman, 1992), 

and they could be easily placed on the parlor table 

for any visitor in the home to see. In The Refinement 

of America, historian of

 

19th-century America 

Richard Bushman notes that although “the contents 

of gift books were hardly distinguished, giving a gift 

book the title ‘Gems of Prose and Poetry’ implied 

the giver’s commitment to refinement through 

literature and a presumption of the recipient’s taste 

for the pleasures of mental culture” (p. 284).  

printed on high-quality, hand-gilded paper and 

bound with leather or cardboard, and embossed 

with handmade, gilded imprints on the covers 

and endpapers to complete the look (Faxon, 1973) 

(Figure 1). Cindy Dickinson describes in her 1996 

article “Creating a world of books, friends, and 

flowers: gift books and inscriptions” that while the 

writings “were meant to engage the mind and heart, 

the physical presentation was intended to captivate 

the eye” (p. 54). These books took on personal 

meaning for the recipient as a gift:  it gave the 

reader an object of good taste meant for refinement 

and self-improvement through its sentimental and 

intellectual contents.

Whereas gift books consisted of contributed 

works from many writers that were often written 

for the specific gift book, annuals were compilations 

of previously published pieces in magazines and 

periodicals of the time, rarely with new works. Both 

gift books and annuals were meant to serve as gifts 

for special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas 

presents, and tokens of gratitude for teachers from 

their students (Faxon, 1973). Because gift books 

and annuals served the same purpose in this culture 

and do not differ significantly in content, I will refer 

to both gift books and annuals as gift books.

Along with gift books, another growing 

phenomenon during this period of the early 19th-

century was popular botany.  Elizabeth Keeney’s 

The Botanizers:  Amateur Scientists in Nineteenth-

Century America gives a highly detailed account of 

how botany developed throughout 19th-century 

America, which is marked by two groups that 

initially shared a common passion but diverged by 

the beginning of the 20th century.  These groups 

were “botanizers” and “professionals.” “Botanizers” 

enjoyed botanical study as a pastime and used it for 

means of social reform and personal improvement. 

“Professionals” contributed to the increasing 

wealth of information needed to understand the 

complexity of botany.  Modern historians view the 

botanical culture of the botanizers as a religious 

and valuable practice for positively cultivating the 

mind and soul, while they define professionals 

as those who focused on correspondence with 

other scientists and publishing new findings in 

professional journals (Keeney, 1972). The 19th-

century practice of the botanizers was popular at 

the same time of the gift book–publishing era of 

1825 to 1865.

Botany caught America’s attention by the 

traveling lecturers, social reformers, ministers, 

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

library, but the objects of the science are scattered 

over the surface of the earth, along the banks of the 

winding brooks, on the borders of precipices, the 

sides of mountains, and the depths of the forest” (p. 

14).

 According to Keeney, botany was a method 

for improving gentility, utility, and piety, and in 

consequence the practice of botany fashioned a 

more polished community (Keeney, 1972 p. 60). I 

argue that this incredibly powerful 19th-century 

idea of personal improvement  that Thompson, 

Bushman, and Keeney discuss is present in 

botanical literature in both practicing botany and 

reading gift books.

These two trends of gift book readership and 

botanical education experienced most of their 

popularity between 1825 and 1865. The participants 

of both were literate, came from the upper half of 

American society, valued gentility and culture, 

and had some means of education (Thompson, 

1936, pp. 3-4; Keeney, 1972, pp. 11-13).  Another 

elemental component of both enterprises was their 

suitability and attractiveness to women and the 

new opportunities they gave to women’s activities. 

In female private schools, catalogs from 1825 to 

1860 show an increase in the amount of botany 

courses offered, and a survey from pre-1830 and 

In the same way, developing refinement could 

be achieved by what popular botany inherently 

demanded—meticulous, diligent observation and 

critical thinking skills—and what it inspires in 

the intellectual and the “cultured” mind:  a poetic 

sensibility for the gentler aspects of nature, a sense 

of order, appreciation of God in general terms 

of protestant natural theology, exercise, and an 

appropriate scientific endeavor for young women 

(Keeney, 1992). Indeed, botany addressed the 

common and overwhelming 19th-century concerns 

of female invalidism, which was the thought that 

women have unusually delicate health and are 

more prone to illness than men (Wood, 1973). 

In a culture where being outside was considered 

hazardous for women, botany opened once-closed 

doors to explore nature in a socially acceptable 

manner (though women often traveled with a male 

supervisor to assist in collecting field specimens) 

(Keeney, 1992).  In her Familial Lectures on Botany 

(1845),  Almira Lincoln Phelps emphasized its 

suitability for females in this sense:

“Botany seems peculiarly adapted to females; 

the objects of its investigation are beautiful and 

delicate; its pursuits, leading to exercise in the open 

air, are conducive to health and cheerfulness. It is 

not a sedentary study which can be acquired in the 

Figure 2. Engraved plates. (A) Plate titled “The Passion Flower” from The Young Botanist, a botany manual 

from 1835. (Image in public domain.) (B) Plate titled “Kate in the Fields” accompanying story “Emily’s New 

Pastime” in the gift book The Dahlia, 1842. (Used with permission from the Library of Congress.)

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

History, botanical historian Beverly Seaton (1995) 

details in part how flower language has developed 

throughout the 19th-century. Seaton discusses the 

context of “flower books,” which includes a portion 

of gift books devoted to flower meanings. These 

flower books contain many illustrations and poems 

about certain flowers.  The author emphasizes 

the sentimentality and purpose of these flower 

books, even quoting an advertisement for The 

Rural Wreath; or Life Among the Flowers:  “It is not 

pretended… to treat upon the science of Botany… 

it is designed… as a Table Book for the Parlor, of 

a sentimental character…” (Seaton, 1995, p. 19). 

Seaton uses this advertisement to suggest that gift 

books and practicing botany were in two different 

spheres: the flowers have been historical objects of 

sentiment, and this new scientific study of plants 

will not change its sentimentality or perception by 

its readers.  

Although Seaton uses an important primary 

resource to show how gift books and botany 

use flowers in different contexts, I think there is 

unexplored territory where botanical literature 

resides in gift books. This is where Seaton emphasizes 

the supposedly impassable line of sentimentality 

and downplays the overall impact of pure botany 

past the language of flowers and their traditional 

use in story imagery and general ornamentation. I 

would argue that women botanizers walked in and 

out of these two areas of sentimentality and science, 

and they created a space of their own to consume 

botanical culture inside of gift books.  

From my survey of gift books and annuals, I found 

plenty of short stories, essays, and illustrations 

that show what I see as the interplay between a 

new botanical culture and the sentimental nature 

of gift books. I conducted my research in 2011 

and 2012 through the online resources of the 

Internet Archive (www.archive.org) and through 

Google Books (www.books.google.com) and in 

physical libraries at the American Antiquarian 

Society Library in Worcester, MA, USA and at 

the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. 

USA. I read 222 gift books available through these 

services and documented 50 gift books with the 

use of botanical literature in at least one of its short 

stories, essays, engravings, songs, or poems. Table 

1 presents a summary of all titles with examples 

of botanical literature. With a total of 977 titles 

published in the United States between 1826 and 

1865, Figure 3 demonstrates the rise and fall of gift 

book publishing and contextualizes the portion 

post-1830 course offerings for female seminaries 

and girls’ schools show an especially high increase 

in the percentage of these schools offering botany 

courses (Keeney, 1972, pp. 54-55). Plates from both 

botanical textbooks and gift books often portray 

young women actively engaging in botany (Figure 

2).

