botanists-from-the-united-states

"As our race has advanced in civilization, owing its progress to a more and more rigid division of labor, with the attendant and ever increasing specialization by which each piece of the great machine does its work more perfectly, yet more and more completely loses its direct touch with all but a few of the other parts, most men have lost much of what was at first common to all; and this, perhaps, quite as true as of a knowledge of plants as of anything else."

"The development of any department of science is closely connected with its power of interesting men."

"A disease of es which caused big losses to the growers occurred last June in Texas, and in August and September in Nebraska. The disease is first noticed in green full-grown tomatoes, but it is hard to detect at this stage unless close attention is given to the stems. When the fruits are green they show a little brown spot or a dark ring around and under the stem. As the fruit is shipped green, the packers may overlook this condition very easily. When the tomatoes reach their destination they have become a pink color, the disease has advanced and shows more plainly, for the stem end has then become a dark brown. The inspector notices this and, although there is not much external evidence of disease, he breaks the fruit open and finds a hard brown center. The rot is usually down the center and may extend from stem end to blossom end but sometimes it takes an oblique course and includes a portion of the seeds, darkening them also. There is no slime or ooze. Bacteria occur in great numbers in the tissues. The same organism was isolated from both the Texas and Nebraska material and the disease was reproduced in green and ripening fruits in the greenhouse, using pure cultures."

"The South Carolina outbreak of lettuce-rot occurred in , the second largest lettuce-growing district on the eastern coast of the United States, with a reputation of growing the finest quality of on the entire eastern coast. The South Carolina disease may be either a stem or a leaf infection ... In an early stage the plants are a lighter green color than the healthy ones; later the head may show rot through the center or only on the top. A general wilting of the head may occur with or without visible spots or rot. In some cases rotting is rapid; in others the heart remains sound, while the outer encircling leaves are in a bad state of decay. The diseased plants are not firm in the soil, the stem is brittle, and can be easily broken off at the surface or a little below the surface of the soil. In an early stage of disease the stem when cut across shows a blue-green color; in a later stage it is brown."

"A bacterial leafspot disease of the occurs widespread in the Eastern States. It is mostly a disease but occurs occasionally on plants grown out of doors. The organism was isolated from diseased plants received from different sources and the disease reproduced on the leaves of healthy plants. Warm, moist conditions with poor ventilation are necessary for the organism to infect the leaves extensively. Care in regulating the temperature, air, and moisture conditions of the greenhouse and in giving plenty of space to plants grown out of doors will go far toward preventing the appearance of the disease and toward curing it when it is present. All spotted leaves should be removed and destroyed. Very sensitive varieties should be discarded. The name Bacterium pelargoni is suggested for the organism causing the disease."

"The evidence from and fossils indicates that , , and probably the other , are cylinders of slowly building on a sinking or ; has occurred in and younger time, and there were three major periods of emergence during which the coral rocks were weathered subaerially."

"To better understand how far various grains were transported by wind, she and Allen Solomon (then at the ) set a network of pollen traps near and s in the to match the pollen rain with different . These data were used to develop a pollen-vegetation calibration that still informs studies in the region and beyond."

"My had developed a craving to have his own land to experiment with a new idea: '. We needed, he said, to find out what the original had been like in our area and what we could do to bring it back. That, and his desire to have a special place to hunt, led to his purchase in the mid-1930s of an abandoned farm along the , in the —"." He specifically chose the Shack land because of its isolation and because this farm was a land of impoverished soil that had become an agricultural failure. In his view this was sick land that needed restoration; it needed to see again the native species that once must have grown here. It was one instance of his larger vision of the countrywide importance of land health and fostering the community of life."

"The idea of an out-of-door laboratory was conceived in response to the need, in the study of ecology, of bringing together the observations made in y carried out in a glass laboratory and observations made in the open. This required a laboratory with situations which would make available the plant associations of the surrounding territory and their transitions, and in which further studies could be made upon the plant members and the environmental factors. Such an out-of-door laboratory affords a place in which the results of the in-door laboratory can be checked, by experiment, against those prevailing under natural conditions. … President and the Board of Trustees of accepted this idea and granted to the Department of Botany,in 1920, the use of some four acres of land for this project. … It has since become popularly known to the students as the Dutchess County Ecological Laboratory."

