The large-leaved kōwhai (Sophora tetraptera) is native to the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, where it is widespread and common. While it grows naturally only in Aotearoa, it has been cultivated extensively outside of this range, including as one of a number of New Zealand plants historically introduced into English gardens.[1]

Natural history literature provides a record of such introductions, with many authors remarking on the suitability of Sophora tetraptera—often referring to it under the synonym Edwardsia grandiflora—to the English climate. For example George Loddiges, within his The Botanical Cabinet (1826), remarked that it was “sufficiently hardy to bear our climate, planted against a wall; in very severe frost, a mat should be hung over it.”[2] Two decades later, British writer and botanical authority Jane Wells Webb Loudon included the plant in her The Ladies’ Flower-Garden of Ornamental Greenhouse Plants (1848), where she noted that the original plant could still be found growing in Chelsea Garden in 1848.[3]

Sophora tetraptera, under the synonym Edwardsia grandiflora. Plate 1162. The Botanical Cabinet. v. 12 (1826). Art by George Cooke. Contributed in BHL from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library.

Loddiges’ and Loudon’s references are just two of many sources related to the history of Sophora tetraptera that Mark Laird (Professor, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto) identified thanks to the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) whilst conducting research for a prospective book. One of the book’s chapters explores a variety of New Zealand plants introduced into English gardens from the 1770s to 1840s, in the context of both Kew’s colonial collecting and Māori heritage. BHL was an invaluable resource for this research—especially during the COVID-19 related lockdowns of 2020.

“I am a huge fan of BHL, and my admiration increases every year,” lauds Laird. “Last year, under Covid, I discovered I could research a large topic through online access to the BHL. The search engine allowed me to find all the collected references to many plant species, including illustrations of those species.”

Mark Laird (Professor, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto). Image courtesy of Mark Laird.

Laird’s expertise in historic landscape architecture is rooted in four decades of research. Over his career, he’s held fellowships at Chelsea Physic Garden, London, and Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, and, prior to his appointment at the University of Toronto, was a Senior Lecturer in the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University for fifteen years. Laird has also authored many publications on historic landscape gardening.

Dust jacket for A Natural History of English Gardening (2015) by Mark Laird. Laird sourced many of the illustrations used within the publication from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). Image courtesy of Mark Laird.

It was whilst working on his most recent publication, A Natural History of English Gardening (2015), that Laird first discovered BHL. Within the work, which was awarded the 2019 Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians, Laird draws on historic documents to help chronicle and illustrate the history of early modern gardening and its cultural and scientific intersections. Jacqueline Dearborn (née Ford), then a Digital Projects Librarian at Harvard Botany Libraries, introduced Laird to BHL, who made enthusiastic use of the Library as a resource for many of the illustrations included in his Natural History.

“When sourcing images for my publications twenty-five years ago, many institutions were charging exorbitant reproduction fees,” recalls Laird. “It was a game changer to find that a good number of those institutions have now made their collections accessible online with a simple cost-free download of a High Resolution Image. BHL, as part of that shift in ‘intellectual commons,’ has changed the game for me.”

The African Land-Tortoise (Testudo graeca) by George Edwards from his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds, v.4 (1751). Contributed in BHL from National Library Singapore. Edwards’ illustration appears within Laird’s A Natural History of English Gardening (2015), where he shares that naturalist George White likened his aunt’s tortoise, Timothy—of the same species as Edwards’ Testudo graeca, to “a snail with a shell on its back.” White’s work represents a major theme in Laird’s Natural History.

BHL is now Laird’s go-to resource for natural history literature, particularly when it comes to accessing high quality illustrations. While he appreciates the access BHL provides, he does hope to see the Library implement a more streamlined high resolution image download process in the future, as the current method involves multiple steps.

Laird isn’t alone in his love of BHL’s illustration collections, as evidenced by the popularity of the BHL Flickr, which provides access to over a quarter of a million images from the Library. As BHL further develops its tools and services, staff will continue to explore ways to improve access to and features around scientific artworks.

As for Laird, BHL has opened up a whole new world of possibilities when it comes to online research, and he intends to make the most of these opportunities. “This summer, I expect to continue ‘remote’ research thanks to BHL, which is a game-changer in how a scholar can work from home and at any hour of the day,” affirms Laird.

As researchers continue to adapt to and evolve within increasingly dispersed, asynchronous working environments, BHL will be there to support them wherever and whenever their work takes them.

References

Title page. The language of flowers, with illustrative poetry. (1841). Contributed in BHL from Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. Digitization sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

On 30 April 2021, join the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Lenhardt Library and the Caxton Club for a free, virtual symposium celebrating the Language of Flowers—a popular literary trend in the 19th century that presented the world of botany through dictionaries of flowers and associated meanings, floral poetry and prose, offering a sentimental view of natural history.

Language of Flowers Virtual Symposium
When? Friday, 30 April 2021, 10am-2pm CT
Where? Online (via Zoom webinar)

Learn more and register for the event.

The Chicago Botanic Garden’s Lenhardt Library, a BHL Affiliate, presents this symposium in collaboration with the Caxton Club as the capstone event for a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to conserve and digitize language of flower genre editions. Over the three-year grant period, 62 rare and unique language of flowers volumes published in the 19th century are being conserved and digitized by expert staff at the Northeast Document Conservation Center, with the volumes being made available in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).

You can explore volumes digitized as part of this grant as well as other titles from the genre in the Language of Flowers collection in BHL.