After a preliminary search through an annotated 

bibliography of gift books, I found that there are an 

abundance of gift books that incorporate various 

writings about plant life.  Looking from an aesthetic 

lens, many gift books have flowers, trees, and leaves 

found on bindings, titles, inscription pages, and 

embellishments throughout its contents. According 

to Ralph Thompson’s index of gift books, many 

of the books were dedicated to flowers. There are 

approximately 50 gift books found that are devoted 

to floral themes of the beauty of flowers and their 

meanings (Thompson, 1936, p. 6). However, many 

more gift books also have titles simply of plant 

names, including The MagnoliaThe Hyacinth, The 

Lily of the ValleyThe Rose Bud, The Iris, and The 

Evergreen.   I found approximately 130 titles of gift 

books from the 469 titles (books often republished 

under the same titles, totaling 977 books) listed 

in the Indices  that were plant related, with most 

of them named after wildflowers.  However, 

this ornamentation of title is not necessarily as 

botanically enriching as the stories about the 

morals of studying botany and embarking into 

botanical culture. 

BOTANICAL CULTURE AND 

BOTANICAL LITERATURE

The popular botanical literature of the botanizers 

used non-scientific language in its writing and 

used the common American early 19th-century 

literary style of sentimentalism to assert the virtues 

of botanical study. Sentimentalism is characterized 

by its emphasis of emotion over reason and action; 

it uses moral tales that juxtapose good and bad 

characters (both often children or young women) 

by rewarding the good character with true love or 

happiness while punishing the bad character with 

a doomed ending; and there is often a concluding 

statement written directly to the reader to 

emphasize the morality and applicability of the tale 

to the reader’s own life (Gutjahr, 2001). I argue that 

historians of botany have not recognized botanical 

literature when it is shrouded in this sentimental 

language and thereby miss an important connection 

to women’s botanical immersion in the works of gift 

books. For example, in The Language of Flowers: A 

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Table 1.  Summary of botanical literature in gift books and annuals, 1826-1865. Of the 222 gift books that 

were analyzed, 50 gift books contained examples of botanical literature. Titles are sorted into representative 

expressions of botanical literature. The multiple dates of The Atlantic Souvenir represent different, individual 

instances of botanical literature and do not represent re-published material.

Example of botanical  

literature within  

contents

Number of 

gift books 

with example

Titles

 

Depiction of young girl(s) who 

practice(s) or begins to practice 

botany as a hobby, written as 

heroine(s) of tale, may uplift a 

male downtrodden character by 

introducing him to botany

14

 

The Lily (1831), The Child’s Annual 

(1834), The Week-Day Book (1835), The 

Violet (1937), The Dahlia (1842), The 

Lady’s Book of Flowers and Poetry (1842), 

Rose of Sharon (1844), The Parlor Book 

(1845), The Hyacinth (1846), The Moss 

Rose (1850), The Amaranth (1850), The 

Young Ladies’ Oasis (1851), The Lily of 

the Valley (1858)

 

Description and image of a 

plant or garden with a statement 

encouraging botanical study

14

 

The Parent’s Cabinet (1832), Flora’s 

Interpreter (1839), Floral Emblems 

(1845), Boudoir Annual (1846), The 

Juvenile Gem (1846), The Lady’s Book 

of Flowers and Poetry (1846), Boudoir 

Botany (1847), The Literary Annual 

(1948), The Youth’s Sketch Book (1849), 

The Hyacinth (1851), The Lady’s 

Companion (1851) The Gift (1854), 

Book of Gems (1858), The Floral Offering 

(1859), Parlor Book (no date)

 

Sermon, poem or essay about 

the goodness of observing and 

studying plant life

11

 

The Book of Flowers, (1836), The Laurel 

(1837), The Parlor Book (1838), The 

Young Lady’s Companion (1839), The 

Charleston Book (1845), The Poetry of 

Flowers (1845), Love’s Garland (1848), 

The Winter Bloom (1850), The Magnolia 

(1847), The Hyacinth (1845), The Pearl 

(1853), The Ladies’ Keepsake (no date)

 

Positive account of a historical 

figure or protagonist of story, 

explicitly states studying botany as 

one of his/her accomplishments

11

 

The Atlantic Souvenir (1827, 1828, 

1829, 1830, 1859), The Casket (1829), 

The Pearl (1829), The Gift (1840), The 

Opal (1849), The Odd-Fellows’ Offering 

(1852), The Amaranth (1855)

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

Rosalie brought her herbier  (plant press)  to 

the market in her village, and women stopped by 

exclaimed over the botanical “treasures.” A wealthy 

father employs Rosalie to teach his daughters how 

to preserve wildflower specimens.  Their father slips 

a large sum of money into her plant press, and at 

the conclusion of the story, Rosalie finds the money 

and “stood, with burning cheeks, down which tears 

of gratitude and joy rapidly followed one another” 

(The Lily, 1831, p. 227). Sentimentality and the 

rewards of botanical interest are here in plain sight.

A second example is from The Hyacinth: or 

Affection’s Gift.  A Christmas, New-Year’s, and 

Birthday Present from 1846. From the preface, this 

gift book’s chief object is “intellectual and moral 

improvement” (The Hyacinth, 1846, p. ii).  In a 

short story called “A Visit to the Botanic Garden of 

St. Vincent,” the Maxwell Children visit the “West 

Indies” with their family.  Jane and Susan Maxwell 

are 10 and 12, and another family, the Pophams 

and their children, are also scheduled to visit at 

the same time.  However, these Popham children 

are not as well behaved as the Maxwells, with their 

parents missing the most important part of their 

education, which was “teaching their children the 

of gift books of which I read and searched for 

botanical literature. The elements of this botanical 

literature—still couched in an arguably required 

tone of sentimentality—fully recognizes the values 

of natural history and reflects upon young women’s 

increasing participation in botany.

CASE SCENARIOS OF BOTANICAL 

LITERATURE

 One example of botanical literature within gift 

books is a story from The Lily, published in 1831, 

with a story titled “Rosalie” by Derwent Conway. 

The character Rosalie has a passion for collecting 

and preserving plants:  

“…Neither was Rosalie’s pursuit the collection of 

insects—she was too tender-hearted for this; for, if 

she caught a beautiful insect, it was with the light 

touch of gentleness, only to admire its purple wing 

and let it go.  Rosalie’s pursuit was, to gather and 

preserve wild flowers, which she dried in so perfect 

a manner, that almost every charm remained with 

them but, beside this Rosalie had found the art of 

taking such perfect impressions from them, upon 

silk… that the grace—the tints of freshness—the 

fragrance of the flowers… continued to live in these 

impressions” (The Lily, 1831, p. 222).  

Figure 3. The rise and fall of gift books and annuals, 1826-1865. Data gathered from Faxon, 1973. There 

were 977 titles published over this time period, and this figure shows the number of gift book and annual 

titles published each year.

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author thanks the following people for 

supporting her endeavors with this project at 

Birmingham-Southern College: Dr. M. Schantz, Dr. 

C. E. Clifford, Dr. G. Smith and Dr. P. Van Zandt. 

The author is thankful for the useful comments 

from anonymous reviewers of earlier drafts of this 

work. The author also acknowledges the Harrisons 

Honors Scholars Program of Birmingham-

Southern College for funding travel to Washington 

D.C. and Worcester, MA, and thanks the staffs at 

the Library of Congress and American Antiquarian 

Society for their helpful comments and direction. 

LITERATURE CITED

BUSHMAN, RICHARD L.  1992. The refinement of 

America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

DICKINSON, CINDY. 1996. Creating a world 

of books, friends, and flowers: gift books and 

inscriptions, 1825-60. Winterthur Portfolio 

1231: 53-66.

FAXON, FREDERICK W. 1973. Literary annuals 

and gift books, 1823 - 1903.  Middlesex, England: 

Private Libraries Association.

