daring botany
B I OLOGY T ODAY
MAURA C. FLANNERY, D E PA RT M E N T E D I TO R
I have just turned 60 and have decided to begin an
exploration of the plant world. This is really an embarrass-
ing thing to admit: that I’ve been a biologist for 40 years and
of the same. If these 24 families have such variety and such
fascinating adaptations, imagine what is in store for us if we
explore further, and with the resources of the NYBG avail-
I’ve finally turned my attention to the organisms responsi- able to us, there’s enough to keep a botanical artist—even
ble for life on earth as we know it. I have definitely suffered one a lot younger than 60—busy for a lifetime.
from “plant blindness” (Allen, 2003), though it hasn’t been In all the courses I’ve taken at the Garden, I’ve felt
quite absolute. I loved to garden with my mother, I keep overwhelmed by my level of ignorance. Since I have no art
coming back to investigations of the life and work of the background, getting into botanical illustration meant not
plant morphologist Agnes Arber (Flannery, 2005), and for only learning to draw plants, but learning to draw, and
the past two years I’ve been taking courses in botanical more than that, even learning to hold a pencil correctly.
illustration at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). But It has been a humbling experience and one that has made
this spring, two things happened that really took the scales me much more attuned to my students’ problems. I now
off my eyes. First, I was invited by Ethel Stanley of Beloit have a better appreciation for the multiple layers involved
College (a “real” botanist) to do a joint presentation on in learning a discipline. At the same time I had to learn how
Seeing Plants: Visualization in Plant Biology at a BioQUEST to hold a pencil, think about shading a two-dimensional
educational symposium (http://bioquest.org/BSA2007). space to make it appear three-dimensional, and accurately
This was to be held in July before the Botany and Plant reproduce a plant form. These were just too many things to
Biology Joint Congress in Chicago. It was definitely hubris think about at once. While we did learn them one at a time,
on my part to accept this invitation, but Ethel assured me we eventually had to attempt to put these skills together,
that I could concentrate on the visualization part and she and that was a stretch for me, much as it is for my students
would do the “real” plant biology. to learn vocabulary, concepts, and scientific ways of think-
ing all at once.
Plant Morphology It is this idea of layers that I’ve become much more
Also this spring, I took a course called Plant Morphology aware of since venturing into the plant world. In plant mor-
for Botanical Illustrators at the NYBG. It was taught by Dr. phology, there is vocabulary galore, but this is only a minor
Dick Rauh, who has a Ph.D. in botany and is a noted botan- aspect of the challenge. There is also thinking in three
ical artist. Dick is also my role model. He started work on dimensions, learning about developmental processes, and
his doctorate when he retired from the field of film special dealing with a range of variations that is staggering. What
effects. Since I am a typical student, I had listened to the fun! Dick’s attitude is that every challenge brings rewards
student gossip on Dick and knew that he was good, but in terms of interesting ideas and beautiful structures. Yes,
tough, and he proved to live up to his reputation. However, schizocarp is an awkward word, but think about how much
I also found him one of the most subtly passionate teach- information it carries; it describes a dry fruit with carpels
ers I’ve ever had. He is definitely a traditionalist in how he that split at maturity. Sure, there’s a lot to fertilization
presents material: lecture followed by lab is his style. But and seed formation, but consider that this whole process
his lectures are punctuated with questions—going both includes the remnants of the alternation of generations
ways—and with asides on some of the more fascinating and you have to be impressed by what plants pull off. As
characteristics of flowering plants. In 8 weeks, we managed I sit here writing this, I have an urge to pull out one of
to cover the basics of plant morphology, from the different my textbooks and get back to work. There are all kinds of
types of pericarpal tissue to the intricacies of leaf shape, assessment instruments, but to me, this is the sure sign of
and we examined specimens from 24 angiosperm families. a great teacher.
The purpose of the course was to give botanical illustra- As a student, I’m afraid that I fail to match the level of
tors some sense of how plants are put together and how excellence found in Dick Rauh and the other faculty at the
they vary. This was definitely a watered-down version of a NYBG. But I am enthusiastic, and this is what led me to
“real” plant morphology course, but because it was taught decide to use plants as the focus for my course this fall. It’s
by Dr. Rauh, all the students developed a hunger for more a core course in scientific inquiry built around the concept
of evolution, but each year I like to draw examples from
a particular area of biology. I’ve used plants before, but I
MAURA C. FLANNERY is Professor of Biology and Director of
feel that this time I bring more to the topic, I bring Dick’s
the Center for Teaching and Learning at St. John’s University,
passion, and also eyes trained to look more carefully at the
Jamaica, NY 11439; e-mail: flannerm@stjohns.edu. She earned green world. It seems like a perfect time to do this because
a B.S. in biology from Marymount Manhattan College; an M.S., plants appear to be “hot” right now and plant blindness
also in biology, from Boston College; and a Ph.D. in science seems on the wane. Plants are in the news as harbinger’s of
education from New York University. Her major interests are in global warming (Davey, 2007) and as a possible means to
communicating science to the nonscientist and in the relation- ease this phenomenon (Reay, 2007), as well as being a solu-
ship between biology and art. tion to our dependence on foreign oil (Brainard, 2007).