The pineapple, indigenous to South America and domesticated and harvested there for centuries, was a late comer to Europe. The fruit followed in its cultivation behind the tomato, corn, potato, and other New World imports. Delicious but challenging and expensive to nurture in chilly climes and irresistible to artists and travelers for its curious structure, the pineapple came to represent many things. For Europeans, it was first a symbol of exoticism, power, and wealth, but it was also an emblem of colonialism, weighted with connections to plantation slavery.

Originating from the region around the Paraná and Paraguay Rivers (present-day Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina), the pineapple was an important economic plant in the development of Indigenous civilizations in the Americas. The Tupi-Guarani and Carib peoples called the fruit, a staple crop, nanas (“excellent fruit”) and several varieties were grown. As well as food, the pineapple was a source of medicine, fermented to become alcohol, its fibers made into robes and bow strings and thread for cloth.

The Aztec word for pineapple is matzatli as seen here is Francisco Hernández’s, Nova Plantarum, Animalium et Mineralium Mexicanorum Historia (1651). The Mayans also cultivated the plant. Volume contributed in BHL from the John Carter Brown Library.

From South America, the cultivated pineapple spread to Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Christopher Columbus encountered the pineapple (Ananas comosus, of the extensive bromeliad family) in the West Indies on the island he named Guadeloupe in November 1493.

Columbus may have brought one back successfully to Spain, although pineapples tended to rot on the long return voyages across the Atlantic. He called it piña de Indes (“little pine of the Indians”) for its resemblance to the pinecone and declared it “the most delicious fruit in the world.” For the Spanish-Italian historian Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, not unreasonably, the pineapple resembled the artichoke. This author of De Orbe Novo (On the New World, 1530) found it “not unworthy of a king’s table.” The early European explorers and colonizers were enamored with it, often praising the pineapple in their chronicles of their voyages. The first identified published illustration of the pineapple is in the historian Oviedo’s Historia General de las Indias of 1535, where it is again connected with royalty as “the prince of all fruits.”

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés‘ Historia General de las Indias, folio lxxvi (verso) woodcut illustration (Seville, 1535). The author was a keen chronicler of what was new from the New World to Europe. Volume contributed in BHL from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library.

The pineapple became a treasured possession in Europe, but it was of practical use for sailors in tropical regions, who were vulnerable to developing scurvy from a lack of vitamin C during long voyages. They observed the healthful effects of eating pineapple, even though the connection between the devastating disease and diet deficiencies was not yet scientifically understood. The Portuguese introduced the fruit (that they called abaxaci) to their colonies in Africa, India, and perhaps other parts of Asia in the mid-sixteenth century. For Tamil-speaking peoples, pineapples were known as annachi pazham.

It was much later that the intriguing tropical fruit was able to be grown in cold climates with the development, at huge costs, of glass houses and their reliable heating systems to warm the air and soil continuously. The fruit needed a controlled environment, run by complex mechanisms and skilled care, to thrive in Europe. Pineapples, thus, became a class or status symbol, a luxury available only to royalty and aristocrats. The fruit appeared as a centerpiece on lavish tables, not to be eaten but admired, and was sometimes even rented for an evening.

The pineapple was also a symbol of colonialism, one of the trophies brought back from conquered territories.

The pineapple can be said to first appear in England by way of the printed title page of John Parkinson’s Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris (Park-in-Sun’s Terrestrial Paradise) of 1629. In its representation of the Garden of Eden, the fruit takes prime spot in between the valuable and wildly fashionable tulips. This may be a symbol of temptation for Adam, as there was also an erotic, seductive association in contrast to the staid, old apple. The pineapple was the fruit of the new Eden, the New World. In his Theatrum Botanicum of 1640, the botanist Parkinson provided a description:

“Scaly like an Artichoke at the first view, but more like to a cone of the Pine tree, which we call a pineapple for the forme … being so sweete in smell … tasting … as if Wine, Rosewater and Sugar were mixed together.”

Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers (London, 1629). Volume contributed in BHL from the Research Library, The Getty Research Institute.

Richard Ligon, part-owner of a sugar plantation run with enslaved labor, in his A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (1657), was fascinated with the pineapple he found there:

“When this fruit is grown to a likeness, you shall perceive it by the smell, which is far beyond the smell of our choicest fruits of Europe, as the taste is beyond theirs.”

The kitchen gardens of Caribbean plantations grew pineapples to supply the white households. Ligon tried to import plants back to England, but they did not survive the voyage. Since Columbus, Jamaica had been a possession of Spain, but the British Navy seized the island in 1655. Hans Sloan in his Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica (1707-1725) reported:

“The Fruit is planted and us’d by way of desert (having a very fine flavor and tast[e]) all over the hot West-Indies, either raw or, when not yet ripe, candied, and is accounted the most delicious Fruit these places, or the World affords … The slices are soaked in Canary [a sweet wine] to take the sharpness which commonly otherwise inflames the Throat, and then they are eaten.”

A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes, by Richard Ligon (London, 1657). Volume contributed in BHL from the John Carter Brown Library.

In the 1680s, Pieter de la Court, with the help of his gardener, Willem de Vink, attempted to cultivate the tropical plant at an estate near Leiden, and this effort is sometimes credited with being the first for growing one in Europe. But it was the remarkable woman, botanist, collector, and patron Agneta Block who achieved the first success with fruiting the pineapple from a slip. This took place in 1687 in a hothouse at her country house, Vijverhof, located between Amsterdam and Utrecht.