GUTJAHR, PAUL C. 2001. Popular American 

literature of the 19

th

 century. Oxford: Oxford 

University Press.

THE HYACINTH:  OR AFFECTION’S GIFT.  

A CHRISTMAS, NEW-YEAR’S, AND 

BIRTHDAY PRESENT. 1845. Ed. Unknown. 

Philadelphia:  Henry F. Anners. 

KEENEY, ELIZABETH B. 1992. The botanizers: 

amateur scientists in nineteenth-century 

America.  Chapel Hill, NC: The University of 

North Carolina Press.

THE LILY: A COLORED ANNUAL FOR 

MDCCCXXXI. 1831. Ed. R. Schoyer. New 

York:  n.p.

PHELPS, ALMIRA L. 1845.  Familiar lectures on 

botany. New York: Huntington and Savage.

SEATON, BEVERLY. 1995. The language of flowers: 

a history. Charlottesville, VA:  The University 

Press of Virginia.

THOMPSON, RALPH. 1936. American literary 

annuals and gift books 1825–1865. New York: 

H. W. Wilson Company.

WOOD, ANN D.  1973. “The fashionable diseases”: 

women’s complaints and their treatment in 

nineteenth-century America. The Journal of 

Interdisciplinary History 4: 25-52.

virtues of obedience, truth, self-denial, humility, 

and gentleness” (p. 179). 

These badly behaved Popham girls named 

Lucy and Harriet (the same ages as the Maxwell 

children) are invited by the Maxwells to tour the 

St. Vincent Botanic Garden with Mr. Elliot, the 

head botanist. They scoff, reacting to the Maxwell 

girls’ invitation “with stupid surprise… as if the 

Popham girls could have said ‘what fun is there 

in hearing Mr. Elliot talk about plants?’” (p. 189).  

This story then demonstrates through their actions 

that the Popham girls are not cultivated enough 

to understand the value of learning new things, 

especially about the natural world.  The Popham 

girls instead sneak off to eat mangoes, staining their 

new beautiful dresses, like badly behaved children 

in the 19th century would (p. 193). The Popham 

girls were indignant at touring with a botanist:  “…

[T]he daughters thought that the Maxwells could 

not play; but they were quite mistaken—they could 

enjoy a game of fun as much as any boy or girl, but 

they had also a strong thirst for knowledge, and 

that, combined with true good-breeding, taught 

them that going off to play at such a time would 

have proved them to be very silly” (p. 193).  

The author concludes, “I can assure you my… 

readers, that neither talent nor genius of any 

description can ever be put to their best use without 

good principles and industry” (p. 197). There is 

a fitting resolution to where Harriet and Lucy 

Popham go and race in their flamboyant frocks and 

pale blue shoes in the mud, whereas Jane and Susan 

wear their humble white frocks and economic 

black shoes while obediently staying with their 

father mother and listening to conversation with 

Mr. Elliot the botanist (p. 196). Sentimental justice 

is served upon those who do not listen to botanists 

and subscribe to meaningful activities.

These are just two examples within 50 published 

titles where I observed botanical literature that 

asserts the goodness of botanical study and at times 

demonstrates the moral downfall of those who do 

not have the good judgment to recognize botany as 

a valuable activity (Table 1). With this manner of 

close inspection, we can find that there is indeed 

a space where gift books and botanical literature 

coincide.

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66

but not searchable. As the DVD-ROM opens, a 

menu appears with the plants organized into five 

classes: Lycopsida, Psilotopsida, Marattiopsida, 

E q u i s e t o p s i d a ,   a n d   Po l y p o d i o p s i d a . 

The gymnosperms are accidentally grouped under 

the Polypodiopsida, and the higher classification of 

these plants is in a perpetual state of revision, but 

neither of these detracts from the ease with which 

the slide collection is used. Orders are listed within 

each class, and clicking on an order opens a list of 

the families and the genera available. Clicking on 

an individual genus provides up to three choices: 

sporophyte anatomy, sporophyte morphology, and 

gametophytes, depending on what is available. 

Each choice then leads to thumbnails of the images 

available in the category. Only 12 thumbnails are on 

a page, so if there are more, one must open the next 

page of thumbnails. It is easy to navigate from image 

to image, from menu to menu, and from genus to 

genus. Furthermore, the authors encourage users to 

save and copy the images for educational purposes. 
While I was excited to review this DVD-ROM, I 

was also a little hesitant. Images for teaching are 

available from so many sources that I wondered 

whether this collection really would offer 

something different and worth the money. I was 

not disappointed. The gross morphology images 

are good, and for the most part, not unique to 

this collection. However, the anatomical images 

and gametophyte images make it a gem. They 

show some of the most meticulously prepared and 

Book Reviews

Developmental and Structural

Images of the Morphology and Anatomy of Seedless Vascular Plants  
and Gymnosperms ............................................................................................................66
The Life of a Leaf .............................................................................................................67

Ecological

The World of Northern Evergreens, 2nd ed. .....................................................................68

Economic Botany

The Beauty of Houseplants ..............................................................................................69
World Economic Plants: A Standard Reference, 2nd ed. .................................................69
Medicinal Plants and the Legacy of Richard E. Schultes .................................................70

Ethnobotany

Ginkgo: The Tree that Time Forgot ...................................................................................72

Systematics

Hardy Cypripedium: Species, Hybrids and Cultivation ...................................................74

Developmental and Structural

Images of the Morphology and 

Anatomy of Seedless Vascular 

Plants and Gymnosperms

R. Larry Peterson, Dean P. Whittier, and 

Lewis H. Melville

2011. ISBN-13: 978-0-9877172-0-7  

DVD. Can$34.95  

Canadian Science Publishing, NRC Research 
Press, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Many of us have built up impressive slide collections 

through our careers. We have photographed plants 

in our travels, we have prepared specimens both 

as part of our research and our teaching, and we 

have exchanged photographs with colleagues. 

Larry Peterson and Dean Whittier have gone a 

step further by making their personal collections 

available to a broader audience. They teamed 

with Lewis Melville to produce a DVD-ROM of 

their own images, supplemented minimally with 

photographs of slides from others. The collection, 

Images of the Morphology and Anatomy of Seedless 

Vascular Plants and Gymnosperms, is published by 

Canadian Science Publishing and available for less 

than $30.00 from Amazon. 

The collection spans the diversity of these 

plants with a catalog that is very easily browsable, 

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

excellently prepared sections I have ever seen. As 

these images are all of gymnosperms and seedless 

vascular plants, the utility of this collection is more 

suited to a typical comparative morphology or 

anatomy course than a systematic botany course or 

a broad survey of all botanical diversity, but it has 

gems to offer nearly all organismal botany courses. 

Many of the captions note how they were stained 

(usually phloroglucinol-HCl or Toluidine Blue 

O), and a large portion of images have arrows and 

letters indicating the location of specific structures. 

There are even a few SEM images. 
There are a few weaknesses with the DVD, but they 

only minimally detract from it. Most specimens are 

identified to species, but a few are only identified to 

genus, and none of the field images note locality. A 

further weakness is a lack of scale on many images. 

Additionally, some might find the coverage to be a 

bit sporadic. For example, within the ferns, there are 

many images of stem cross sections, but relatively 

few of sporangia. And while nine genera of cycads 

are represented, there are anatomical images of 

only  Cycas  and  Zamia. These weaknesses are all 

understandable, noting the origin and purpose 

of the collection itself, and I doubt any of them 

are particularly problematic for most practicing 

botanists. 
Overall, this is an excellent collection of images 

to use for teaching diversity and anatomy. The 

specimens are very well prepared, especially the 

anatomical sections, and I highly encourage anyone 

to consider using this as a supplement to their own 

slide collection or as an atlas for students to use in 

their study. 
–Douglas P. Jensen, Converse College, Spartanburg, 

South Carolina, USA

The Life of a Leaf

Steven Vogel

2012. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-85939-2 

Hardcover, US$35.00. 293 pp.

