Human Flower Project

Science

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Botanical Gardens, It’s Time to Make Our Case for Plant Research

James Wandersee and Renee Clary see the economics of botanical science changing. For plant research programs to survive within botanical gardens, they may need to show profits and/or make the benefits of their discoveries better known.

A Louisiana first-grader studying leaf structure
Photo: Vermilion Parish Schools

By James H. Wandersee and Renee M. Clary
EarthScholars™ Research Group

A recent Human Flower Project article entitled “Mr. Bromeliad Heads for Singapore,” presented the story of a famous Florida botanical garden that is losing some of its acclaimed research scientists, as that institution trims its budget and juggles multiple priorities. Recently, two of the garden’s orchid experts were dismissed, and now “Mr. Bromeliad,” Harry Luther, has left for a new job in Singapore.

The back-story source hyperlinked in the essay suggests that the garden’s current board is not principally interested in botany and considers plant science research to be tangential to its newly emphasized garden focus of engaging the public with plants—in aesthetic and utilitarian ways. 

From a different perspective, one of the fired scientists put it this way: “Science, I think, intimidates the board. They don’t understand it; they don’t like it; they have no interest in it.” Another said, “I don’t think they see any value in the [botanical] research.” (quoted in Levey-Baker, 2010). As a result, the garden may have lost its hard-won, international scientific reputation as an orchid and bromeliad research center.

A plant science researcher at one of his study plots on native plant seed germination
Photo: Beacon Hill Park History

Research is important to botanical literacy and to the nation. Back in 1944, Vannevar Bush, Director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development, began to plan for the   future. Convinced that after WWII,  the country still required ongoing support for research, Bush published “Science—The Endless Frontier” in March of 1945, outlining the importance and value of continued government funding for scientific study. Bush explained that scientific knowledge is derived from research, and a subset of that ever-growing body of knowledge is essential for the public to know and understand.

We think the central rationale for public understanding of plants may be found in the motto of London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: “All life depends on plants.”  This statement sets out the first of many reasons why we the people should know about plants.

The global scientific prominence of Kew across its 300 delightful acres can be credited to a series of enthusiastic plant collectors, visionary plant scientists, inspired landscape architects, and authoritative gardeners who, over three centuries, have grown and expanded the gardens, and the living and preserved collections they contain.

Linnaeus’ home alongside the former University of Uppsala Botanic Garden in Sweden, 2009
Photo: EarthScholars Research Group

As Linnaeus (1745) himself demonstrated in Uppsala, Sweden,  botanic-garden-based research should drive and continually improve botany teaching.  Linnaeus lived on the grounds of the garden where he carried out his studies, and he taught students on the second floor of his home. His wonderfully organized garden and adjacent house were the locus for his research and teaching.

Botanic gardens provide convenient sites for research, and their plant science researchers can help botanic gardens fulfill their mission of public education. Besides conducting basic research studies,  plant scientists today increasingly provide related services to the garden’s visitors, plant aficionados, schools, commercial plant-related businesses, artists and photographers, government agencies, the scientific community, and even the cybersphere.

The Wellington Botanical Society’s CBD logo, promoting public understanding of plants
Image: Wellington Botanical Society

Our own science education research group has defined botanical literacy this way: It is the public’s understanding of a core set of pervasive plant science principles appropriate to making informed personal and societal decisions about plants in everyday life. In some of our studies, we have used the content of a representative sample of major U.S.  newspaper news stories first to determine what kinds of plant-science-related information the U.S. public regularly encounters and then to help us to decide which botanical knowledge appears to be of greatest value to 21st-century citizens.

In 1998, the American Society of Plant Biologists (formerly ASPP) developed the following 12-item set of plant science principles which we have found very useful as criteria for anticipating what today’s public botanical knowledge core might contain.

Findings from our own botany education research studies have shown us that, especially in urban areas,  the public only pays attention to and cares about the plants in their environment after a person or persons whom they respect help them to observe, identify, grow, interact with, and eventually, scientifically understand plants and their importance to human affairs as well as to the biosphere—and it’s best when such teaching takes place in personally meaningful and experiential ways. We’ve also hypothesized that the more botanically literate the public becomes, the greater its multifaceted interest in plants and the greater its support of botanic gardens, including plant science research. It is an astute conservation principle that the more we understand something, the more likely we are to value it and to want to preserve it.

The board of the Florida botanical garden that is terminating some of its plant science researchers seems to be saying that it wants to grow and display plants but doesn’t want to support botanical research—mainly for the reasons that (a) it is only marginally important to fulfilling the garden’s mission and (b) it can’t be justified as it doesn’t generate a substantial income stream.