"1. The initial formation of the is indicated by a general swelling of the outer wall of the . 2. The swelling is produced if the physical resistance of the wall is overbalanced by the higher which is maintained on the inside of the wall. 3. Further swelling followed by growth takes place at the less resistant portion of the wall. 4. This region bears no relation to the position of the nucleus. 5. The wall of the root hair is composed of two parts, an inner membrane of cellulose and an outer membrane of calcium pectate. 6. The presence of this membrane, together with the fact that the soil particles are held to it by a pectin mucilage, accounts for the high efficiency of the root hair as an absorbing organ."

"With potent new analysis tools, researchers could capture a species’ unique genetic fingerprint to trace its origins and evolutionary history. Once s for grapes became available, Meredith and her team at quickly harnessed the power of DNA fingerprinting to identify classic vinifera varieties and resolve longstanding questions about their murky history. Meredith and grad student John Bowers even surprised themselves in 1996 by revealing a mixed heritage of white () and red () grapes for . And in what many call her crowning achievement, Meredith—whose place in the wine pantheon was secured by a 2009 induction into the Vintners Hall of Fame—confirmed that , long claimed California’s “historic” native, is the genetic twin of the nearly extinct Crljenak Kastelanski grape variety, once grown along ’s n Coast."

"... I started to contact other grape geneticists in labs all over the world—initially 10 or 15 different research groups in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, South Africa—and proposed that we form a consortium to develop these s. Each lab would try to develop a few markers and then contribute those markers to the general pool that we would share. We formed the . After a couple of years we had developed several hundred markers. We were able to make some interesting discoveries by just using a couple of dozen markers, because that is enough to prove statistically whether one variety is related to another variety. But once several hundred markers existed it was then possible to develop a of grape, a project that was really just starting around the time that I retired from . The highlight of my career was using these s to reveal genetic relationships among classic s and to then elucidate from that something about the ."

"1. The region is a mountain range of . 2. The of the region is of the beech-maple-hemlock type. 3. The successions may be classified as: I. s: (I) trap slope successions; (2) trap cliff successions; (3) successions. II. s: (I) ravine successions; (2) brook successions. 4. The terms initial and repetitive seem to be better than primary and secondary in conveying the idea of often-repeated successions such as are found in a frequently deforested area. 5. The east-facing and the south-facing trap slopes have the same successions. seems to present a temporary climax. 6. The trap cliff doubtless presents an initial succession in which the east and north cliffs have similar first stages, but the second stage on the east is ' and ', while on the north it is '. 7. The combination of weathered rock with on the north talus slope affords a better opportunity for the climax formation than does rock alone on the talus east of . 8. Repeated deforestation has prevented all but a small area from reaching the climax."

"In North America, perhaps had as much to do in fostering the beginnings of agriculture as any other of plants. In Agaveland anyone can plant and grow agaves. All that is needed is to dig up or pull up a young offset and bury its base in moist or dry soil, with or without roots, wherever it is wanted. If it does not strike root and grow the first season, the chances are that it will the next. (1965) has made a strong case that such transplants were the primary agricultural subjects of the . Compared with seeds, the shift of useful plants from the open wild site to camp or village was more obvious and direct with transplants, and their care, protection, and culture were simpler. The hunting and gathering tribes had good reason to regard agave with special attention, because agave supplied them with food, fiber, drink, shelter, and miscellaneous natural products. Protection may have been one use, for when planted around a cottage, the larger species make armed fences, a common practice in modern Mexico."

"' is unique in many ways. Endemic to the of Mexico and the United States, its broad, persistent, heavy leaves are unlike any of its associates. Its large edible seeds contain about 50% oil, which is directly used as a and as a . The oil has excellent qualities for many industrial and medicinal uses. Chemically it is a liquid wax and by is easily converted to a hard white wax. ’s singular characteristics as a , however, present many problems facing its development as a cultivated plant."