The pineapple can be viewed as an early example of a global commodity. And of slavery with the unfathomable number of enslaved Africans brought to the New World. The Dutch had started exporting the fruit to the Netherlands and Surinam, their colony in Guianas. A ship’s captain first managed to transport the plant to the botanical gardens of Amsterdam and Leiden in 1680. Surinam became wealthy in trading humans and was marked by its brutal plantations. Cash crops grown in the Americas for trade—sugar cane, tobacco, coffee, rice, for example—relied on enslaved labor as well as local expertise. In two successive plates of Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, the famed naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian gave prominence to the fruit. She had sailed to Dutch Surinam in 1699 to study tropical insects. There, for two years, she relied on enslaved African and Indigenous peoples as guides, household help, and sources for botanical information.

“Pineapple with Cockroaches,” the first plate in Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium by Maria Sibylla Merian (Amsterdam, 1705). In the author’s portrayal of insects of Suriname. Volume contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.

“Ripe Pineapple with Dido Longwing Butterfly” in Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. Maria Sibylla Merian described Ananas comosus as producing “the most outstanding of all edible fruits.”Volume contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.

It was in a German book solely devoted to citrus fruits that the pineapple was illustrated in a manner reflecting its exalted position as symbol of social status and refined collecting. Johann Christoph Volkamer’s Nürnbergische Hesperides (The Garden of Hesperides at Nuremberg) contains wonderfully inspired, dreamlike images from the author’s garden ‘Gostenhof’ and its orangeries. Untethered, fruits float above various etched scenes of elaborate gardens of the Alps and Italy, country landscapes, villas, and seaports. There are five uncolored, double-size plates of pineapple, the “Queen of Fruits,” elements of which show the artist’s debt to Merian and her scientific observations (one almost a mirrored image). However, the Nürnbergische Hesperides is very much of the world of the merchant Volkamer, one of the few of the time who had the means and interests to both nurture exotic fruits and undertake such an opulent publication, a more lasting testament to the aristocrat’s cultivation and refinement.

The pineapple plates of Nürnbergische Hesperides (1708-1714) appear in the second volume, Continuation, here with a hairy spider, a reference to Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. Volume contributed in BHL from the Wellcome Library.

One of the imaginative pineapple plates from Nürnbergische Hesperides (volume two of 1714) above a bustling port scene with tall ships, suggesting its importation from foreign lands. Volume contributed in BHL from the Wellcome Library.

The pineapple became fashionable in England after the arrival in 1688 of the Dutch King, William III and Queen Mary, daughter of James II, who were keen horticulturalists and, not incidentally, accompanied by skilled gardeners from the Netherlands. Pineapples were soon grown at Hampton Court. The hothouses in Great Britain became known as pineries. With its distinctive form, the cult of the pineapple extended to architecture and art. Carved representations sit atop the towers of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and other prominent buildings, perhaps an adaptation or reference to the pinecones used on ancient Roman buildings.

Most famously, John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore in Scotland, had a stone-carved pineapple sitting atop his folly or summerhouse perhaps around 1761. The reason for that massive construction is unknown (although certainly boastful), as is the architect. The fruit had been grown in Scotland since 1732. The hapless, diplomatically inept Dunmore was the last Colonial Governor of Virginia and in that colony’s capital, Williamsburg, the pineapple had also become fashionable and a common motif in decorative arts. It was there that Dunmore incurred the wrath of George Washington in 1775 by proposing to arm his own 56 enslaved people as well to grant freedom to Black Loyalists.

During the 18th century, the pineapple was established as a symbol of hospitality, with its prickly, tufted shape incorporated in gateposts, door entryways and finials and in silverware and ceramics. The motif continues, prevalent in Christmas decorations in Williamsburg today. But with pride of place on the lavish dining tables of enslavers in North America, the pineapple continued its association with slavery. George Washington, who first encountered the pineapple at the plantations of Barbados, had them imported from the West Indies, a port in the triangular trade of enslaved Africans.

The 37-foot-high Dunmore Pineapple, the north front, showing the entrance (photograph by Keith Salvesen from geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons).

With technological developments in growing and preserving throughout the wealthy 18th century, the tropical fruit, once an expensive novelty, became a more common commodity in Europe. Helping to make the pineapple more accessible by describing cultivation methods in Great Britain were the writings of Richard Bradley, Philip Miller and William Speechly. The Reverend William Smith in A Natural History of Nevis and the Rest of the English Leeward Charibee Islands in America (1745) declared:

“Ananas, or Pine-Apples, are so common at Chelsea and other fine Gardens here in England, that they need no description, and I shall refer you to Laurence Miller, Sir Hans Sloane, and other books that treat of Gardening.”

Returning to the thought of the pineapple as a symbol of globalization, the Spanish had brought the pineapple to Hawaii sometime by the late 18th to early 19th century. The first commercial crop enterprise was established there in 1886 and others soon followed, often settling on land stolen from the Hawaiian people. A plantation system was developed, exploiting workers, both Indigenous and imported. With cheap labor and new canning technology, Hawaii quickly became the dominant market for pineapples in the world. With extensive advertising, the fruit evolved into a cliche of the Islands. But the big agricultural companies began moving their operations out of Hawaii to Asia and Central America for cheaper land, transportation, and labor in the 1970s. The pineapple’s reign as an economically important and popular fruit throughout the world was firmly in place.

