The label on that herbal supplement may say it’s Ginkgo biloba, but given the loose regulation of this multi-billion-dollar industry, how can a consumer be sure that that is what it really contains?
That question prompted the New York Attorney General’s office to investigate the ingredients in some popular herbal supplements using a technology that examines the DNA of the ingredients to determine what they are. The investigation’s disturbing findings—four out of five of the products tested did not contain any of the herbs on their labels—led New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to order Target, Walgreens, Walmart, and GNC to stop selling their house brands of the supplements.
Using similar DNA “barcoding” technology, New York Botanical Garden scientists have been studying the same question for years, as Dennis Wm. Stevenson, Ph.D., Cullman Curator and Vice President for Botanical Research, pointed out in a letter to the editor that ran in the February 10 edition of The New York Times.
The New York Botanical Garden recently welcomed our distinguished former head of scientific research, Sir Ghillean Prance, one of the most important explorers of the Amazonian rain forest in modern times, who was back for an all-too-brief visit.
Sir Ghillean, who spent 25 years at the Botanical Garden before leaving in 1988 to become the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was here to celebrate the publication of his new book, That Glorious Forest: Exploring the Plants and Their Indigenous Uses in Amazonia, published by The New York Botanical Garden Press.
In a lifetime devoted to the study and conservation of tropical plants, Sir Ghillean has participated in 39 expeditions to the Amazon, beginning with a 1963 trip to Suriname as a young Garden researcher, which he describes in That Glorious Forest.
Of all the far-flung places that scientists from The New York Botanical Garden explore, one of the farthest in terms of distance and culture is Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific with a population of about 225,000 people spread over 65 islands and speaking more than 113 indigenous languages.
With its remote location, Vanuatu is home to many plant species that are found only there, making it a treasure trove of biodiversity and an important source of materials for biologists to study. The residents rely on native plants for food, fuel, medicine, and more, but unlike some better-known Pacific islands, Vanuatu’s plant life and the traditional knowledge about how to use those plants have not been adequately studied.
Barbara Thiers, Vice President for Science Administration, Patricia K. Holmgren Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium
One of the most important projects underway at The New York Botanical Garden is the ongoing effort to make the preserved plant specimens in the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium available online. That means more than just taking high-resolution digital images of the plants. It also entails entering all of the information about the specimens, such as where they were collected, when, and by whom, into a searchable database.
Of the 7.4 million specimens now in the Steere Herbarium—the largest in the Western Hemisphere and one of the four largest in the world—Botanical Garden science staff have already digitized more than 2.3 million of them.
Why is this a big deal? Well, as more specimens become available online at the Steere Herbarium and elsewhere, plant scientists and other researchers will be able to compile massive amounts of data about Earth’s plant life for the first time.
The Huffington Post has published a piece by Dr. Barbara Thiers, the Garden’s Vice President for Science Adminstration and the Patricia K. Holmgren Director of the Steere Herbarium, in which she talks about one very important use for this newly available data: gaining a better understanding of the potential impact of climate change on ecosystems.
You can read more about the Garden’s digitization project here.
Internships may seem like a summer-only opportunity to gain exposure to a field and make a contribution to a project, but that’s not the case at The New York Botanical Garden’s Science Division. We have interns here during all four seasons, performing important work and learning plant science firsthand from our researchers.
One of our volunteer summer interns, Chelsea Fowler, a biology student at the University of Tampa, wrote about her recent experience working in the Garden’s William and Lynda Steere Herbarium on a project that is part of the effort to digitize the Steere Herbarium’s 7.4 million preserved plant specimens. This post is from the iDigBio Web site, a national resource for information about digitized natural history collections. Our thanks to the Florida Museum of Natural History, where the Web site is based, for permission to repost Chelsea’s story.
One of the most important research facilities at The New York Botanical Garden is the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, but unless you’re a plant scientist or seriously interested in botany, chances are you’re unfamiliar with what a herbarium is and why it’s crucial to the task of understanding and conserving Earth’s plant life.
Simply put, a herbarium is a library of plants—7.3 million preserved plant specimens, in the case of the Steere Herbarium. That makes it the largest herbarium in the Western Hemisphere and one of the four largest in the world.
But what can researchers learn from all those specimens? How do they use the knowledge stored there? How was the Steere Herbarium founded, and does it contain just the things that average people think of as plants—trees, flowers and shrubs? What about seaweed, moss, lichens and mushrooms?
From the crowds that attend The New York Botanical Garden’s annual orchid exhibition, it’s clear that this family of flowering plants exerts a fascination on gardeners and plant lovers almost without equal in the horticultural world.
Count Prof. James D. Ackerman among the devotees. From his days as a graduate student in northern California, he’s devoted his scientific career to the study of Orchidaceae. Prof. Ackerman, who teaches biology at the University of Puerto Rico, is the lead author of Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles, recently published by NYBG Press.
With full scientific treatments of 594 orchid species, the book covers the largest islands in the West Indies, including Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola, the island that comprises the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
I had a chance to chat with Prof. Ackerman during his recent visit to the Botanical Garden, where he gave a talk about his time in the field cataloging the orchids of the Greater Antilles. He was also planning to see The Orchid Show: Key West Contemporary, which closes next Monday, April 21.
As the longtime Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, Barbara M. Thiers, Ph.D., already had a demanding job as the head of one of the world’s four largest collections of preserved plant specimens. But recently she added a new title—and new responsibilities—when she was named Vice President for Science Administration at The New York Botanical Garden.
In that role, she oversees all staff, programmatic initiatives, and operations in the Botanical Garden’s Science Division, one of the leading centers for studying plants at all levels, from the whole organism down to its DNA.
The promotion has made her one of the few women ever to lead scientific research at a major botanical institution.
I recently sat down with Dr. Thiers in her office on the fourth floor of the Garden’s Library building for a conversation about her life and career, including how she spent many of her weekends as a child and how long it took her to decide she wanted to stay at the Garden after her arrival as a postdoctoral intern in 1981.
The 14th Annual Winter Lecture Series kicks off this Thursday, January 30, with Kirstenbosch—The Most Beautiful Garden in Africa, a much-anticipated talk by Brian J. Huntley. As one of the world’s leading conservation scientists, he will be speaking about that stunningly beautiful Cape Town botanical garden and the long history of botanical exploration in southern Africa, home of one of the world’s most diverse—and endangered—floras.
A couple of weeks ago, I called Professor Huntley—among his many other titles and endeavors, he’s an emeritus professor of botany at the University of Cape Town—at his home in South Africa to ask him about his upcoming visit to The New York Botanical Garden, the first stop on an American speaking tour.
“The core component of my lecture will deal with the unusually rich flora of South Africa and how it has been developed and displayed at Kirstenbosch,” said Professor Huntley, who promises his talk will be “profusely illustrated” with images of Kirstenbosch’s gorgeous gardens, as well as individual species and families of plants. “One purpose of the trip is to give people a sense of what they’d see if they came to South Africa.”
