As a botanist, my idea of paradise is to have an identification tag appear on every plant that I or anyone with me does not recognize. At The New York Botanical Garden we enjoy what is about as close as you will get to that paradise. I am so thankful for those who perform the monumental task of labeling the plants in the Garden, even including the cultivar names on the labels where applicable.
Cultivar names (as in cultivated varieties) are those names that appear in single quotes following the scientific (“Latin”) name of the species. If you see an “x” in the name, that means the plant is an artificial cross by plant breeders between two species. The scientific name consists of two parts: the genus and the species name, with only the genus name capitalized. But in the case of cultivars, sometimes only the genus name is given because the species is not clearly delineated.
Altitude and cold weather continue to plague Rusby, who decides to travel ahead to warmer climes, but must pass through even higher and colder mountains to do so. He is helped along the way by the Guggenheim mining company, providing him with many comforts in the inhospitable mountains. But the survival of the expedition is in jeopardy, as the supplies have not yet arrived.
OFFICIAL DIARY of the MULFORD BIOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF THE AMAZON BASIN
H. H. RUSBY, DIRECTOR
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 1921
This has been a very important day for us. I rose after a night of much discomfort from my cold and remained in the house all day. I wrote a long letter home and partially straightened out my accounts and brought my journal up to date. We have today made our final arrangements about our journey from here to the Boopi, and it appears that there are some unpleasant complications which will render this transaction less favorable than we had anticipated. Mr. MacCreagh had virtually committed himself to send our cargo by a contractor over a different route than the favorable one provided by the Guggenheim Company. It now transpires that we must carry out this arrangement, sending most of our freight directly by mule to Canamina, at a cost of about $3.50 American money per hundred pounds, and going ourselves with a small outfit by way of Eucalyptus and Pongo.
The freight did not arrive in time for any work at repacking today.
Aimé Bonpland, the author of the scientific name of the Brazil nut.
In our continuing discussion on botanical taxonomy, we now delve into the discovery of the Brazil nut and explain where it fits into the plant kingdom. But don’t be mistaken—when I say “discovery,” I am referring to the scientific naming and classification of the species rather than the first physical discovery of the plant by humans. Nearly all economic plants were discovered and given common names long before scientists became aware of them.
As part of their travels to the New World (between 1799 and 1804), the German scientist Alexandre von Humboldt and the French botanist Aimé Bonpland traversed the Rio Orinoco, making natural history collections and observations along the way. At one point, they subsisted for three entire months on rancid chocolate and plain rice alone. Fortunately, these explorers came upon Brazil nut collectors, allowing them to feast on great quantities of Brazil nut seeds. They were also impressed by the magnificent tree itself, and so interested in obtaining its flowers that Humboldt offered an ounce of gold to any one of the collectors who could find and retrieve them—an impossible task, as fruiting Brazil nut trees were not in flower.
Nevertheless, the expedition made collections of the leaves and fruits, and Bonpland described the species as Bertholletia excelsa Bonpl. Although the authorship of this species is sometimes attributed to both Humboldt and Bonpland, it is clear that the latter is the author of the scientific description and name for this species. Bonpland dedicated the genus to Claude Louis Berthollet, a chemist who, along with Antoine Lavoisier, developed a system of modern chemical nomenclature.
As Rusby and his expedition move deeper into Peru and Bolivia, the daily trials of traveling abroad mingle with fleeting moments for discovery along the way. Rusby’s fascination for all things scientific leads him to the Arequipa Hospital, where he examines ulcer patients, before taking the railroad into the mountains toward Juliaca. In between snatching up passing flowers from a train railing, struggling with altitude sickness, and sleeping through a near-death experience on the steamship, he finds time to identify the local flora, along with fruits and vegetables in city markets.
OFFICIAL DIARY of the MULFORD BIOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF THE AMAZON BASIN
H. H. RUSBY, DIRECTOR
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 1921
I made a number of purchases of things which will be needed on our expedition. I went to the market and purchased a number of samples of vegetable products and also three pairs of fully dressed figures of Quichua indians, each accompanied, the age of the later varying from infancy to eight or nine years. In the afternoon I secured an automobile and went down to Tiavaya, where the market gardens were located, charging this expense to the Botanical Garden. Here I found growing the fruiting plants of a pepino, having oblong fruits, wholly of a deep purple color like the eggplant. I also found and obtained specimens of a species of Tasconia, which yields an edible fruit sold in the market under the name of “Tumbo“; of a plant yielding another edible fruit, sold in the market under the name of “Acchocta”; of the rhacache, a delicious turnip-shaped root belonging to the parsley family, a species of Arracacia, and some unripe fruits of the Lucuma. In the evening I attended the motion picture exhibit, which was so silly that I left before it was over.
One of the locks of the Panama Canal, under construction in 1913, eight years before the Mulford Expedition.