The vast literature of accounts of the pineapple by travelers, explorers, plant enthusiasts, those in the plant and nursery trade, and gardeners— so taken with the distinctive plant— can be found and further studied in the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The pineapple’s distribution throughout the world is told in so many works, reflecting a range of histories— botanical, horticultural, historical, cultural, economic, architectural, and art— in a single tropical fruit. There is much for plant scholars, scientists, historians, artists, and others to discover in the digitized works, tracing the biodiversity and meaning of the pineapple. It still evokes a balmy, tropical paradise and the wondrous beauty of the natural world. As the 17^th-century Dutch businessman Pieter de la Court declared, “One can never be tire’d with looking at it.”

Hand-colored engraving by Johann Jacob Haid after Georg Dionysius Ehret. Plantae Selectae Quarum Imagines ad Exemplaria Naturalia Londini, in Hortis Curiosorum Nutrita. (Nuremberg, 1750-1773). Volume contributed in BHL from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library.

Further Reading

For more in-depth information of the pineapple, a few of the works in the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives’ collections:

The pineapple: botany, production and uses, edited by D.P. Bartholomew, R.E. Paull, and K.G. Rohrbach. c. 2003 (link)

Pineapple culture: a history of the tropical and temperate zones, by Gary Y. Okihiro, c. 2009 (link)

Fifty plants that changed the course of history, by Bill Laws. 2010 (link)

Pineapple: a global history, by Kaori O’Connor. 2013 (link)

For further reading on the history of pineapple production: Jesse Rhodes, “It’s Pineapple Season, But Does Your Fruit come from Hawaii?” Smithsonian Magazine (link)

Cover. Osgood, Frances Sargent (editor). The Floral Offering, A Token of Friendship (1847). Contributed in BHL from Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. Digitization sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

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.

Her description of floriography from her introductory poem in the Floral Offering follows:

INTRODUCTORY.

THY EMBLEM FLOWER.

Round every flower there gleams a glory

Bequeathed by antique song or story;

To each, old legends give a name

And its peculiar charm proclaims;

O’er smiling lawn – through shaded grove,

Our dreaming poets pensive rove,

And strive to read their language rare,

And learn the lesson latent there-

Then ‘mid them all, so fair to see,

What flower shall thy fit emblem be?

The Floral Offering, a Token of Friendship was edited by Frances S. Osgood and illustrated by J. Ackerman “with ten beautiful bouquets of flowers, elegantly colored after nature.” The work was published in Philadelphia, PA by Carey and Hart publishers in 1847. It contains poems by Osgood and others, plates with flowers assembled in bouquets, and a floral dictionary at the back containing her definitions of flowers. For example, basil means “I hate you” and olive means “peace be with you.” Osgood uses these definitions to ascribe secret messages. The list of illustrations for the plates provides the “secret message” that each illustrated arrangement is meant to convey.

Columbine, White Lily and Lupine. Secret message: It was a dream of folly, from which I woke to weep. Osgood, Frances Sargent (editor). The Floral Offering, A Token of Friendship (1847). Art by J. Ackerman. Contributed in BHL from Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. Digitization sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Frances Sargent Osgood (1811 – 1850) was one of the most influential American women poets of her time. She was born in Boston to a family of poets together with her brother, sister, and step-sister. Early on, her parents recognized her talent and encouraged her pursuits. Her first poem was published when she was a young teenager. She was a prolific writer and published numerous works in magazines for women and children and also authored and edited several books.

Osgood married a painter, Samuel Stillman Osgood, in 1835. He had previously studied at the Royal Academy, and they moved back to London where he had a successful career painting portraits. During the four years that they lived abroad, Osgood remained active in her craft and in 1839 published a compilation of all her work in a volume entitled Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England. With the unexpected death of her father, the Osgoods returned to the States, first to her family home in Boston and then settling in New York in 1840. While in New York, Osgood published two volumes in the language of flowers genre in 1841 and 1847.

Trumpet.-flower, Forget-Me-Not, and Raspberry. Secret message: Farewell, be true to thyself, yet sometimes think of me. Osgood, Frances Sargent (editor). The Floral Offering, A Token of Friendship (1847). Art by J. Ackerman. Contributed in BHL from Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. Digitization sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Osgood was very well known during her life-time, such that her biography appears in The American Female Poets; with Biographical and Critical Notices (1848), by Caroline May, and in The Female Poets of America (1849), edited by Rufus Griswold. Her notoriety and embracement of the language of flowers genre may have influenced and encouraged other women to write in the field of horticulture, botany, and natural history.

An interesting side note to her time in New York is Osgood’s association with Edgar Allen Poe. He published her poems and thought highly of her work. Their friendship is rumored to have developed into a love affair.

Anemone, Harebell, and Spiderwort. Secret message: Thou art false, and I resign myself to my fate. Osgood, Frances Sargent (editor). The Floral Offering, A Token of Friendship (1847). Art by J. Ackerman. Contributed in BHL from Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. Digitization sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Frances Sargent Osgood died from tuberculosis in 1850 at 38 years old. She was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston with her daughter that preceded her in death. Her other two daughters died just after her in 1851.

The Memorial (1851) by “Friends of the Late Mrs. Osgood” and edited by Mary E. Hewitt was a tribute to her life. Its 346 pages contain numerous pieces by different authors; it is truly an acknowledgement of her importance to her family, friends, and literary colleagues.