The University of Georgia Press, Athens, 

Georgia, USA

The title of this book is misleading. The dustjacket 

cover shows an unrolling crozier of a fern, yet 

ferns are never mentioned (and other herbaceous 

plants only rarely). And this is not a book devoted 

to the developmental life of a leaf. However, it is 

a very readable book about many aspects of the 

physiological life of a plant. The life of the leaf itself 

comprises a small part of the many explanations of 

the inner workings and environmental interactions 

of the mostly woody plants that they are attached 

to. Vogel clearly enjoys explaining such mechanical 

and physio-chemical interactions of the plant with 

the world as they ultimately affect the leaf, and he 

succeeds in offering a fascinating view of many of 

the physical processes that are necessary for leaf 

function. 
This book was not light reading for me as I had 

left physics formulas and experiments behind in 

my freshman year of college to pursue the wider 

world of plant ecology. However, for a botanist, 

plants can be used to provide insights into how 

physics control function. Vogel explains it all 

quite lucidly despite unavoidable references to the 

various laws and formulas of physics such as Fick’s 

law (diffusion) or the Hagen-Poiseuille equation 

(flow through pipes). Vogel thoughtfully relegates 

the more mathematically challenging details to 

footnotes, and makes the concepts come alive with 

illustrations and a series of images and diagrams of 

experiments and simple “do it yourself” projects. 

Vogel starts with light, and then talks about the 

various interactions of the plant with gases, water, 

and temperature (both hot and cold). 
Most often he addresses the subject through 

questions that a keen plant observer may have 

thought about but not known how to answer—such 

as why maple saps run in the spring or what the 

ultimate limit in height for a tree is and why, or 

why aspen leaves quake, or why there are so many 

different leaf shapes and folding patterns, or why 

very rounded droplets of water form on some leaves 

but not others, or why some trees fall in a storm 

while others are uprooted. Of particular interest 

to those who work in hurricane-prone areas is a 

chapter on the various ways that woody plants and 

their leaves deal with wind, including descriptions 

of wind tunnel experiments (very challenging to do 

with large plants). He also provides several physical 

explanations for how plants combat herbivory.
Undergraduates in a botany course would 

certainly benefit from several of the explanations 

and illustrations of subjects often only briefly 

mentioned in basic texts, and the whole book 

would be an excellent supplement to the usually 

much drier textbooks used in plant physiology 

courses. But I also think that structural engineering 

students would benefit from reading this book, as 

it provides living examples of so many elements of 

our built environment.

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In his introduction, Vogel says that the book is 

about the interactions of a plant with the physical 

world—“a world that limits them, one that they 

can’t much alter, but of which they can take all 

sorts of subtle advantages.” It reads as though the 

author of a book called “Life of the Human” were to 

describe the lives of people living on an upper floor 

of a very tall apartment building by describing all 

of the physical processes that result in their being 

able to survive in that habitat, such as the design 

of the windows for light access, how the cooling 

and heating systems work, how water and energy 

are brought up, why the building doesn’t blow 

over, what the transportation and digestion of food 

entails, and how wastes are carried down through 

the building and away. After reading and learning 

so much from Vogel’s book about the plants I’ve 

studied for so long, I’d look forward to a similar 

book by structural engineers using humans as the 

lens through which to view physical processes.
–Joanne Sharpe, Sharplex Services, Edgecomb, 

Maine, USA

Ecological

The World of Northern Evergreens, 

2nd ed.

E. C. Pielou

2011. ISBN-13: 978-08014-7740-9

Paperback, US$19.95, 168 pp. 

Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 

USA

The World of Northern Evergreens is a guide to the 

natural history of the boreal conifer forests of North 

America. Conversational but botanically accurate, 

complete but not overladen with scientific trivia, it 

is meant for the naturalists in all of us. Indeed, these 

days, it is a rare thing to find a professional botanist 

who can actually see the forest for the trees, so very 

specialized are we all. 
This handy paperback is not really a classical 

field guide in the sense of having color plant 

identification photos with telegraphic descriptions 

and a waterproof binding. No, it is meant for those 

who yearn for a more holistic view of the northern 

evergreen forest, and want to see both the forest and 

the trees. How did the boreal forests come about 

during the Ice Age? What kinds of conifers make up 

the forests? How do conifers live and grow? What 

sorts of the broadleaved trees can you also find in 

these forests? These topics form the focus of the 

first six chapters of the book.
I have to confess that I was excited to find the 

answer to a question that has plagued me all of my 

botanical life. While I can still recite the reasons for 

the upward pull of water in tracheids that I learned 

in Intro Botany—root pressure, capillary action, 

water-molecule cohesion, and transpiration—these 

factors seem to come up short next to the majestic 

heights attained by conifers. (The tallest tree in 

Canada is a 95-m high Sitka spruce in Carmanah 

Walbran Provincial Park.) Pielou finally satisfied my 

curiosity with a more detailed explanation from the 

point where plant science meets molecular physics. 

After a germinating seed pulls up water a short 

distance by capillary action from the soil through 

its root hairs, the water column continues to flow 

upwards through each of the new, lengthening 

tracheids as an unbroken column, staying intact by 

intermolecular attraction as the tree grows. Ah, I 

said to myself, another mystery of the natural world 

solved.
Seriously, though, what is I find particularly 

pleasing about Pielou’s approach in guiding the 

reader through the boreal forest is how the conifer 

trees take their rightful place as the major players 

in this northern biome.

 

Angiosperms, fungi, 

parasites, insects, mammals, birds, and even fire 

are explained in reference to the trees and forest. 

These subsidiary topics make up the second part of 

the book, along with concluding chapters on forest 

biogeography in northern North America, and on 

global warming and its effect on the boreal forests.
E. C. Pielou is one of the great plant scientists 

of our time, a mathematical ecologist who has 

produced six scholarly textbooks on numerical 

ecology, ecological diversity, and biogeography, 

as well as several popular books. The World of 

Northern Evergreens is actually the second edition 

of the original that was published in 1988 and can 

take its place proudly on the bookshelf alongside 

other popular books written by Pielou on glaciated 

North America, the naturalist’s guide to the Arctic, 

freshwater, and the energy of nature. This second 

edition of The World of Northern Evergreens differs 

from the first by describing the contrast between 

conifers and angiosperms in the boreal forest and by 

broadening the book’s scope with discussions about 

the forest floor, the geographical extent of different 

forest ecosytems, and the dire consequences of 

logging and climate change on northern conifers. 

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I think that most botanists may find The World of 

Northern Evergreens a bit too “lite,” but Pielou aims 

to explain forest ecology to “naturalists, hikers, 

backpackers, canoeists, cross-country skiers,” as she 

says in the preface. Still, I can also see how the book 

can be put to good use as supplementary reading 

in a non-majors botany or biology course. Even for 

a majors course, The World of Northern Evergreens 

would do a good job of integrating botanical and 

ecological information on plants, trees, and forests 

to end up with something that is more than the sum 

of its parts. For all readers, accompanying Pielou on 

her tour of the natural history of the boreal forest 

will be instructive and interesting, and, as depicted 

on the book’s cover, as stirring and refreshing as 

a walk among the giant evergreens when the sun 

breaks through the early morning mist.
–Carole T. Gee, Steinmann Institute, Division of 

Paleontology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Economic Botany

The Beauty of Houseplants

Tom Gough and David Longman

2011. ISBN-13: 978-1-889878-30-0

Cloth, US$22.95. 118 pp.