"In , s are scattered like gems in an arborescent matrix. They grow mainly upon the rocky slopes of hills and mountains and are generally lacking in the valleys and on the plains. Hence, the distributional pattern is islandlike. Compared with the massive populations of agaves in and in the , they are very sparse in Sonora. However, they are distinctly characteristic of the succulent component in the vegetation of our America deserts and arid regions ... … Desert species exist with about 5 inches or less annual precipitation and can endure rainless years; montane species receive 30 or more inches annual precipitation."

"Howard Gentry was an inspirational figure from an heroic age of arid plant science — exploring from horseback the of the in the 1930s, working on the wartime t in the 1940s, travelling around Iran in search of gum s and around the deserts of Arizona and California in search of in the 1950s."

"Methods to introduce s, either from or other organisms, into existing are now well-established and permit the targeted modification of existing grape cultivars. This may provide a means to reduce disease losses and usage in classic cultivars without otherwise changing their wine attributes."

"The word “ecology” may seem to have rather suddenly intruded upon the world’s consciousness circa 1970, but at , Edith Adelaide Roberts, professor of plant science, was popularizing the term—and studying the interrelationship between organisms and their environment—half a century earlier. In addition, it was Roberts who proved (along with fellow Plant Science faculty member Mildred Southwick, in a 1948 paper presented to the ) that young green and yellow plants are the original source of . “This being so,” the New York Times reported, “fish livers can no longer be regarded as the main source of vitamin A.” Later generations who have been spared doses of , preferring instead to get this vital nutrient from carrots or , have reason to be grateful to Roberts."

"The students, working with a biology professor, Meg Ronsheim, were resurrecting a that was cultivated by botany professors and students in the 1920s, long before native species became a rage, and then forgotten for decades. The garden was the life’s passion of Edith A. Roberts, a professor of plant science who, after being hired by in 1919, set out to document every species of plant in . Over the next three decades, she and colleagues transformed the four-acre plot into what would be called the Dutchess County Outdoor Ecological Laboratory. Dr. Roberts, a farmer’s daughter from New Hampshire who earned a doctorate in botany from the , was in the forefront of a group of women who blazed trails in academia, just as the suffrage movement won them the right to vote."

"' has a number of common names, one of which is monkshood, so called because of the enlarged that resembles a hood, under which the rest of the floral parts are hidden. Roots were used as poison bait for wolves, thus accounting for another popular name, wolfsbane. All aconitums have poisonous roots, leaves, and stems and warnings concerning their poisonous properties have been sounded since the late 1500s."

"The new program at the (UGA) consists of plant evaluation and new crop introduction. The definition of “new crop” used in the program is taxa that are new to the floriculture/landscape industry. New introductions are first evaluated in the for ease of propagation and placed in the trial gardens the subsequent spring. In the past, commercial growers were allowed to gather cuttings of new material and sell them under the names given to the new plant. The market determined the success or failure of the plant. Examples of successful plants which resulted from this “Open Grower” concept included ' ‘Homestead Purple’, ' ‘Margarita’, and new selections of ' ('). No charge for cuttings was applied and no funding returned to the department. However, an excellent working relationship between the department and industry developed."

"Our new headquarters were at the laboratory at , outside of , right next to 's . He was always going out alone on horseback by our building and I always just missed seeing him."

"are tiny insects with rasping-sucking mouthparts, gradual metamorphosis. They feed by macerating surface layers of plant cells and sucking up the juices. They belong to the order Thysanoptera ..."

"Dogs sometimes disturb roses by burying their bones too near the roots, but in general rose thorns provide adequate self-protection."

"Hand pick the s where you can and use bait. A barrier of lime on the soil around trees will keep snails away. s are named for their sooty black spore mass. They are important on grains and grasses, not too common on . Corn and onion smuts appear in backyard gardens."

