The Case of the Florida Nutmeg: Empowering Research on Endangered Plants. Kate Crooks and the Botanical Society of Canada: How BHL Helped Uncover the Work of a Long-lost Female Botanist. “Towards the latter end of November, 1860, a proposal was made to organize a Botanical Society.
There being no such Institution in operation in Canada, it was thought that much benefit might result from its establishment.” So begins the first volume of the Annals of the Botanical Society of Canada, published in 1861 following the Society’s founding in Kingston, Ontario in 1860. The Botanical Society of Canada’s botanical garden at Queen’s College, Kingston. Queen’s University Archives V28-B-Summ-2.1. The Society—founded by members of the Queen’s College (now Queen’s University) natural history department—welcomed men and women as equal members and met regularly in Kingston. Undated Daguerreotype portrait of Catharine McGill Crooks. This flora included several plant species Crooks recorded in the southwestern Ontario communities of Cambridge, London and St. Anna Soper, librarian, artist, writer. “I asked myself, ‘How come I’ve never heard of Kate Crooks?’ Meadowfoam and Cluster-Lilies: Empowering Research on Rare Plants Through Open Access to Biodiversity Literature.
April 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.
Organizations around the world have commemorated the occasion by participating in the global Earth Optimism movement — an initiative spearheaded by the Smithsonian to “turn the conservation conversation from doom and gloom to optimism and opportunity”. Throughout 2020, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and our partners are joining the movement by sharing conservation success stories from and made possible by the BHL collection. Follow our blog for conservation stories — past and present — and visit our website for more information and to explore our Earth Optimism book collection. Baker’s meadowfoam (Limnanthes bakeri), which grows in wet meadow and on the shallow margins of freshwater marsh in Little Lake Valley, Mendocino County, California.
Photo credit: Robert Preston. “The large lowland wetland ecosystem found in the Little Lake Valley, if not unique, is quite rare,” asserts Dr. . [1] Oakes, Harry and Maureen Doyle. The John Torrey Papers: Increasing Accessibility with Full Text Transcriptions in BHL. Drawing of John Torrey by Sir Daniel MacNee.
From the collection of Sir William Hooker, The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, England. Since July 2016, the papers of taxonomic botanist John Torrey (1796-1873) have been the focus of a digitization and crowdsourced transcription project at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). Digitizing and Transcribing the John Torrey Papers, organized in coordination with the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, was created in an effort to digitize and make virtually accessible the correspondence of John Torrey and his colleagues, specifically letters received by Dr.
Torrey. Myrtle: The Provenance and Meaning of a Plant – Biodiversity Heritage Library. Provenance can be defined as the chain of ownership of any type of object from its creation to the present day.
The Smithsonian’s Material Culture Forum recently held a lively session of presentations and discussions on this topic, with speakers from across the Institution: the National Zoo; Natural History Museum scientists and researchers in anthropology and paleobiology; archivists of World War II-era material; and curators from the National Museum of American History, the National Air & Space Museum, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. There were many other subject specialists (such as a horticulturist) who could have participated, given time and world enough, as ownership history is a crucial matter and a commonality in the work of Smithsonian staff.
The provenance of a botanical specimen was recently presented to a world-wide audience, even if they did not quite realize it. Myrtle growing in Sardinia, Villacidro (photo supplied from Wikimedia Commons) For the Love of Cider: Phenotyping Apples with Modern Techniques and Historic Texts – Biodiversity Heritage Library. Cider-making is currently undergoing a revival in the United States.
Production and consumption of cider is increasing rapidly, and the global cider market is projected to reach $16,252 million by 2023.[1] Cider (sometimes called hard cider) is a fermented beverage made from apple juice. A wide range of apple cultivars, or cultivated varieties of domesticated apples (Malus x domestica), are used in cider production. One of the oldest surviving cider apple varieties is the “Foxwhelp”, which originated in England several centuries ago. The earliest recorded reference to the cultivar comes from John Evelyn’s Pomona from 1664.[2] Though still used for cider making, an aura of mystery surrounds this cultivar, because many apples labeled as “Foxwhelp” today are not true to type.
The Herefordshire Pomona – Biodiversity Heritage Library. It is a glimpse into a lush diversity of the past….and into possibilities for a resilient future.
Explore Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum on BHL. The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University has contributed a century of their publications to BHL as a part of the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project, including: Bulletin of Popular Information (1915-1940) and Arnoldia (1942-2016).