Botanical Research Institute of Texas, Fort 

Worth, Texas, USA

The  Beauty of Houseplants is an attractive coffee 

table book  with nice quality photographs of 

houseplants that will be familiar to most readers. 

The common and scientific names are given for 

approximately 70 houseplants, along with a single-

page description of the proper care and optimal 

conditions for growing each particular species. Data 

on the geographic origin and the natural history are 

also provided, and the information on each plant 

species seems to be accurate. There is also a section 

on choosing plants for each room of the typical 

home and another section on common pests that 

includes recommended treatments for pests and 

diseases. A history of how these houseplants were 

discovered as well as information on propagation 

make this book interesting. I found this attractive 

book fun to read and believe it will be useful to 

amateur botanists, gardeners, and anyone who uses 

plants to decorate the home.
–John Z. Kiss, Department of Biology and Graduate 

School, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Missis-

sippi, USA

World Economic Plants: A Standard 

Reference, 2nd ed.

John H. Wiersema and Blanca León

2013. ISBN-13: 978-1-4398-2142-8

Cloth. US$149.95. 1300 pp.

CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, Boca 

Raton, Florida, USA

The first edition of World Economic Plants, published 

in 1999, provided basic reference data for over 9500 

vascular plant taxa of commercial importance. This 

second edition provides additional data on a total 

of 12,235 economically important vascular plants. 

Levels of detail vary from entry to entry, but for the 

majority of the taxa the most common synonyms, 

common names in up to 20 languages, economic 

importance, and geographical distributions are 

provided. Native, naturalized, adventive, and 

cultivated distribution ranges are distinguished. 

Most of the included taxa are used as ornamentals 

(5361), medicinal plants (2997), gene sources 

(1907), food (1725), timber (1253), and animal 

food (929). About 18% (2136 taxa) are classified as 

weeds and about 13% (1589) as vertebrate poisons. 

Not only economically useful but also economically 

harmful species are included (e.g., 22 species of 

Cuscuta and 10 species of Orobanche). An index 

of common names in English and, to some extent, 

in 26 other languages represents almost half of 

the volume (562 pages). Nearly 200 taxonomists 

and agricultural specialists reviewed entries for 

individual families. Taxonomy and nomenclature 

are up-to-date. For example, Acer is in Sapindaceae, 

Sambucus in Adoxaceae, and the widespread weedy 

taxon usually called Lantana camara L. is correctly 

named as L. strigocamara R. W. Sanders.
How complete is this reference? To get an idea, I 

looked at two large genera, Acacia  and  Pinus. A 

total of 53 Acacia species are included, 12 of them 

correctly classified as weeds. There are 23 Australian 

Acacia  species currently recognized as invasive 

(spreading in areas where they were introduced 

by people; Richardson and Rejmánek, 2011). Six 

of them are not among the 53 species treated in 

this reference. The coverage for pines is much 

better: all 24 Pinus species currently recognized as 

invasive are included among 81 species covered in 

this volume. From 25 naturalized Melastomataceae 

(Meyer and Medeiros, 2011), only 12 are included. 

However, the omitted species are, in general, not 

common. There are two general shortcomings I can 

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think of: First, it would be useful to add a short life 

form characteristic for each taxon. Some of the taxa 

are not very common, and one can only guess their 

life form from characteristics of their economic 

importance. Second, the distinction between 

“naturalized” and “adventive” is not explained. 

This would be desirable because the second term 

may have several meanings (Pyšek et al., 2005). 

Also, references to particular monographs where 

individual cultivars are described would be very 

helpful (e.g., Auders and Spicer, 2012). One may 

argue about minor details in the geographical 

distribution characteristics (Abutilon theophrastii 

may be native, not naturalized in China; more is 

currently known about original distributions of 

Chrysophyllum cainito and Cocos nucifera; Petersen 

et al., 2012; Gunn et al., 2011), but, in general, 

distributional data seem to be accurate.
Several dictionaries and checklists of economic 

plants were available before the publication 

of this volume. The amount of information in 

this reference, however, supersedes all previous 

attempts. It is a monumental achivement, and I am 

sure that it will be heavily used for many years to 

come. 
–Marcel Rejmánek, University of California, Davis, 

Davis, California, USA

Literature Cited

AUDERS, A. G., and D. P. SPICER. 2012. Royal 

Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Conifers. A 

Comprehensive Guide to Cultivars and Species

Two Volumes. Royal Horticultural Society, 

Kingsblue Publishing Limited, Nicosia, Cyprus.

GUNN, B. F., L. BAUDOUIN, and K. M. OLSEN. 

2011. Independent origins of cultivated coconut 

(Cocos nucifera L.) in the Old World Tropics. 

PLoS ONE 6(6): e21143.

MEYER, J.-Y., and A. C. MEDEIROS. 2011. 

Melastomes. In: D. Simberloff and M. Rejmánek 

(eds.), Encyclopedia of Biological Invasions, 458–

462. University of California Press, Berkeley, 

California, USA.

PETERSEN, J. J., J. M. PARKER, and D. 

POTTER. 2012. Origin and close relatives of 

a semi-domesticated Neotropical fruit tree: 

Chrysophyllum cainito (Sapotaceae). American 

Journal of Botany 99: 585–604.

PYŠEK, P., D. M. RICHARDSON, M. REJMÁNEK, 

G. WEBSTER, M. WILLIAMSON, and J. 

KIRSCHNER. 2005. Alien plants in checklists 

and floras: Towards better communication 

between taxonomists and ecologists. Taxon 53: 

131–143.

RICHARDSON, D. M., and M. REJMÁNEK. 2011. 

Trees and shrubs as invasive alien species: A 

global review. Diversity and Distributions 17: 

788–809. 

Medicinal Plants and the Legacy of 

Richard E. Schultes

Bruce E. Ponman and Rainer W. Bussmann, 

eds. 

2012. ISBN-13: 978-0-9848415-2-3

Paperback, US$24.95. 138 pp. 

The William L. Brown Center at the Missouri 

Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

This short volume comprises the proceedings of 

the Society for Economic Botany’s “Botany 2011 

Symposium Honoring Dr. Richard E. Schultes” 

held at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Presuming 

that being at the symposium would have been more 

enjoyable and more interesting that simply reading 

about it, I guess this little book is the next best 

thing to having been there. I agreed to read and 

review the book because I was aware that Richard 

E. Schultes had been a prominent ethnobotanist, 

but I knew little more than comments I had heard 

from the late Dr. Bernard Lowy, a mycologist and 

ethnobotanist in the Department of Botany at 

Louisiana State University. I now regret having 

missed the original symposium, but am delighted 

with having agreed to review the book. The eleven 

papers include two that do not deal with Schultes 

per se, but rather with directly related topics. 

One deals with stand protocol for gathering 

ethnobotanical data and socioeconomic variables, 

and the other with biodiversity as a resource. In the 

context of the symposium, these were appropriate 

additions, but the real importance of this book is 

found in the papers, which provide a glimpse into 

the life, career, and personality of Schultes.
The symposium was the first to honor Schultes and 

was held on the 10-year anniversary of his death, 

which is very appropriate; however, as soon as I 

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read the wonderful preface by Rainer W. Bussmann, 

I was struck with the notion that I wished there 

had been a similar symposium honoring Schultes 

during his lifetime. I wished this not only because it 

was immediately clear that Schultes deserved such 

an honor while he was alive to enjoy it, but also 

because presumably more of his colleagues would 

have been alive and physically able to participate 

in the event. It is sad that there had not been an 

earlier symposium, and it is equally sad that some 

of the authors allude to Schultes’s important and 

impressive collections sitting “all but neglected in 

some attic at Harvard.” Alas.
Jumping back to the topic, the real importance of 

this book is getting to know Richard Evans Shultes. 