"In 1933, Dr. Westcott bought a garden in , as a laboratory. She described it as "equipped with all the common plant diseases." Home studies and experiments with plant problems led to a career as a plant doctor, and for many years, she tended gardens in the New York area. The first of her seven books,The Plant Doctor, published in 1937, was based on her experiences. She wrote on rose growing, plant diseases and pests. The Gardener's Bug Book appeared in 1946 and is undergoing its fifth revision. Dr. Westcott was a contributor to many publications. During World War II, she lectured on pest control for s. Dr. Westcott was known for her annual Rose Day Open Houses for hundreds of visitors at her gardens in Glen Ridge and, later, at her retirement home in Springvale in ."

"' I always enjoy a good story, and the history of the blue false indigo, ', makes for good reading. This blue-flowered species was the first plant to be subsidized by the English government in the 1700s, the farmers in the colonies of Georgia and South Carolina grew it as a row crop for the British Empire to supplement true indigo ('). It was a good substitute, but not of the quality of true indigo, and thus came to be known as false indigo, or wild indigo. The false indigos come in three main colors—blue, white, and yellow—but new hybrids and selections are bringing this fine plant into mainstream gardening."

"Raspberry Horntail, Hartigia cressoni (). One of the , a western species, injuring young shoots of , , , and . Bright yellow-and-black females appear in April and May to insert eggs with a curved point under epidermis of tender tips of host plants."

"A major task for any , , , , or applied forensic specialist is to determine the correct identification of a plant sample in a rapid, repeatable, and reliable fashion. “s,” i.e., standardized short sequences of between 400 and 800 s long that in theory can be easily isolated and characterized for all species of plant on the planet, were originally conceived to facilitate this task (Hebert et al., 2003). By combining the strengths of , , and , DNA barcodes offer a quick and accurate means to recognize previously known, described, and named species and to retrieving information about them. This tool also has the potential to speed the discovery of the thousands of plant species yet to be named, especially in s (Cowan et al., 2006)."

"s are native primarily in the American tropics from the in Central Mexico to the in , including the . A curious disjunct group of six species of Heliconia separated by thousands of miles from most other species is found in the Old World tropics (Kress, 1985, 1990a). The center of diversity of the genus is found along the northern Andes (Colombia and Ecuador) extending into southern Central America (Panama and Costa Rica; Andersson, 1989). Most species inhabit moist or wet regions, but some are found in seasonally dry areas. Although heliconias attain their most luxuriant vegetative growth in the humid lowland tropics at elevations below 500 meters, the greatest numbers of species (many locally endemic) are found in middle-elevation (800-1,500 meters) rain and cloud forest habitats. Few species occur above 2000 meters."

"are reported for all but two major divisions of extant s ... No epiphytes have been reported in the or the . Ten percent of all species (23,466 species) are epiphytic. ... The s account for the great majority of epiphytic taxa at all hierarchical levels. ... The s are depauperate in epiphytes: only 0.5% of the species are epiphytes."

"The majority of species, , and of s are found in the of the Earth. Therefore it is no surprise that the greatest diversity of flower morphologies and plant-pollinator interactions are also present in the tropics. Endress has amassed a splendid display of examples and illustrations of this tremendous diversity. ... ... There are many references to the classic works of , , and , as well as many lesser known but important European workers of the nineteenth century."

"text at archive.org (See .)"

"I cannot help looking back to those early days spent in with a longing which amounts to nostalgia, for the place which seemed a fairyland to a youth in his twenties has acquired a halo to the man in his seventies. To a young man interested in nature it was then about the loveliest spot on the entire globe—a fairyland in which the quiet-voiced Javanese came and went softly. You did not hear their bare feet on the roadways; their costumes were the colors of autumn leaves that faded into the landscape; their meals of rice and fish and many kinds of vegetables were eaten noiselessly from wooden bowls, without a clatter of china; their thatched houses of bamboo seemed like playthings scattered picturesquely under the and trees in the tiny s; and the voices of children playing with crickets on the clean-swept dooryards mingled with the cooing of the in bamboo cages which hung from the overarching tips of bamboo poles beside the ."

"The miserable, money loving wretches that these Yankees are: they even have the impudence to paint their advertisements of s and s upon the and the rocks that jut from the ."

"In the field of medical science, the advent of the and have discredited the “” methods of a generation ago which lacked the factor of controls. The treated patient got well, but where was the untreated one? Maybe that case recovered also. And how about the hereditary set-up of resistance? The value of identical twins as offering material for control in medical experimentation is just beginning to be appreciated."