The Rose. Secret message: Beauty and love. Osgood, Frances Sargent (editor). The Floral Offering, A Token of Friendship (1847). Art by J. Ackerman. Contributed in BHL from Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. Digitization sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden is digitizing 62 rare and unique language of flowers volumes published in the 19^th century as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded to the Chicago Horticultural Society. Over three-years, the volumes are being conserved and digitized by expert staff at the Northeast Document Conservation Center. The Floral Offering is from the second set of volumes. You can explore volumes from sets one and two as well as other titles in the Language of Flowers collection in BHL. Learn more about other language of flowers volumes digitized as part of this grant in this past blog post.

China-Aster and Fuchsia. Secret message: Caprice is a woman’s privilege. Osgood, Frances Sargent (editor). The Floral Offering, A Token of Friendship (1847). Art by J. Ackerman. Contributed in BHL from Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. Digitization sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Sweet Pea, Bluebottle Centaury, and Evening Primrose. Secret message: Goodbye! Our love was too lovely to last. Osgood, Frances Sargent (editor). The Floral Offering, A Token of Friendship (1847). Art by J. Ackerman. Contributed in BHL from Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. Digitization sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

References

Griswold, Rufus W. The Female Poets of America. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1849. Internet resource.

Hewitt, Mary E. M, and Frances S. Osgood. The Memorial. New York: G.P. Putnam, 1851. Internet resource.

May, Caroline. The American Female Poets: With Biographical and Critical Notices. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1848. Internet resource.

April 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Organizations around the world have commemorated the occasion by participating in the global Earth Optimism movement — an initiative spearheaded by the Smithsonian to “turn the conservation conversation from doom and gloom to optimism and opportunity”.

Throughout 2020, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and our partners are joining the movement by sharing conservation success stories from and made possible by the BHL collection. Follow our blog for conservation stories — past and present — and visit our website for more information and to explore our Earth Optimism book collection.

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Florida nutmeg, Torreya taxifolia (male). This illustration, along with that of the female tree, represents the first published illustration of this species. Plate 232. Hooker’s Icones plantarum, vol. 3 (1840). Contributed in BHL from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library.

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 [1].

Torreya taxifolia is one of the species highlighted in a recent study to be published in the Memoirs of the Torrey Botanical Society. Authors Dr. Brian M. Boom (Curator Emeritus and former Vice President for Conservation Strategy and Bassett Maguire Curator of Botany at The New York Botanical Garden) and Susan Fraser (Recently-retired Thomas J. Hubbard Vice President and Director of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library) review John Torrey’s botanical legacy, drawing heavily on Torrey’s extensive correspondence, most of which, along with drawings, books, and artifacts from Torrey’s collections, can be found in the holdings of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) [2].

In 2016, NYBG embarked on a project to digitize and transcribe Torrey’s correspondence and make both freely available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). To date, more than 9,500 pages of correspondence—including those from Croom regarding Torreya taxifolia—are available in BHL, and over 7,000 of those pages have been transcribed.

The Torrey correspondence available through BHL was an invaluable resource during Boom and Fraser’s research for their study, which highlights several rare, restricted-range, or threatened plant species for which Torrey was directly involved in the scientific discovery and description phases. This was especially true with regards to Torreya taxifolia.

“BHL was instrumental in researching the circumstances surrounding the discovery and naming of this species, particularly through access to the correspondence of Hardy Bryan Croom and John Torrey between 1834-1837,” asserts Boom.

Dr. Brian M. Boom, Curator Emeritus and former Vice President for Conservation Strategy and Bassett Maguire Curator of Botany at The New York Botanical Garden. Photo Credit: The New York Botanical Garden.

Boom has been studying plant conservation, systematics, and ethnobotany for 40 years. His conservation work focuses on rare, restricted-range and threatened plant species in the American tropics and North Temperate areas, or, alternatively, on invasive species that pose threats to native flora in these regions. An important aspect of his research is aimed at understanding these species from the circumstances surrounding their discovery in the field and description and publication as a new species, through to subsequent documentation of their occurrence in the landscape, and with regards to the threats they are under, in the case of rare plants, or the threats they cause, in the case of invasives.

“Plant species with restricted geographic ranges, or that are rare or threatened, are of conservation concern because it could take relatively little perturbation to cause populations of such species to become further restricted, fragmented, or to become extinct,” states Boom.

Understanding the history of a species’ scientific discovery and subsequent changes in its population and distribution over time require access to historical data. As Boom articulates, BHL’s collections are rich in such data and thus play a vital role in research on threatened species.

“Conservation-related research benefits greatly from BHL in terms of providing access to some of the classic and most iconic images of plant species and to the early texts and archival materials, especially correspondence, pertaining to the focal species,” affirms Boom.

Torreya taxifolia. Plate 109. The North American Sylva, vol. 6 (1849). Art drawn by G. West. Contributed in BHL from New York Botanical Garden, LuEsther T. Mertz Library.

Beyond the published literature, correspondence and field notes are especially valuable as they may contain information that is not included in the published literature or on the herbarium labels of the specimens collected. For example, in the case of Torreya taxifolia, the type specimen is in the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. While there is no collector indicated on the actual specimen, John Torrey is listed as the collector in the Kew specimen database. However, Boom stresses that he knows of no record of Torrey visiting Florida before he made a five-week trip to the state in 1872, during which he did not observe Torreya taxifolia in its natural habitat, although in March of that year he did collect a cultivated specimen of this species in a garden near Tallahassee that he believed had been planted there by Croom (NY Barcode 9506).