All of the authors who discuss Schultes offer 

similar “pictures” of the man. Because Schultes 

was the focus of the symposium and this book, 

here are some examples (all taken from the book) 

of how he is described by those who knew him 

and worked with him: “one of the most important 

ethnobotanists of the 20th century”; “most iconic 

colleague”; “was the first ethnobotanist to step 

off the academic cloud and to respect and value 

the deep traditional knowledge his indigenous 

counterparts held”; “a most unusual person, a 

great thinker, and an individual who viewed life 

as an opportunity to carry out the dreams of his 

early youth”; “he could read, write, or speak 10 

languages including two Amazonian languages”; 

“[a] great man, whose intelligence, courage, sense 

of humor, vision, and accomplishments were so 

inspiring”; “well known for insisting on the correct 

spelling and pronunciation of Latin, Greek, and 

any other language”; “perfectly groomed”; “always 

conservatively and correctly dressed, rather more like 

a Victorian professor”; “[he] propelled ethnobotany 

and economic botany to resolve concrete 

problems”; “lifelong mentor and continuing 

source of inspiration”; “highly supportive”; “a 

field botanist and a Harvard man through and 

through”; “one of the ‘last Victorian explorers’”; 

“a complex scientist”; “an ethnobotanist…plant 

taxonomist, an economic botanist, a conservation 

botanist, and an ethnopharmacologist”; “incredibly 

supportive of his students”; “the great man”; and 

“a walking encyclopedia.” His colleagues noted 

his “inspiration, discipline, and vision”; “humility, 

sense of humor, respect for indigenous peoples, 

love for Amazonia and Columbia”; and “his dry 

sense of humor.” 

This book is a wonderful first encounter for those 

people who, like me, did not know much about 

Schultes. An added delight of the book is reading 

the wonderful excerpts from letters written to 

Schultes by his mentor Dr. Oakes Ames. Not only is 

it interesting to read some of the fatherly advice that 

Ames offered, but reading his satirical description 

of how many students choose their topics and 

develop their theses or dissertations is a true 

delight. Less amusing are the frequent comments 

on the lack of concern for the preservation of the 

tropical forest in particular and biodiversity in 

general. Similarly, the unnecessary loss of Schultes’s 

rubber tree seed collection at a time when disease is 

once again threatening natural rubber production 

is a painful example of how the value of collections 

is ignored until those lost collections are truly 

needed. Similarly, there is an all too true reference 

to the loss of trained botanists despite the fact that 

the importance of plants to humankind remains 

undiminished from that day, long ago, when green 

algae conquered the land and gave rise to the 

land flora upon which we and kindred animals 

all depend! Despite these unpleasant truths duly 

reported in some of the papers, this is a wonderful 

little book because Richard Evans Shultes was a 

wonderful person. I strongly recommend it and 

am happy to report that it won a James A. Duke 

Excellence in Botanical Literature Award from the 

American Botanical Council in February 2013.
The wonderful preface by Rainer W. Bussmann 

(mentioned above) includes a poem in Spanish 

written for the symposium in spring 2011 by 

Isidoro Cabrera (who had been a field assistant 

for Schultes in the 1950s). I thought a translation 

might have been provided for those us who have 

not mastered as many foreign languages as did 

Schultes. My colleagues, Dr. Juan Manuel Lopez-

Bautista of the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, 

and Dr. Joseph V. Ricapito of Louisiana State 

University, Baton Rouge, and I offer our translation 

to close this review:

TO RICHARD EVANS SCHULTES

IN MEMORIAM

 EXCELSIOR

Indefatigable explorer
Of the extensive Amazonia
Who worked with passion
Studying its harmony.

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His life, truly endangered,
In torrential rivers
With its impetuous twists and turns
In winters and summer times.

Wise, with strong character
Subjected to many trials
Challenging even death
Gave to science new plants.
He recorded his experience
With sound observations
For the scientists
Of future generations

Under the deep jungle
Which enclosing its secrets
Unknown and fertile
Covers part of the earth.

He wrote his history
Forever into the future
And on his glorious pedestal
Remains unharmed and safe.

 Russell L. Chapman, Professor Emeritus and 

Founding Dean, School of the Coast and Environ-
ment, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 
Louisiana, USA

Ethnobotany

Ginkgo: The Tree that Time Forgot

Peter Crane

2013. ISBN-13: 978-0-300-18751-9

Hardcover, US$40.00. 384 pp. 

Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecti-

cut, USA

Ginkgo is an artifact of the prehistoric past, 

noteworthy for its symbolism, e.g., endurance, 

survival, persistence. Inspired by the historic ginkgo 

that has thrived at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 

since the 1760s, distinguished botanist Sir Peter 

Crane explores the evolutionary history of ginkgo 

from its origin through its spread, drastic decline, 

and eventual resurgence. 
Motivated to prepare this volume by his appreciation 

for the portraits of economically important 

plants by economic botanist Charles Heiser in an 

accessible style of science writing for the popular 

audience (references cited below), Sir Peter Crane 

highlights the cultural and social significance of 

Ginkgo: its medicinal and nutritional uses, its power 

as a source of artistic and religious inspiration, and 

its importance as one of the world’s most popular 

street trees. Sir Peter Crane—Missouri Botanical 

Garden Trustee, former Head of Kew Gardens, 

and current Head of Forestry at Yale—stated in his 

presentation about Ginkgo at the Ridgeway Center, 

Missouri Botanical Garden on 11 March 2013, that 

his position at Yale School of Forestry influenced 

his choice of topic. Writing began while Sir Peter 

Crane was director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, 

Kew, continued at the University of Chicago, and 

was completed at Yale; much of the writing was 

prepared in Seoul in the summers of 2009, 2010, 

and 2011, surrounded by Ginkgo trees.
In his prologue, Sir Peter Crane calls the book a 

biographical sketch. His narrative incorporates 

botany, medicine, and geological sciences, crossing 

the globe culturally and historically. Weaving his 

life experiences, his observations of Ginkgo during 

his travels, his career at Kew, visits to the New York 

Botanical Garden, journeys in East Asia  (China, 

Japan, South Korea, etc.), this volume popularizes 

botany for serious lay readers as well as informing 

botanist colleagues.
One can’t help but write about Ginkgo using clichés: 

a most distinctive tree… unique among seed 

plants… the earth’s oldest… unchanged for more 

than two hundred million years… a living fossil… 

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link to the age of dinosaurs… it survived the great 

ice ages as a relic in China… beloved for its elegant, 

fan-shaped leaves with veins radiating out into the 

leaf blades, often gilded for jewelry… appreciated 

for its edible nuts, and venerated for its longevity. 

Ginkgo is an ancient Chinese tree—sacred to the 

Chinese and Japanese and grown for centuries in 

their temple courts—that has been cultivated and 

held sacred for its health-promoting properties. A 

long-lived shade tree, it is resistant to fungus disease 

and insect pests that afflict most other ornamental 

trees. Once thought to be extinct, Ginkgo was re-

discovered in China in the mid-1700s, and is now 

dispersed throughout the world, having lived on 

earth for over 150 million years.
Coverage of the ethnobotany of Ginkgo will appeal 

to a diverse readership. It draws from a wide range 

of sources, reflecting the author’s broad experiences. 