Nancy Rose, an arborist with a background in woody plant research and horticulture extension, served as Arnoldia’s editor from 2008 to February 2018. Before retiring, she shared with us some reflections on the their contributions to BHL (and recommended some good reads for us to dig into). “The Arnold Arboretum’s first serial publication, started in 1911, was the Bulletin of Popular Information, a newsletter published during the growing season that provided visitors with information on plants with current ornamental interest (e.g., flowers, fruit, fall foliage). Lloyd Library and Museum.
Over the course of the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature (EABL) project, contributing organizations have shipped material to Internet Archive scanning centers around the country.
A few have scanned their own material, and a few more have used third-party commercial services. One EABL contributor did things a little differently. Heterostyly Before Darwin: Tracing Early Observations of Primula Floral Morphs. In 1860, Charles Darwin had an epiphany.
This was not an epiphany on the origin of species, as his monumental publication on the subject had been published one year earlier in 1859. This epiphany, which Darwin shared in a letter to his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, was that flowers in the genus Primula display two distinct forms which differ in the length of the pistil's styles and the height of the stamen's anthers.
The condition of having multiple, distinct floral forms within a species is called heterostyly. Darwin coined the term distyly to describe the presence of two forms, or morphs. These morphs are called pin and thrum flowers, with pin flowers possessing long styles and low anthers and thrum flowers possessing short styles and high anthers. Darwin published further research on heterostyly fifteen years later within the monograph Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species (1877). Dr. Gilmartin's interest in Primula heterostyly isn't restricted to genetics. A “Botanist’s Botanist” : The Field Books of Timothy Plowman. Herbarium / Title Herbarium / Title Variants: Alternative: American herbarium.
Native American useful plants, notes accompanying collection 1899. By: Lesley ParillaCataloger, The Field Book ProjectSmithsonian Libraries In honor of Native American Heritage Month, we would like to highlight a field book that documents Native American knowledge of natural resources. The field book was created by William J. Fisher, who lived in southern Alaska from 1879 until his death in 1903.
Fisher's notebook documents his final years collecting and looks at the relationship between the Alutiiq (Aleut) and their plants by recording medicinal and food uses for 48 specimens. Poetic Botany: A Digital Exhibition Celebrating the History of Botany. ‘Queen of the dark, whose tender glories fade In the gay radiance of the noon-tide hours.’ ‘That flower, supreme in loveliness, and pure As the pale Cynthia’s beams, through which unveiled It blooms, as if unwilling to endure The gaze, by which such beauties are assailed.’
These elegant lines are quoted in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (v. 62, 1835) as part of the description for the Night-blowing (Blooming) Cereus (Selenicereus grandiflorus) and serve as an artful conveyance of the species' nocturnal blooming. But these lines represent more than just a whimsical representation of plant behavior. George Engelmann’s Botanical Notes. By Randy SmithMetadata librarian and Senior image technician, Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden The Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG), a partner in the Biodiversity Heritage Library Field Notes Project, has spent the last year digitizing the notebooks of George Engelmann. George Engelmann assisted Henry Shaw, MBG’s founder, in establishing the Garden’s research arm and corresponding library.
He arrived in Belleville, Illinois, sometime in the 1830s but soon moved to St. Louis where he set up practice as a physician. What's Up with Seed Catalogs in BHL? We've spent a fun-filled week exploring the history, art, and science of gardening with our Garden Stories event. Fun with Seeds. The Southern Cultivator. By Patrick Randall Community Manager Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature. We Need Books to Identify New Species. The Science of Identifying Life on Earth There are an estimated 8.75 million species on earth, of which almost 2 million have been described. Scientists classify about 18,000 new species per year, meaning that it may take hundreds of years to create a complete species catalog.Early explorers documented their observations and data about the world’s biodiversity in historic fields notes and published literature.
These discoveries provide a foundation for modern scientific research and fueled the drive to systematically catalog life. The Birth of Microscopic Plant Anatomy. There are groundbreaking biodiversity works that most of us are familiar with, including Systema Naturae and On the Origin of Species. Then there are other works that, though just as monumental for their impact on scientific knowledge, are less universally known than others.
One such book is Anatomy of Plants, a seventeenth century work by Nehemiah Grew. Many people have probably never heard of this work, and most probably have no idea what contribution it made to scientific discovery. Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker’s Antarctic Journal. Celebrating Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker at 200. By Cam Sharp Jones and Virginia Mills Project OfficersThe Joseph Hooker Correspondence ProjectThe Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew On the 30th June 1817, Joseph Dalton Hooker was born in Halesworth, Suffolk. A Pot of Basil in Every Household. By: Julia Blakely Special Collections Cataloger Smithsonian Libraries In Johann Prüss’ late 15th-century herbal, Ortus Sanitatis (Garden of Health), a bushy basil plant is portrayed growing in a decorative container.