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.”