We learn that the Department of Plant Sciences of 

Cambridge University chose a logo that surrounds 

a ginkgo leaf with a stylized double helix of DNA, 

reflecting the site of the old Cavendish Laboratory 

where the structure of DNA was first worked out; 

we welcome a well-deserved tribute to Weimar, 

Germany, one of the historic preservation centers 

of cultural Ginkgo memorabilia; Frank Lloyd 

Wright, whose architecture used natural forms that 

blended with the environment, built his own home 

and studio in Chicago’s Oak Park around a Ginkgo 

tree; the architect worked around it as he extended 

his home, and that house museum today features a 

Ginkgo bookshop. 
Despite the fact that this book will have popular 

appeal, the treatment is far from superficial. 

The volume features a 27-page bibliography, 20-

page index, and an additional 50 pages of notes 

supplementing the text. Illustrations that enrich 

the book are unique, e.g., a Buddhist shrine at the 

base of an ancient Ginkgo; a stylized ginkgo leaf 

carved into the planks of a wooden bridge and 

painted yellow, marking the way to the great ginkgo 

at Yongmunsa Temple, South Korea; the portrait of 

Ginkgo painted on board made from Ginkgo wood 

and framed with young Ginkgo branches, made by 

C. Kato for Tokyo University in 1878; stalactite-

like outgrowths bound with prayer ribbons 

demonstrating the Ginkgo’s link with fertility. Each 

chapter opens with a select proverb, verse, or text 

written by a noted naturalist, shedding light on the 

author’s personal philosophy. 
Some readers might wish that the ethnopharmacology of 

Ginkgo biloba L. was described more exhaustively. 

There is substantial experimental evidence to 

support the view that G. biloba extracts have 

neuroprotective properties under conditions such 

as hypoxia/ischemia, seizure activity, and peripheral 

nerve damage, as reviewed by Smith et al. (1996). 

One of the components of G. biloba, ginkgolide B, is 

a potent platelet-activating factor (PAF) antagonist. 

Although the terpene fraction of G. biloba, which 

contains the ginkgolides, may contribute to the 

neuroprotective properties of the G. biloba leaf, it 

is also likely that the flavonoid fraction, containing 

free radical scavengers, is important in this respect. 

Taken together, the evidence suggests that G. biloba 

extracts are worthy of further investigation as 

potential neuroprotectant agents. Extracts of ginkgo 

leaves contain flavonoid glycosides (myricetin 

and quercetin) and terpenoids (ginkgolides, 

bilobalides) that have been used pharmaceutically, 

exhibiting reversible, nonselective monoamine 

oxidase inhibition.
It was tantalizing to find sesame listed in the 

Appendix, “List of Common Plant Names Used in 

the Text and Latin Equivalents” (pp. 279–283), but 

since that entry was not included in the index, it left 

this reader disappointed to search unsuccessfully 

for those relevant passages.
–Dorothea Bedigian, Research Associate, Missouri 

Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Literature Cited

HEISER, C. 1993. The Gourd Book. University of 

Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, USA.

HEISER, C. 1969. Nightshades: The Paradoxical 

Plants. W.H. Freeman, San Francisco, 

California, USA.

HEISER, C. 1976. The Origin and Development 

of the Cultivated Sunflower. University of 

Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, USA.

HEISER, C. 1992. Of Plants and People. University 

of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, USA.

HEISER, C. 1990. Seed to Civilization: The Story 

of Food. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 

Massachusetts, USA.

SMITH, P. F., K. MACLENNAN, and C. L. 

DARLINGTON. 1996. The neuroprotective 

properties of the Ginkgo biloba leaf: A review of 

the possible relationship to platelet-activating 

factor (PAF). Journal of Ethnopharmacology 

50(3): 131–139.

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Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

with line drawings, paintings, and about 100 small 

(and not always good) color photographs. The 

book under consideration here is the first to cover 

Cypripedium in a large, lavishly illustrated format 

that is as pleasing to the eye as it is satisfying to the 

orchid lover, instructive to potential growers, and 

informative for the scientist.
Many orchid books contain sections on history and 

orchid biology. These sections are often shallow, 

repetitive from book to book, and unnecessary. 

In this book, the introduction (pp. 1–15) covers 

these topics, but here the information is fresh, new, 

necessary, and informative because so little of it is 

known and/or has been collected in one place. In 

places the information is qualified by “probably,” 

but this is inevitable and should serve as a challenge 

to orchid scientists and graduate students. There is 

much in need of research in this genus. Grab it! 
Most of the book is devoted to taxonomy of 

species (pp. 16–113) and natural (pp. 114–117) 

and artificial (pp. 118–427) hybrids. Descriptions 

include nomenclature and information about size, 

distribution, and habitat. Habitats are indicated 

by red areas on dark gray maps. High-quality 

photographs of entire plants, immediate habitats, 

and flowers accompany every description. 

Unfortunately, no data are provided about the 

magnification factors of photographs. 
Carson Whitlow, an American orchid grower, was 

the first to register a Cypripedium hybrid in 1987. He 

was followed by Werner Frosch (a retired German 

civil engineer specializing in telecommunications), 

one of the authors of this book who made his first 

hybrid in 1989 and produced many more after that 

(pp. 118–120 and http://www.w-frosch.de).
Only eight pages (pp. 139–146) are devoted to 

cultivation and propagation. The information 

presented on these pages is entirely sufficient to 

be instructive for anyone who may wish to grow 

these orchids. Unfortunately, the only information 

about a culture medium for seed germination is 

that it contains “high levels of various sugars.” This 

is completely insufficient, a very serious omission, 

and a major fault of the book because temperate 

terrestrial orchids are not easy to germinate from 

seed and propagate clonally from explants taken 

from mature plants. If media have been formulated 

for seed germination and micropropagation of 

Cypripedium  they should (no, not “should,” but 

“must”) be published in detail.
Pages 147–148 are devoted to a glossary that is 

Systematics  

Hardy Cypripedium: Species,  

Hybrids and Cultivation

Werner Frosch and Phillip Cribb

2012. ISBN-13: 978-1-84246-464-9

Hardcover, US$74.00. 156 pp. 

Kew Publishing, Royal Botanic Gardens, 

Kew, Richmond, United Kingdom

Cypripedium flowers are every bit as beautiful 

as those of the related diandrous genus, 

Paphiopedilum—possibly more so. However, they 

are not common in orchid collections because 

they have a reputation of being difficult to grow 

(perhaps), are not easy to obtain from legal sources 

(yes), may be hard to hybridize (no), and have not 

attracted enough attention (certainly).
One of five genera of so-called slipper orchids, 

Cypripedium  is circumboreal in distribution and 

extends from Alaska to as far south as Guatemala 

in the New World; from Siberia to the Himalayas, 

southwestern China, and Japan in Asia; and from 

Northeast England to the Urals in Europe. 
The genus Cypripedium consists of 46 species, 32 of 

which are found in China and about 12 in North 

America. Current classification divides the genus 

into 13 sections. Two of these sections, Aculia 

and Californica, consist of a single genus each, the 

North American C.  acaule and C. californicum

respectively. The largest section, Cypripedium

contains 19 species with the type being C. calceolus.
The first color illustration of a species in the 

genus (of C. calceolus) is by Conrad Gesner (who 

was also the first to draw orchid seeds), whereas 

the earliest description of a slipper orchid is by 

Rembet Dodoens (1568). However, the genus 

has received limited attention over the years. 

What may be the first taxonomic treatments of 

the group were by Ernst Hugo Heinrich Pfitzer 

(1846–1906) in 1889 and 1903, and Robert Allen 

Rolfe (1855–1921) in 1896. Two books published 

at about the same time and now primarily of 

historical interest treated Cypripedium as a genus 

that combined Paphiopedilum and Cypripedium 

(Desbois, 1888; Pucci, 1891). An extensive book-

length consideration was published 100 years later 

(Cribb, 1997). This review of the genus, although 

informative, suffers from being illustrated mainly 

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75

Plant Science Bulletin 59(2) 2013

sufficient, but contains an error of omission. It 

fails to mention that “pod: commonly used term 

referring to a seed capsule” may be common, but 

is wrong.
No book is free of typographical errors. A glaring 

one in this book is Cypripedium×colombianum

which should be Cypripedium×columbianum 

because the name refers to British Columbia in 

Canada, not the country of Colombia.
Altogether this is a beautiful and informative 

book that deserves to be highly recommended. 