Week two of Henry Hurd Rusby‘s Mulford Expedition sees the Santa Elisa passing through the Panama Canal (see Week One). At the time of this writing, the Canal has been open for less than seven years, and as we read, construction is ongoing. The Canal’s most profound immediate effect is a quicker and safer journey between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. A voyage from New York to San Francisco saves over 7,800 miles and the ship avoids navigating the hazardous Drake Passage and Cape Horn.
Dr. Rusby mentions the ceremony of the Court of Neptune, also known as the Line-crossing Ceremony, whereby a commemoration of a sailor’s first crossing of the equator is performed. This ceremony is also performed for passenger’s entertainment aboard civilian ocean liners such as the Santa Elisa. Few details are given by Dr. Rusby, but the ceremony has its colorful characters, including the King of Neptune and Davy Jones.
In 1921, when Henry Hurd Rusby was 65 years old, he embarked on his last field trip to South America as the Director of the Mulford Biological Exploration of the Amazon Basin. Professor of Botany and Materia Medica, and Dean of the College of Pharmacy at Columbia University, Rusby had much experience exploring in South America. The goal of the Mulford Biological Expedition was the discovery of plants with possible pharmaceutical properties.
Understanding the botanical naming system can be a difficult task for beginners—classification hierarchy, plant name changes, and name selection all have to be taken into account. But rather than tackle this important botanical puzzle all at once, we instead begin with the most basic piece: species names. The rules discussed here apply not just to the Brazil nut family, but to every plant found in all the world’s habitats, and have much in common with zoological nomenclature.
A species name consists of two parts—Gustavia augusta, for example. The first part of the name is the genus and the second is the species epithet, each of which is either in Latin or Latinized words from other languages, especially Greek. Known as binomial nomenclature, Carl Linnaeus is considered the first to use this system, which he employed in his Species Plantarum—long regarded as the starting point for plant nomenclature. As such, a name used in Species Plantarum has priority over other names published for the same species at a later date.
Gustavia augusta L. was published in a later, 1775 edition of Species Plantarum, but afterward the same species was published as Gustavia antillana Miers in 1874. In this case, Gustavia augusta is considered the correct name, and G. antillana is accepted as a synonym.
Today, I discuss the importance of botanical line drawings in illustrating the diagnostic characteristics of plants. The value lies in the fact that they either represent species new to science, or the illustration makes it easier for users of scientific and popular publications to determine the names of plants they have an interest in. Fortunately, soon after my return from a two-year stay in Bahia, Brazil in 1980, I was introduced to Bobbi Angell; after seeing samples of her drawings, I asked her to illustrate species of the Brazil nut family (Lecythidaceae) for a monograph that Ghillean T. Prance–then Vice President for Science at the NYBG–was preparing with me.
A view of the megalopolis of Sâo Paulo from the Botanical Garden.
When I was in Brazil to attend a meeting on Amazonian Biodiversity in São Paulo I also had the opportunity to visit one of The New York Botanical Garden‘s sister institutions, the Jardim Botânico de São Paulo. Just like NYBG, the São Paulo garden is a refuge from the traffic, heat, and noise of life within one of the world’s megacities. São Paulo is the eighth largest city in the world with 11 million inhabitants, and the city’s 588 square miles of paved surfaces can make it feel much hotter than the reported temperature. During my visit, temperatures ranged from a pleasant 68º to a high of 90º. In the open areas of the garden it was hot enough to dampen my t-shirt as I headed for a remnant patch of Atlantic coastal forest, but upon entering the forest the temperature dropped significantly and I cooled off. I was then able to begin enjoying the plants surrounding me.
The Garden was established in 1920 under the directorship of Frederico Carlos Hoehne. The area was originally the location of the city’s waterworks and the original gate built in 1894 is preserved on the Garden’s grounds. Today the Garden consists of 85 acres of formal gardens and an arboretum dedicated to growing trees native to São Paulo and Brazil, in addition to the 1,210 acres of remnant forest mentioned above.
From the 4th to the 8th of March I was fortunate to attend a meeting in São Paulo, Brazil, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States and the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP). The NSF is the most important supporter of pure research in the United States, and FAPESP plays the same role in the State of São Paulo. FAPESP’s importance, however, extends throughout Brazil, and like the NSF its discoveries are applied across the globe. Science progresses best when it receives strong governmental support–but that support often pays dividends well beyond the original investments!
The FAPESP research program serves as a model for state-supported research. However, it also collaborates on an even larger scale with Brazil’s national research organization, known as Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq); and the Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (EMBRAPA). The FAPESP research program is funded by one percent of the state’s taxes and, of that, only five percent can be employed for administrative costs. São Paulo’s dedication to research has made it the leading Brazilian state in promoting pure and applied research in Brazil, and perhaps in the world!