"To one has seen the vast storehouses of utterly unknown material in the great jungle world below the , botanizing anywhere in the though fascinating is rather lacking in excitement ..."

"might be called the botanical Mecca of the English-speaking world."

"Never to have seen anything but the is to have lived on the fringe of the world."

"There were five of us children, and the setting of our childhood was quite ideal. The and it contained all of the elements necessary to develop happy, healthy boys and girls. There was a brook teeming with water life; s to tap when the sap ran fresh in the spring; and great trees which stood here and there on the campus and were, in some way, my childhood companions. My earliest recollection is of myself as a toddler searching for their nuts in the frosty grass."

"... one of my playmates, a boy of my own age, broke his leg while riding in the buggy with his father. His foot slipped from the dashboard and caught in the wheel. It was a , and our family physician shook his shaggy head as he said, “I fear that he cannot live.” The boy’s leg was amputated immediately. Later word came that gangrene had set in. And then the funeral. To the medical profession of those days, a fracture which broke the skin, technically a compound fracture, meant almost certain death. Modern methods of disinfection were still unknown. In fact, it was not until seven years after this that I first heard the word “,” when my classmate painted for me a world filled with bacteria, floating particles in the air, microscopic plants. Only those of us who lived before the days of can realize what an amazing thought it seemed when first presented to the world."

"Waite’s profound research into the nature and cause of the of the was spectacular and had far-reaching results. He had an incubator full of the pear blight organism, Bacillus amylovorus, and could produce the blight at will by dipping a needle into the culture and inserting it into the growing tip of a pear branch. He believed that bees carried the blight from infected flowers to healthy ones. Doctor Maxwell, a little country doctor of , challenged Waite to prove this on his trees. The results were disastrous! A short time after Waite inoculated the flowers on a few trees, Doctor Maxwell suddenly realized that the bees had spread the blight all over his orchard. He sent a frantic telegram to Washington, but there was little that could be done, for the disease had made such headway that Waite could not stop it. Waite next went South and there made another far-reaching discovery. In an immense orchard of s, the trees mysteriously failed to bear fruit. Waite managed to solve the problem, and returned to Washington in a great state of excitement. His discovery was that the Bartlett pear flower is practically sterile to its own pollen. Hence he found that the only fruit was on trees along the outer edge of the big orchard. He interpreted this phenomenon as indicating that the bees from near-by orchards of other varieties had brought foreign pollen and pollinated the first trees they came to. Basing his experiments on this assumption he proved that it was correct. It was a very real discovery, a precursor of what has now become a generally accepted principle of horticulture, the principle of mixed plantings."

"As I sit under a giant tree on my terrace, the setting sun casts long shadows on the grass, and every now and then a yellow leaf falls to the ground. I see in memory the little red figs lying scattered around under a tree at the entrance to a planter’s house far up on the slopes of the , in the island of , not far from the village of Karang Pandan. Seventeen years ago, Marian and I spent a week-end in a little hotel there, and from the verandah we watched the rain storms come and go, while in the distance the smoking peaks of three volcanoes broke the horizon. Karang Pandan was a quiet, solitary place which the had chosen for his summer palace. Although the palace was closed, we could see the Sultan’s favorite tree in the patio, with every bunch of fruits in a little wicker basket that had been woven about it to keep away the es."

"... this story of the Kampong, Fairchild's home at the edge of the Florida tropics, is ... concerned with ... the introduction and cultivation of the many tropical and exotic fruits which he, as plant explorer extraordinary, had uncovered in his travels around the world. ... It is a readable book, full of reminiscencses and personalities, both plant and man. ... ... Fairchild has the rare faculty of making his readers share his experiences. The numerous photographs add to the book, giving form to the fruits with which he was worked, and the men—, , , and , to name a few—with whom he has been associated."