Cypripedium  plants are not easy to find. Legal, 

artificially propagated, well-grown plants are 

available from very few reliable and legal sources. 

One source that I visited for several (very cold) 

days and can vouch for is Hengduan Mountains 

Biotechnology Ltd. in Sichuan, China (http://

hengduanbiotech.com/, holger.perner@gmail.

com). It is operated in Chengdu, Sichuan, by the 

German Cypripedium expert Dr. Perner Holger and 

his wife Wenqing.
–Joseph Arditti, Department of Developmental and 

Cell Biology, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, 

California, USA

LITERATURE CITED

CRIBB, P. 1997. The genus Cypripedium.  Royal 

Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, United 

Kingdom, and Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 

USA.

DESBOIS, F. 1888. Cypripedium, Selenipedium, 

and Uropedium. Imprimerie F. Meyer-van Loo, 

Ghent, Belgium.

PFITZER, E. 1889. Cypripedilinae.  Page 82 in A. 

Engler and R. Prantl (eds.), Die Natuerlichen 

Pflanzenfamilien, Vol. II, 6. W. Engelman, 

Leipzig, Germany.

PFITZER, E. 1903. Cypripedium. Pages 28–42 in 

A. Engler (ed.), Das Pflanzenreich, Vol. IV, 50, 

No. 12, Orchidaceae Pleonandrae. W. Engelman, 

Leipzig, Germany.

PUCCI, A. 1891. Les Cypripedium et genres affines. 

Imprimerie L. Niccolai, Florence, Italy.

ROLFE, R. A. 1896. The Cypripedium group. Orchid 

Review 4: 327–334, 363–367.

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76

Alfred Russel Wallace’s 1886-1887 Travel Diary: The North American Lecture 
Tour.

 Smith, Charles H. and Megan Derr (Eds.) 2013.  ISBN 978-0-9567795-8-8 (Paper 

£21.00) 258 pp.  Siri Scientific Press, 2 Progress Street, Rochdale, OL11 3BH, United 
Kingdom.

American Herbal Products Association’s Botanical Safety Handbook, 2nd Edition. 

Gardner, Zoë and Michael McGuffin (Eds.). 2013.  ISBN 9781466516946 (Cloth 

US$119.95) 1072 pp.  CRC Press. 6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300 Boca 
Raton, FL 33487.

Common Mosses of the Northeast and Appalachians.  McKnight, Karl B., Joseph R. 
Rohrer, Kisten McKnight Ward & Warren J. Perdrizet.  2013.  ISBN 9780691156965 

(Paper US$24.95) 392 pp.  Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, NJ, 
08540-5237.

Florida Wildflowers: A Comprehensive Guide.   Taylor, Walter Kingsley.  2013.  

ISBN 978-0-8130-4424-5  (Paper US$29.95) 567 pp.  University Press of Florida, 15 
NW 15

th

 St., Gainesville, FL 32611-2079.

Freshwater Diatom Floristics of the late Eocene Florissant Formation, Clare’s 
Quarry Site, Central Colorado, USA.
  Benson, Mary Ellen and J. Patrick Kociolek.  

2012.  ISBN 978-3-443-57049-1 (Paper €69.00) 136 pp.  J. Cramer, Gebrüder 
Borntraeger, Johannesstrasse 3A, 70176 Stuttgart, Germany.

The Hunter-Gatherer Within: Health and the Natural Human Diet.  Brock, Kerry 

G. and George M. Diggs, Jr.  2013.  ISBN 978188987840-9. (Paper US$19.95)260 pp.  
Botanical Research Institute of Texas Press,  1700 University Drive, Fort Worth, TX 
76107-4441. 

Plant Organogenesis.  

De Smet, Ive (Ed.) 2013, ISBN 978-1-62703-221-6 (Cloth 

US$139.00) 356 pp.  Humana Press, 

233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013.

Plants of the Kampong: A Guide to the Living Collection. Schokman, Larry M.  

2012.  ISBN 0-915809-06-0 (Spiral US$49.95) 385 pp., National Tropical Botanical 

Garden c/o The Kampong, 4013 S. Douglas Road, Coconut Grove, Florida 33133.

Stress Biology of Cyanobacteria: Molecular Mechanisms to Cellular Responses.  

Srivastava, Ashish Kumar; Amar Nath Rai, Brett A Neilan (Eds.).  2013.  ISBN 

9781466504783  (Cloth US$159.95) 394 pp. CRC Press 6000 Broken Sound Parkway 
NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487.

Virus-Induced Gene Silencing: Methods and Protocols.  Becker, Annette (Ed.).  

2013.  ISBN: 978-1-62703-277-3 (Cloth US$119.00) 221 pp.  Humana Press, 233 
Spring Street, New York, NY 10013.

Books Received

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Plant Science Bulletin

Featured Image

 

1st Place Triarch Botanical Images 

Student Travel Awards

Ricardo Kriebel

The New York Botanical Garden

 

Flower of Miconia arboricola 

(Melastomataceae: Miconieae) in late 

anthesis.

Among high elevation shrubs and trees of the family Melastomataceae 

in Central America and the Andes, a group comprised of species in 

Miconia section Cremanium tend to have small white flowers with 

broad anther pores. After observing these plants in their habitat it 

became apparent that the flowers in this example species Miconia 

arboricola start with the stamens erect and as time passes the stamens 

bend inward and fall on or near the stigma. This image was helpful to 

document the strong angle in the middle of the filaments that appears 

to allow for this to happen. In addition, the image documents the 

relatively short style and the broad anther pores. Most Melastomataceae 

have yellow anthers with small anther pores, exerted styles and are buzz 

pollinated. It is possible that species such as M. arboricola have evolved 

totally white flowers with shorter styles, filaments that bend inwards 

and broad anther pores to allow for self pollination, assuring seed 

production in the absence of bees. Indeed it is known that there are 

fewer bee species at high elevations and flies and butterflies have been 

observed visiting relatives of M. arboricola with very similar flowers. 

Short styles are not as uncommon as is thought in the Melastomataceae 

and in technical terms they represent the loss of herkogamy. Herkogamy 

is the separation of sexual parts (stamens and stigma) in space within 

flowers. As fascinating as this sounds, because styles are usually white 

and skinny they continue to be overlooked and thus herkogamy or its 

loss also continues to be overlooked. I hope that this image, which is the 

first to my knowledge of a Scanning Electron Micrograph of a whole 

flower in the family Melastomataceae, will call attention to a reality: 

plants have style!

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basic science dealing with the 

study & inquiry into the form, 

function, development, diversity, 

reproduction, evolution, & uses 

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within the biosphere.

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Plant Science 

Bulletin

                                                                                   Summer 2013 Volume 59 Number 2

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Incoming President  

Botanical Society of 

America

Dr. Pamela Diggle

University of Colorado in 

Boulder

Plenary Speaker 

Dr. Nalini Nadkarni

University of Utah

Regional Botany Lecture

Dr. David White

Loyola University New Orleans

Kaplan Memorial Lecture

Dr. Elena Alvarez-Buylla

University of California, 

Berkeley

Annals of Botany Lecture

Dr. Tia-Lynn Ashman

University of Pittsburgh

Featured Speakers for Botany 2013 

Register now...for the most relevant scientific conference of the summer!

Early registration deadline - July 1

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