“It seems very likely that the holotype was in fact collected by Hardy Bryan Croom, and that Torrey passed a specimen that Croom had sent to him on to Scottish botanist George Arnott Walker-Arnott, who described the new species in 1838,” explains Boom.

As further evidence for this hypothesis, the holotype specimen (K Barcode K000287662) contains a pencil notation, written in Croom’s handwriting, stating: “New genus of Coniferae allied to Taxus. To be described in the next number of the Lyceum of Natural History.”

Torreya taxifolia is a testament to the important role that BHL’s open access collections play in research on endangered species. The historical conservation and systematics research conducted for this species was made possible by reviewing the John Torrey correspondence that is available in BHL and enhanced with crowdsourced transcriptions generated via From the Page. BHL also provided access to the first known published illustrations of Torreya taxifolia, which appeared in Hooker’s Icones plantarum.

Florida nutmeg, Torreya taxifolia (female). This illustration, along with that of the male tree, represent the first published illustrations of this species. Plate 233. Hooker’s Icones plantarum, vol. 3 (1840). Contributed in BHL from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library.

By providing open access to essential literature and archives, BHL is empowering the work of conservationists around the world. Easy and immediate online access to these materials allows scientists to conduct their research more quickly and efficiently—which is ever-more important as biodiversity faces unprecedented threats today, with at least one million species threatened with extinction [3].

“The BHL resources are the only or most readily available ones for accessing certain older titles and certainly for images of plants and correspondence of botanists involved with the discovery and description of new species and of their habitat,” asserts Boom. “Such literature is important for conservation work because the historical materials often contain first-hand commentary about the collection and discovery of threatened species, including information about their population size at the place of discovery and of the habitat in which the species occurred at the time.”

By providing conservationists with the information they need to help save biodiversity, the Biodiversity Heritage Library is improving our ability to respond to today’s biodiversity crisis. As such, free and open access to biodiversity knowledge is a reason to be an Earth Optimist.

References

April 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Organizations around the world have commemorated the occasion by participating in the global Earth Optimism movement — an initiative spearheaded by the Smithsonian to “turn the conservation conversation from doom and gloom to optimism and opportunity”.

Throughout 2020, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and our partners are joining the movement by sharing conservation success stories from and made possible by the BHL collection. Follow our blog for conservation stories — past and present — and visit our website for more information and to explore our Earth Optimism book collection.

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Baker’s meadowfoam (Limnanthes bakeri), which grows in wet meadow and on the shallow margins of freshwater marsh in Little Lake Valley, Mendocino County, California. Photo credit: Robert Preston.

Little Lake Valley, located in northern California’s Eel River watershed, is home to several thousand acres of wet meadows and riparian woodlands that are habitat for diverse plants and wildlife, including tule elk, many bird species, and gorgeous spring wildflower displays. A landscape formed when sediments from several creeks filled an intermountain valley bounded by faults, the Valley is also home to two rare plants: the North Coast semaphore grass (state-listed as Threatened) and Baker’s meadowfoam (state-listed as Rare).

“The large lowland wetland ecosystem found in the Little Lake Valley, if not unique, is quite rare,” asserts Dr. Robert E. Preston, a Senior Biologist in the Sacramento office of ICF, an international consulting firm. “Most or all of the small interior valleys of California’s North Coast Ranges were long ago converted to agriculture or were hydrologically altered. Moreover, it supports almost half of the known occurrences of Baker’s meadowfoam, including the largest and most extensive population.”

In November 2016, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) completed construction of the Willits Bypass Project, a 5.9-mile long bypass of US Highway 101 in Mendocino County. First proposed in 1957, the controversial project, which crosses a corner of Little Lake Valley, raised a variety of environmental concerns due to its impact on endangered species and state and federally regulated resources [1].

Preston served as the lead botanist for the team that prepared the Project’s Mitigation and Monitoring Plan, which was developed and is being implemented by Caltrans to offset the bypass’ impacts on wetlands and rare plants.

“For the past several years, I have spent six to eight weeks each spring collecting data on Baker’s meadowfoam and sampling the vegetation to document progress towards meeting the Project’s habitat restoration and enhancement goals,” explains Preston. “It has been one of my most satisfying projects, because impacts of the Willits Bypass led to the preservation, restoration, and management of large parts of the Little Lake Valley ecosystem.”

Rob Preston collecting Brodiaeas growing in serpentine habitat in Northern California. Photo credit: Laurie Preston.

Preston has been an avid student of California flora for nearly 40 years. It has been the focus of his floristic and taxonomic research and career as a consulting botanist. As suggested by his work on the Willits Bypass Project, much of his research focuses on the conservation of rare plants in the state.

“My position as Senior Biologist with ICF provides me with opportunities to travel throughout California to help clients comply with laws and regulations that help conserve rare plants and wetlands,” shares Preston. “This work includes field-oriented studies such as floristic inventories, rare plant surveys, wetlands delineations, and mitigation monitoring. An important aspect of my work is to convey the results of these studies to clients, resource agencies, and the public through many types of environmental documents, including survey reports, Habitat Conservation Plans, Environmental Impact Reports, and other planning documents.”

Preston’s work involves a great deal of taxonomic research, which has led to the discovery and description of several new rare species. For example, he has worked extensively with the genus Brodiaea, commonly known as cluster-lilies, which consists of about 19 species growing mostly in California.