While the first assumption above clearly seems misguided to us and worthy of a separate article, the second one may well be a defensible argument for a traditional institution under financial stress. Yet we believe it reflects 20th-century thinking in 21st century circumstances. Here are some alternatives we see.

Today, science and technology research models are changing. No longer are many research centers independently-supported or fully government-supported entities. Critical management skills in the new hyper-collaborative arenas of the global economy include the ability to transform the fruits of research into economic value. Botanic gardens, too, are forming alliances with other gardens, with businesses, industry, and academia. The conversion of their researchers’ expertise and their new findings to intellectual property is the process used by some innovative, budget-constrained botanic gardens to create assets that can ultimately be converted into economic value.

British scientist Michael Faraday (1710-1867)
Image: University of Toronto

Basic research is indeed necessary for a field of science to progress, but, alas, few of its discoveries may have immediate economic value. A mix of basic and applied research can be more sustainable. When the great British scientist Michael Faraday, one of the giants who helped shape our current understanding of electricity and magnetism, was questioned by Chancellor Gladstone as to the use of this electricity he was working on, Faraday’s reply was, “I do not know Sir, but I wager that one day you will put a tax on it.” Faraday knew just how to satisfy his sponsor!

The support-me and leave-me-alone researcher of the past seems headed toward extinction. So does the I-am-so-famous-amongst-my-peers researcher.  Salaries today are justified by sphere of responsibilities, economic productivity, and the number of clients served.  Fewer and fewer research center scientists have the luxury of doing just basic research—seeking knowledge for knowledge’s sake.  Currently, curiosity-driven research is less economically sustainable than is solution-seeking research.  In times of economic contraction, sustainability and networking become the litmus tests of research center success. Innovation and income require that ideas, people, services, knowledge products, and physical products flow across institutional boundaries to and from allied gardens, companies, universities, and countries. Many research centers can no longer afford to be insular, independent, and externally funded—providing freely available services. We all must recognize that we are living in a time of profound change, and we can either bemoan that fact and pine for the return of the good old days, or we can adapt to our changing economic climate and implement new models to fund plant science research. 

After all, plant research always pays off—although the specific time frame for that return-on-investment is unpredictable. Old scientific knowledge is sometimes untrustworthy, so contemporary research updates are often useful.

Garden rhubarb (Rheum x hybridum)
Photo: About

For example,  during World War I,  rhubarb leaves (Rheum x hybridum) were widely recommended to the public as a substitute for other greens unavailable in war-time. As a result, there were cases of acute poisoning and even some deaths. Researchers who investigated the plant found oxalates in all the organs of rhubarb plants—especially in the green leaves. There was some evidence that anthraquinone glycosides were also present. Scientists suspect leaf-poisoning may be a result of both biocidal compounds’ synergistic effects. The rhubarb stalks contain only low levels of oxalates and may be eaten safely. When poisoned from the rhubarb leaves, a person could experience weakness, burning in the mouth, difficulty breathing, burning in the throat, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, convulsions, coma, or death from cardiovascular collapse.

Poisonous leaves of Senecio vulgaris (not salad greens!)
Photo: wiki

Here’s a closing example of the value of educating citizens, who then comprise a botanically literate and botanically observative public. In 2009, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that a Hannover discount-chain supermarket customer noticed that packages of rocket salad greens (Eruca sativa) were, in fact, mislabeled. They also contained a poisonous plant with dangerous alkaloids as well! The potentially lethal poisonous plant, Senecio vulgaris, found all across Germany, has leaves that look quite similar to the otherwise-distinctive rocket salad greens. The tainted salad packet was determined to contain 2,500 micrograms of Senecio by University of Bonn botanical researcher Helmut Wiedenfeld. He told Der Spiegel that one microgram is the maximum amount a person can safely consume. The supermarket chain was fortunate this customer was “plant savvy,” recognizing the differences in leaf color and shape right away and sparing his liver and others’ from potentially life-threatening damage. Thanks to him, the stores quickly removed all the product from their shelves and nobody was harmed (as reported by Devins, The Local, 2009).

Researchers at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill
Photo: Sustainability, University of North Carolina

Our last point is that a botanic garden must interpret its own research and enlighten non-scientists if it expects the public to appreciate and support its work. We think the Missouri Botanical Garden does this well—beginning with these words of introduction to its visitors: “While most visitors discover a heightened appreciation and understanding of the world’s rich botanical heritage, few realize that beyond the floral panoramas and exhibits there exists another realm; our internationally renowned research enterprise. This is the “Unseen Garden.” Consider, too, this 21st-century description of the research conducted by the Missouri Botanic Garden.

