Search

Having recently published a book on herbaria, collections of preserved plants, I look back on my career teaching biology and the experiences that led me to the world of dried plants. My first job was teaching non-science majors, to which I devoted 45 years. Over that time, I worked to make biological inquiry as fascinating to my students as it was to me. I found that the private side of science, how science is actually done, was a good entry point with stories about the wrong turns, difficulties, and joys of research. This led me to biographies and essays by biologists, works on the philosophy and history of science, and interest in the relationship between science and art. Eventually these avenues brought me to the aesthetics of biology and then to botanical art and finally to where these streams seemed to come together in herbaria. I literally fell in love with them. Specimens contain a rich history of people and places, of exploration, colonization, exploitation, and the development of modern botany. Herbaria today are key to documenting and conserving the earth’s biodiversity and tracing how climate change is shaping it. Through digitization, herbaria are an essential component of bioinformatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a book review of "Joel Schwartz, Robert Brown and Mungo Park: Travels and Explorations in Natural History for the Royal Society." The book explores the lives and contributions of Robert Brown and Mungo Park, who were both from southern Scotland and influenced by the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment. They were selected for expeditions by Joseph Banks and were part of the quest for new plant species that could benefit the British Empire. The review highlights their expeditions, plant collections, and scientific discoveries, with a focus on Brown's meticulous methods and his role in caring for Joseph Banks' collection. The review acknowledges the limitations of the book, such as the lack of information on the relationship between Brown and the artist Ferdinand Bauer, as well as limited material on the interactions of both Park and Brown with Indigenous people. Overall, the review praises the book for shedding light on these overlooked figures in the history of botany. [Extracted from the article]

Citizen science involves the participation of the public in supporting scientific research. With the advent of online data collection and the digitization of information about specimens, citizen science has burgeoned. This article deals with how the botanical community is responding to this surge, what kinds of projects are being developed, and why this is important to the future of natural history collections, environmental studies, and the creation of a public interested in plant research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herbaria are collections of preserved plants specimens, some of which date back to the 16th century. They are essential to botanical research, especially in systematics. They can also be important historical documents. The collections of Lewis and Clark, Carolus Linnaeus, and Charles Darwin, to name a few, are primary sources for the study of these individuals' work. Now many of these herbarium specimens are being scanned and the images are freely available on the Web. This article deals with how these online collections may be used in teaching about biology and its history. It will highlight the JSTOR Plant Science project which is making available electronically about two million plant specimens, many historically significant, as well as the entire runs of important plant journals. In addition, it will discuss other valuable online resources including how links to social media can bring the history of botany to 21st-century students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author focuses on herbaria which are collections of preserved plant specimens primarily composed of paper sheets with pressed plants or plant parts attached to them. Topics discussed include the things that naturalists see which are enough for identification such as the forms of the structural elements, their quantity and their relative magnitudes and other functions of the herbaria such as documenting what plants were found where at a particular moment.

The article presents author's opinion on the herbaria that refers to the collections of preserved plants. It mentions that the plant specimen is composed of paper sheets with pressed plants. It mentions that the botanists use this specimen to reclassify or renaming a species. It focuses on the environmental science of herbaria.

A personal narrative is presented in which the author reflects on her experience traveling to Charleston, South Carolina to visit her son and daughter-in-law, visiting the public Brookgreen Gardens and the A.C. Moore Herbarium, and reading literature about the ecology of the region.

The article discusses the evidence that indicates some proteins are not behaving according to previous scientific thought and lack defined structure beyond the primary structure. The author notes that research seems to indicate that approximately 40% of human proteins have disordered segments of amino acids and that this data has received mixed reactions from structural biologists. Also discussed is the questioning of theories that state amino acid sequencing determining protein structure. Other topics covered include study of conventional proteins, predicting protein structures, and molecular research techniques.

The article looks at the relationship between the study of biology and art. The author states that the most common aspect of this relationship is artists becoming inspired by living organisms or biological research; however there are examples of biological study inspired by artwork. Examples given in the article include biologist Jonathan Kingdon, who used his illustrations of animals to study their behavior and anatomy, artists incorporating organisms in artwork, and the creation of artistic sculptures that can also be used for studying purposes.

The article discusses Australia's place in the history of biology as well as the author's own travel experiences there. The author visited places including Western Australia; Darwin, Northern Territory; and the International Botanical Congress in Melbourne, Victoria. She also discusses the British biologist Charles Darwin's visit to Australia, the frequency of wild fires, and the presence of stromatolites. The article draws lessons on biological evolution from the convergent evolution of kangaroos and deer, notes Australia's prehistoric breakaway from the continent Gondwana, and addresses the relation between native and invasive species.

A personal narrative is presented in which the author reflects on her travels to Australia and her visits to several historical places within the country including the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Chiltern Box-Ironbank National Park, the Melbourne Museum, and the Hi-Valley Farm sheep ranch.

In this article the author discusses research on microbes and microbiology. She comments on the theme of the issue, which is microbes, and describes her appreciation for bacterial microbes because of their versatility. The article examines the use of biofilm to dissolve gold and convert gold ions into metallic gold nanoparticles, which are a pure form of gold. The author suggests that such a technique could be used to detect the presence of gold in ore. The prevalence of bacteria on the surface of human skin is examined in light of the possible use of bacterial communities left on fingerprint traces to differentiate between criminals. Other topics include the diversity of organisms living in the human gut, antibiotics, and microbial dormancy.

In this article the author discusses several individuals who have had multiple career interests. She presents the example of Miguel Sánchez Romera, a former neurologist in Barcelona, Spain, who became a chef and opened a restaurant. The author discusses the book "Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation," by Andrea Wulf, which explores the interest in gardening common among the first American presidents and the Founding Fathers, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and John Adams. The book "A Pirate of Exquisite Mind," by D. Preston and M. Preston, a biography of English buccaneer William Dampier, is also examined.