“About half of the species are rare, and several species are state or federally listed as threatened or endangered,” states Preston. “One species I described, Brodiaea matsonii (named for its discoverer, Gary Matson), is known only from two small populations near Redding, California, and is currently being reviewed for state listing as endangered.”

Sulphur Creek brodiaea (Brodiaea matsonii), known from only two small occurrences growing along Sulphur Creek, in Redding, California. Photo credit: Robert Preston.

As Preston explains, taxonomy and conservation go hand-in-hand.

“To preserve biological diversity, species must be identified and named,” asserts Preston. “Since publication of the first edition of The Jepson Manual, the ultimate catalog of the California flora, over six new species per year have been added to the flora, and the rate of new species discovery does not appear to be slowing. Not surprisingly, many of these new species are rare and face various types of threat.”

Taxonomic research, in turn, is dependent on access to historic literature. In order to name, describe, and classify organisms, scientists must understand the scope of biodiversity that has already been described. This is documented within the published record of scientific literature.

Not long ago, however, it was often difficult for scientists to access the literature required for such taxonomic research. Many of the necessary publications were available in only a few libraries globally, requiring expensive and time-consuming trips to holding libraries or weeks to sometimes months of delay waiting on interlibrary loans—if the publication could be shared at all. This was a major impediment to the efficiency of scientific research, greatly hampering progress at a time when the biodiversity and climate crises demand greater speed and efficiency in scientific outputs to inform conservation.

Fortunately, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) has tackled this challenge head-on and transformed scientific research globally by providing free and open access to this essential literature. Preston has experienced the benefits of BHL’s collections first-hand with his own taxonomic research.

“When I’m conducting a status review for a rare plant, I often find it useful to check the original species description,” shares Preston. “I use BHL primarily to find historic documents with these descriptions.”

Preston first discovered BHL in 2010, while investigating a disagreement over the name of a species that required consultation of the original species description.

“I had been able to find some documents using other sources (Botanicus, Google), but BHL provided a much broader availability of historical resources,” affirms Preston.

Since discovering the Library, Preston has used BHL regularly to support his taxonomic research, including his work on the Brodiaea. For example, in order to determine the correct name for Brodiaea minor, which is endemic to California, Preston needed to confirm the collection location of the type specimen, which had been collected by Theodor Hartweg in 1846. Through BHL, Preston was able to access Hartweg’s account of his collecting trip, published in the Journal of the Horticultural Society of London as “Journal of a Mission to California in Search of Plants.”

“Hartweg recorded the wildflowers, trees, and shrubs associated with his collection, from which I was able to deduce the plant community and pinpoint the collection location to within a few miles,” shares Preston.

While researching the names of other Brodiaea species, Preston discovered that there was confusion over several names arising from a rivalry between two early 19th century English botanists. Materials accessed through BHL helped him unravel this taxonomic mystery.

“In researching the history of this rivalry for my article on ‘How the Brodiaeas Got Their Name,’ published in the journal Fremontia, I found a number of historic sources of information through BHL,” recalls Preston. “Among these was the ‘Monthly Botanical Report,’ a regular feature in the The Monthly Magazine, which chronicled newly described species and horticultural introductions by the botanical community along with snippets of gossip about the botanists themselves.”

Free and open access to biodiversity literature has transformed taxonomic research, which, as Preston’s testimonial demonstrates, is essential to the conservation process.

“‘Species’ and ‘ecosystems’ are constructs that we use to describe and organize the world around us, and taxonomy is how we name and organize those constructs,” asserts Preston. “Names are important, and in fact, a species must be named before it can be legally protected as threatened or endangered.”

First scientific description of Baker’s meadowfoam (Limnanthes bakeri). J.T. Howell. Leaflets of Western Botany (1943), v. 3(9), pg. 206. Contributed in BHL from the New York Botanical Garden with permission from the California Academy of Sciences.

The identity conveyed in a species name extends well beyond a simple binomial. It also articulates an organisms’ context within its wider ecosystem and its relationship to other species. Understanding this context is vital to the creation of any holistic conservation strategy.

“A species name is also an hypothesis, and our concept of a species can change depending on the data we use to interpret it,” explains Preston. “Because many plant species were described and named in the 18th and 19th centuries, it can be difficult to discern the original author’s concept of the species. We can’t call or email them to find out what they were thinking or how they came to a particular conclusion. The historic literature is the only way we can communicate with our colleagues of the past.”

BHL ensures that anyone, anywhere—from the curator in a major natural history museum to the scientist in a developing country without access to a robust research library or the botanist working from home—has easy access to the information they need to study and conserve life on Earth.

At BHL, we’re Earth Optimists because we know that open access to biodiversity literature empowers scientific research and conservation—and that is a reason to be optimistic.

References

When you think of Los Angeles, there are some iconic things that come to mind: the Hollywood Sign, the Santa Monica pier, the Hollywood Walk of Fame — and palm trees. Call up a photo of Los Angeles’ cityscape, and chances are you’ll see palm trees. They are ubiquitous throughout the city, growing along major boulevards and picturesque residential streets, populating parks and framing beachside boardwalks.

While today it’s hard to conjure up imagery of Los Angeles without these towering plants, that was not always in the case. Before the end of the 19th century, Los Angeles was a scrubland desert, no palms in sight. As developers moved into the area in the late 1800s, they wanted to find a way to make the desert more appealing. Palm trees, with their tropical and exotic associations, were just the ticket, especially since they are relatively easy to transport (they have a small, dense root ball rather than elaborate root systems) and thrive so long as they have sun and water.

