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José and Virginia Correia are one of history’s most prolific bird collecting teams. For over three decades, they participated in many scientific exploring expeditions for the American Museum of Natural History, including the Whitney South Sea Expedition from 1922 to 1926.

Although the published literature is scant regarding their scientific contributions, their story is certainly worth telling. Described by The Standard-Times (New Bedford) as a “life reading like fiction”,³  —  their work has emerged from obscurity with the recent digitization of José’s field notes from the Whitney South Sea Expedition (1920–1941). Now audiences far and wide can enjoy this quintessential American story of two immigrants propelled by fate, hard work, and a sincere desire to improve one’s lot in life.

As we come to the end of 2020, we reflect on the challenges that have profoundly impacted us as societies and individuals this year, requiring us to rethink how we do our jobs, interact with friends and colleagues, and access and share information. Facing these unprecedented challenges together, we continue to work with our partners to ensure that you have free access to the resources you need to empower your research—no matter where you are.

It is thanks to the generosity and support of our community that we were able to pivot quickly and meet the needs of our users in a rapidly-changing environment throughout 2020. Please consider making a gift in support of BHL this Giving Tuesday and help ensure that we can rise to meet whatever comes our way, together.

Our latest quarterly newsletter is now available! From our BHL symposium at the virtual TDWG 2020 conference to the most recent additions to our Earth Optimism series, don’t miss the latest news from the BHL community.

View our November 2020 Quarterly Newsletter.

Be sure to subscribe to our mailing list to keep up to date with all the latest BHL news.

The Language of Flowers genre is at the intersection of botany, horticulture, natural history, art, poetry, and women’s studies. This popular literary trend in the 19th century, presented the world of botany through dictionaries of flowers and associated meanings, floral poetry and prose, offering a sentimental view of natural history. A properly arranged bouquet was said to convey a “secret message” for the recipient. The “social media” of its day, this Victorian fad, led to many editions of works published, with multiple titles by successful authors.

Frances Sargent Osgood edited two works in this genre, Poetry of Flowers and Flowers of Poetry and The Floral Offering.

On 5 June 1834, avid amateur botanist Hardy Bryan Croom wrote a letter to botanist John Torrey describing a gymnosperm tree in northern Florida that he was struggling to identify. In this letter, he postulated—with some degree of confidence—that the tree was Taxus baccata, the common yew, and he hoped to acquire some specimens to send to Torrey for investigation.

Torrey was one of the most important 19th century botanists in America. He corresponded with hundreds of scientists in North America and Europe, many of whom sent him specimens from their various explorations for study and identification. As such a well-respected expert and advisor on botanical science, it comes as no surprise that Croom sought Torrey’s expertise regarding this mysterious Florida tree.

The next year, in a letter dated 18 November 1835, Croom wrote again to Torrey, stating:

“The letter which I wrote last summer has had the effect to procure me some perfect fruit of that remarkable Taxoid tree at Aspalaga. The result surprises me. It is an ovate one celled nut entirely enclosed in fleshy covering! as large as a pigeon’s egg! Calix imbricated; thus agreeing neither with Taxus nor with Podocarpus. Besides, the tree, I think, is dioecious, but of this I am not yet certain. What will you do with it? Will it make a new genus?”

The following year, Croom again wrote to Torrey in a letter dated 18 May 1836 that he had determined that the tree represented a new genus. He proposed the genus name Torreya and provided a description and habitat details for “this fine tree,” for which he remarked:

“It is so abundant about Aspalaga (especially on Flat Creek) as to have been sawed into plank and lumber. It is an elegant tree with dark green foliage.”

With this letter, Croom provided the first recorded description of the habitat and abundance of the Florida nutmeg, Torreya taxifolia.

Sadly, Croom and his family drowned in a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Hatteras on 8 October 1837. As such, Torrey arranged that the new genus and species were formally named and described by botanist George Arnott Walker-Arnott in 1838.

While Croom characterized Torreya taxifolia as abundant in 1836, today the species is critically endangered. With a distribution restricted to the limestone ravines and bluffs along the Apalachicola River in northern Florida and southern Georgia, fewer than a thousand individual trees persist in their native habitat. The most significant threat to the species is continued reproductive failure resulting from fungal pathogens—a threat which is continuing but not well-understood.

This year, as organizations around the world have done in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) held its annual conference virtually. With a mix of online working sessions, webinar-style symposia, presentations, panel discussions, and recorded presentations, this year’s conference was held across two separate periods—the first dedicated to working sessions during the week of 21-25 September 2020 and the second to symposia and panel sessions the week of 19-23 October 2020.

On 20 October 2020 as part of the TDWG 2020 virtual conference, BHL hosted a symposium, “SYM03 Enhancing Connections With the Global Neighbourhood Through Expanding Partnerships”, organized by Constance Rinaldo (Librarian of the Ernst Mayr Library, Harvard and Chair of the BHL Executive Committee) and Colleen Funkhouser (BHL Program Manager, Smithsonian Libraries).

The symposium consisted of four talks, covering topics including building BHL’s technical strategy, digital object identifiers (DOIs), taxonomic name finding services, and BHL’s response to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

We often think of natural history libraries serving as memorials for lost species, animals like the passenger pigeon and the dodo living on only in books, photos, and illustrations that tell sad cautionary tales of once-abundant populations lost to overhunting or habitat destruction.

However, such records also tell stories of hope, providing valuable resources for modern scientists working to protect threatened wildlife. Since it was founded in 2006, BHL’s historical documents have supported the work of conservationists devoted to saving everything from Caribbean mammals to rare wetland plants. Not only are accessible records that describe the historic ranges, populations, and other characteristics of a species essential for researchers, but they help remind the public of how vibrant historical ecosystems were—and the importance of protecting what is left.

“The real advantage of BHL is keeping our ecological memory intact, and not allowing us to collectively forget how beautiful, wild, and diverse ecosystems of the past were,” wrote historical ecologist Dr. Joshua Drew in a blog post from BHL’s 2020 Earth Optimism campaign. “If we succumb to this collective amnesia, we risk setting our conservation bar too low and allowing the dulling of our natural environments to continue without even recognizing our losses.”

As part of BHL’s Earth Optimism series, we’re sharing the conservation success stories of four bird species, all prominently featured in the BHL collection, whose impending losses were reversed through the efforts of concerned citizens and researchers.