"There was hardly a fence left standing all the way from to . The fields were trampled down and the road was lined with carcasses of horses, hogs, and cattle that the invaders, unable either to consume or to carry away with them, had wantonly shot down to starve out the people and prevent them from making their crops. The stench in some places was unbearable; every few hundred yards we had to hold our noses or stop them with the cologne Mrs. Elzey had given us, and it proved a great boon. The dwellings that were standing all showed signs of pillage, and on every plantation we saw the charred remains of the and packing-screw, while here and there, lone chimney-stacks, " 's Sentinels," told of homes laid in ashes."

"There were strange contrasts in the little microcosm which then constituted the . Some of the men seemed to be relics of a former era, still unaware of the tremendous strides which had taken place in the use of the microscope. In vivid contrast to these fossils, were such men as , whose laboratory adjoined mine up under the old mansard roof. Late one afternoon, long after most of the Department had gone home, I heard Theobold Smith’s light step behind me and his enthusiastic voice calling, “Fairchild, would you like to see the cause of ?” After months of work, he had just discovered the parasite in a drop of steer’s blood which he had taken from a cattle tick. It was a momentous discovery, the first of its kind. I had heard much about the terrific losses of cattle on the plains. Whenever herds of domestic cattle were driven from Texas to the slaughter houses in Chicago and Kansas City, they died by the hundreds if their paths happened to cross a trail made by the longhorn Texas cattle of the plains. Apparently the native Texas cattle were not susceptible to the fever themselves, but were passing it on somehow to their less fortunate brethren."

"... by far the most active agent in the dissemination of both s and seeds is man. This is the frequent result of intention on his part, in the introduction and cultivation of new grains, fruits, and s, and he works to the same end unconsciously and often to his great detriment by the transportation of the s or seeds of pernicious weeds in the dirt clinging to s and s, and the mixture of impurities with his seeds through ignorance, carelessness, or unavoidable causes. This mode of , however, is purely artificial, and except in the case of a few weeds that have adjusted themselves to the conditions of cultivation, is not correlated with any special adaptations in the plants themselves, many of our most widely distributed weeds, such as the , the , and the , possessing very imperfect natural means of dispersal."

"Not all s evolve at the same rate, some early species were actually so well adapted that they competed successfully against newer species. are so well suited to life in oceans, lakes, and streams that they still thrive even though most features present in modern, living algae must be more or less identical to those present in the ancestral algae that lived more than 1 billion years ago. Features that seem relatively unchanged are relictual features (technically known as , formerly called primitive features). Like the algae, s are well-adapted to certain habitats and have not changed much in 250 million years; they too have many relictual features. Modern conifers are similar to early ones that arose around 320 millions years ago. The most recently evolved group consists of the flowering plants, which originated about 100 to 120 million years ago with the evolution of several features: flowers, broad, flat, simple leaves, and that conducts water with little friction. The members of the (sunflowers, daisies, and s) ... have many features that evolved recently from features present in ancestral flowering plants. These are derived features (technically known as , formerly called advanced features (i.e., they have been derived evolutionarily from ancient features). One recent (highly derived ) feature in the asters is a . The terms "primitive" and "advanced" are avoided in that they imply inferior and superior."

"Ancestral presumably had abundant, fibrous, heavily , similar to that present in the relictual, leaf-bearing genus '. During the evolutionary radiation of the subfamily , diverse types of bodies and woods arose. Several evolutionary lines have retained an abundant, fibrous wood: all wood cells, even ray cells, have thick lignified walls, and axial is only scanty paratracheal. Aside from a diversity of vessel diameters, there seems to be little protection against during water-stress, and little capacity. This strong wood permits the plants to be tall and to compete for light in their tree-shaded semi-arid habitats. In other evolutionary lines, the wood lacks fibres, and almost all cells have thin, unlignified walls. Vessels occur in an extensive matrix of water-storing parenchyma, and tracheids are also abundant, constituting over half the axial tissue in some species. There is excellent protection against cavitation, but little mechanical support for the plant body; however, these plants are short and occur in extremely arid, unshaded sites. Scandent, vinelike plants of two genera produce a dimorphic wood—while their shoots are extending without external support, they produce fibrous, lignified wood, but after leaning against a host branch, they produce a parenchymatous, unlignified wood."