Perhaps it’s time for all botanic gardens to make their unseen gardens visible and their research widely understood.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Down on the Digital-Dirt Divide

For plantsman Allen Bush, it all began by getting shooed out of the house. After digging holes to an imaginary China, he’s actually gone there, collecting rare species and befriending rarer horticulturalists from across the world.

A youth spent in the woods leads to self-esteem, and in some cases, to a career and schanpps, also
Photo: Jonathan Prescott

By Allen Bush

I wish children could experience the same simple pleasures I enjoyed over fifty years ago. They should try to dig a hole to China.  My big adventure was slowed by summer heat and hard clay, but I finally busted through, on a plant hunting trip in 2001. Memories of abandoned, shallow craters from childhood expeditions in Louisville are nearly as good as Sichuan itself turned out to be.

Back in those early years, I imagined I could poke through by noon and be home by dark. But the only way kids are going to dig to China now is if they hack into Chinese cyberspace. American youngsters can’t be bothered with a spade. And they’re certainly not spending much time outside, unless you count a precious few minutes misspent with older brothers and sisters who stand shivering at the back door catching a smoke.
 
The digital-dirt divide worries me. Edward O. Wilson understands outdoor lessons: “The Secret Places of childhood, whether a product of instinct or not, at the very least predispose us to acquire certain preferences and undertake practices of later value in survival. The hideaways bond us with place and they nourish our individuality and self-esteem,” Wilson writes in The Future of Life. ”If played out in the natural environment, they also bring us close to the earth and nature in ways than can engender a lifelong love of both.”
 
Generation Z may learn again how to dirty their mitts and swing on a wild grape vine across a skinny creek, but it doesn’t look promising.

Among American children, ages eight to eighteen, more than seven and half hours are spent each day wired to smartphones, music/video devices, computers and televisions – sometimes multitasking several digital gizmos at once—according to a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And there’s no “Thank God It’s Friday” for this demographic. Bleary eyes are focused 24/7 all week long—which amounts to a whopping fifty-three hours —barely seeing the light of day. Stop and smell the roses? Doubtful.
 

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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Plants of Avatar

Following through on a filmmaker’s vision, a botanist hypothesizes plants with darts of poison and roots that grow upward—the flora of Pandora.

Exploring the plant and animal and ?? life on Pandora, in James Cameron’s movie Avatar
Image: via Scifi Scoop

By James H. Wandersee and Renee M. Clary
EarthScholars™ Research Group

Avatar, the current 3-D blockbuster film written and directed by James Cameron, is the first movie ever to gross $2 billion globally. You’ve probably seen it, or at least talked to someone who has. Considered a rare breakthrough in cinematic technology for its advances in 3-D viewing and stereoscopic filmmaking, Avatar was made with cameras specially designed for the film’s production.

This science fiction film takes place in the year 2154, on Pandora, a moon of Polyphemus, a giant gas planet orbiting a star beyond Earth’s neighborhood, Alpha Centauri. Pandora is inhabited by the Na’vi, a ten-foot-tall, blue-skinned species of wise humanoids, who are linked in equilibrium with all of the moon’s nature, worshiping an ecological goddess called Eywa—the tree-nexus of the moon’s wireless “biological internet.” The film’s title points to the genetically engineered Na’vi bodies used by several of the story’s human characters to interact with the natives of Pandora. In Cameron’s future vision, technology can inject human intelligence into a remote biological body and activate it.

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Thursday, February 11, 2010

‘Mr. Bromeliad’ Heads for Singapore

A famous Florida botanical garden is losing its proud research scientists, as the institution trims the budget and juggles multiple goals.

A bromeliad at Selby Gardens, which has the largest collection in the world
Photo: dotpolka

Thanks to Holly Chase for alerting us to the tumult at Selby Botanical Gardens. Selby, in Sarasota, Florida, has been world renowned for its study and collection of epiphytes – principally orchids and bromeliads.

Here grows “the most diverse collection of bromeliads in the world... over 20,000 plants from some 6000 species in 1200 genera from 214 plant families, including 6,000 live orchids. More than 150 expeditions to the tropics and subtropics have contributed to these collections.”

Recently, two of the garden’s orchid experts were dismissed, and now “Mr. Bromeliad” Harry Luther is leaving to take a position in Singapore. “It comes down to cash,” Selby’s CEO Thomas Buchter told the Herald-Tribune. Ah, yes. It comes down to that, but in the case of this 35-year-old institution, it may keep on rolling downhill, at least insofar as Selby’s reputation and community relations go.

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