Developers planted them everywhere, and they became a staple of Southern California [1].

California fan palm (Washingtonia filifera) transplanted from Palm Canyon (outside Palm Springs, California) to San Marino (Los Angeles County, California). Hertrich, William. “Washingtonia filifera”. Lasca Leaves, 1:1 (1950). Contributed in BHL from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library with permission from The Arboretum Library at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. CC-BY-NC-SA.

Given their strong association with the area, you might be surprised to learn that there is only one species of palm native to the entire state of California — the California fan palm (Washingtonia filifera), native to the southwestern United States and northwest Mexico. It is one of two recognized species in the genus Washingtonia, the other being the Mexican fan palm (Washingtonia robusta), native to western Sonora and Baja California Sur in northwestern Mexico. Both are among the palm tree species found in L.A., with the Mexican fan palm in particular reaching exceptional heights throughout the city.

A grove of Mexican fan palms (Washingtonia robusta) “adjoining the historical section at the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum.” Deardorff, David. “Washingtonia Robusta: the Mexican fan palm.” Lasca Leaves, 26:2 (1976). Contributed in BHL from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library with permission from The Arboretum Library at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. CC-BY-NC-SA.

Dr. Lorena Villanueva-Almanza, outreach coordinator at the California Botanical Society, specializes in the Washingtonia genus. As a plant taxonomist, her work focuses on understanding plant relationships and the many ways and names under which plants have been described across time — something she is currently engaged in for the Washingtonia. BHL is an invaluable resource for this work.

“Sometimes, the same plant will have multiple names, something we know as a synonym. In order to clear the confusion, I must look for the original publications — the protologues — in which they were first described,” explains Villanueva-Almanza. “The protologue gives me information about when a taxon was first published, traits that can help me determine the plants that I am working on, and if any type specimens were designated. BHL is a great resource for finding these protologues and, ideally, a solution to taxonomic and nomenclatural problems.”

Dr. Lorena Villanueva-Almanza after arriving at her lab from a trip to the Baja Peninsula. Photo Credit: Javier Sabines.

Villanueva-Almanza has been studying plant taxonomy and systematics for twelve years. She first discovered BHL in 2011, while working as a research assistant for the Flora of the Tehuacán Valley Flora project in Mexico City. Since then, she has used the Library for all of her nomenclatural research. She refers to it daily in her work to identify Washingtonia synonyms and trace type specimens, downloading relevant pages as well as images of possible types in cases where these might be illustrations rather than herbarium specimens.

Villanueva-Almanza cutting a leaf from a Brahea armata palm at Cañón Berrendo, Northern Baja Peninsula. Photo Credit. Javier Sabines.

Being a plant taxonomist is rather like being a detective, explains Villanueva-Almanza. Working out the often convoluted taxonomic history of a species or genus means digging into historic texts and protologues and piecing together information across multiple centuries and languages. BHL makes it easy for her to locate relevant information with its full text “search inside” functionality and author searches that often lead to new publication sources.

“BHL provides invaluable material that sparks my detective skills,” attests Villanueva-Almanza. “It does a great job cross-linking data. I have found more information than I was originally looking for, allowing me to piece together the botanical history of Washingtonia palms with newly discovered information.”

One such example of the kind of unexpected discovery made possible thanks to BHL relates to the original collecting location for the Mexican fan palm (Washingtonia robusta). While taxonomists knew that W. robusta was described from a cultivated palm, it has long been accepted that it was first collected in Baja California Sur. However, after studying a passage published in Möllers deutsche gärtner-zeitung(1888) in which Hermann Wendland — the author of W. robusta’s original species description — discussed the specimen that was sent to him by Louis van Houtte in the spring of 1883 for identification, and upon which his description was based, Villanueva-Almanza realized that this assumption was baseless.

“I remember the awe I felt when I read, translated, and finally realized the importance of Wendland’s notes on W. robusta,” recalls Villanueva-Almanza. “Wendland admits that he does not know where the specimen was collected, which means we do not know its original location. I knew that what I had found would change the way we had interpreted the genus Washingtonia.”

Illustration of Washingtonia robusta published along with Hermann Wendland’s 1888 passage discussing the original specimen sent to him for determination, and upon which the original species description was based. Wendland, Hermann. “Washingtonia robusta H. Wendl.” Möllers Deutsche Gärtner-Zeitung, v. 3 (1888). Contributed in BHL from University Library, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.

While unraveling taxonomic mysteries may sometimes simply lead to more mysteries, Villanueva-Almanza is up to the challenge. By providing easy access to historic texts through a single, convenient online portal, BHL allows her to make discoveries that eluded researchers of the past who may not have had access to such a breadth of material.

“Sometimes, finding a solution becomes a bigger challenge than I anticipated. However, I am particularly drawn to old mysteries,” affirms Villanueva-Almanza. “BHL has been a crucial part of my research — first, by acknowledging the value of historical publications and second, by making them accessible.”

View of Palm Canyon, where Villanueva-Almanza conducted her fieldwork for her dissertation on Washingtonia palms. Photo Credit. Marta Ruiz.

We’re proud to know that BHL is living up to its vision of “Inspiring discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge.” And while the original collecting location for Washingtonia robusta may still be a mystery, there’s no mystery about where you’re sure to see a Mexican fan palm today — towering over the streets of Los Angeles.

References