488 THE AMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER, VOLUME 69, NO. 8, OCTOBER 2007
All these issues were prominent at the Joint Congress. There endlessly rich. The NBII includes not just plants, but all types of
was so much going on there, especially for someone who was organisms, and because of its sponsor, it is a map-rich site with
also trying to adjust to a new scientific culture, that it made the all kinds of environmental information.
overload I felt in plant morphology class seem trivial. While I At the workshop, we were also introduced to the new
have attended many education and science education meetings Encyclopedia of Life that is in development now but which
over the years, I haven’t been to a blatantly scientific conference promises to be just what its name implies—a database with
in decades, so I definitely experienced culture shock. Posters information on all known species (http://www.eol.org/home.
were just becoming common when I was in graduate school, html). The project makes others seem small, but there are several
now they are everywhere, and so are the tubes used to tote important databases that are worth mentioning. Also recently
them around. And the visual sophistication of the posters is launched, Botanicus is sponsored by a consortium of institutions
fascinating: backgrounds range from jet black to pale photos of and spearheaded by the St. Louis Botanical Garden (http://www.
the presenter’s campus or plant of choice. Just walking around botanicus.org). They are digitizing thousands of their books and
can give you an education in how to present masses of data in journals, most published before 1925, when the copyright laws
understandable formats—and also how not to do it. made copying printed materials more problematic. Much of the
material is text based, but there are enough images to satisfy a
Databases picture addict like myself. If funding continues, then more and
more treasures of the botanical literature will be digitized.
I hate to admit it, but when I was in graduate school, the
calculator was the technological equivalent of the iPhone. Now, Also dependent on funding is the digitizing of herbarium
computers are everywhere, as are the scientific data they manage. specimens. At the workshop, there was a presentation on a con-
Also impressive is the sophistication of the databases available to sortium of California herbaria created to make their collections
plant scientists, and to the general public, on the Web. There was available online (http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/consortium/about.
an entire symposium on this topic. Called “The World of Plants html). Jepson Herbarium at the University of California, Berkeley
at Your Fingertips,” it was a great introduction for someone like is spearheading this effort, and Bruce Baldwin of the Jepson
me who barely know about the existence of these resources, let showed how interactive its database is (http://ucjeps.berkeley.
alone their depth and potential. edu/interchange/). Since specimens are being contributed from
many sources, there are cases where the same species may be
Information literacy is a popular education buzzword at the identified differently in different collections. There is a comment
moment. In its most limited sense, it means being able to use a box with each entry giving experts the opportunity to annotate
library’s resources to find information, but in a broader sense, it the information and make the entries more accurate and informa-
involves understanding how knowledge is used, evaluated, and tive. Also, mapping software is incorporated so that the geograph-
created in a particular discipline. There are definitely discipline- ical distribution for each species can be displayed, or at the very
specific aspects to being information literate. I can navigate least, the location where a specimen was collected. For someone
general databases to find a reference, know a bit about general like myself who is more familiar with mapping genes, this use of
biology resources, and have a good grasp of the Web resources geographical information systems is amazing. I consider myself
dealing with evolution. I have some sense of what PubMed with very fortunate to have attended a session like this just as I am
its reference database and the NCBI Web site with its protein trying to orient myself in the plant world. It really does involve a
and nucleic acid sequence data can do, but as with other aspects different type of thinking, one in which three-dimensional space
of plant biology, the plant databases are virgin territory for me. is important in a way that’s more obvious than in the more two-
I had bookmarked the link for the PLANTS Database, managed dimensional world of gene and protein sequences.
by the US Department of Agriculture, but I can’t say that I know
my way around the site (http://www.plants.usda.gov). After the Of course, all organisms live in an environment, but because
guided tour we had at the workshop and a few minutes just now plants are stationary, their space is better defined and can be
wandering around the site, I realize three things. First, this is seen more as an extension of themselves. The Jepson database
a massive and powerful resource; second, it will take time and includes mapping software that allows you to see photos of the
thought to appreciate its potential; three, doing this work is abso- areas where plants were collected, giving the specimens an excit-
lutely necessary for taming this site for my students. ing, you-are-there, quality. This is just one of a large number of
projects aimed at digitizing herbaria collections. The New York
By “taming” I mean developing guided activities so students Botanical Gardens has already made 850,000 of its specimens
come to understand the power of this resource without getting available electronically with the ultimate goal of digitizing its
lost in its size and intricacies. I am more and more convinced seven million-piece collection (http://sciweb.nybg.org/science2/
that this will become a large part of my role as teacher in the VirtualHerbarium.asp). The Field Museum in Chicago also has a
future. I have heard endless presentations on how teachers have large project focusing on its huge collection of neotropical plant
to assume the role of guides for their students, but until I began specimens (http://fm2.fieldmuseum.org/plantguides/).
to wrestle with Web resources I didn’t appreciate what a chal-
lenge this is. I may be reacting to Dick Rauh’s enthusiasm, but
I don’t see this as a laborious task ; it is more a source of excite- Theory
ment. It really is like exploring a new world, a visually exciting Plants in three-dimensional space was also one of the top-
one, that is available right at my desk. ics touched upon by James Collins, Assistant Director of the
NBII, the National Biological Information Infrastructure, is Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF),
another huge, government-sponsored database; it’s administered who spoke on “Plant Biology into the 21st Century: Where to
by the Biological Informatics Office of the US Geological Survey from Here.” He referred to three biological themes that NSF
(http://www.nbii.gov), so navigating through all this informa- is focusing on. They are systems biology which looks at the
tion means, in part, navigating through a web of government complexity of the living world, issues in biology and society,
bureaucracy. But I can’t complain because these resources are and encouraging the development of a solid theoretical base for
BIOLOGY TODAY 489
biology. As a botanical example of the latter, he cited a recent plant researchers have been looking for a workable sequence for
article on inflorescence form and development (Prusinkiewicz et the botanical world. Kress mentioned several teams, including
al., 2007). The authors looked at three inflorescence structures one at the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew in Britain, and then
that occur in nature: the panicle, the raceme, and the cyme. They went into the work being done by his group at the NMNH, that
compared these to theoretical structures that don’t exist, and is part of the Smithsonian Institution. They decided to look for
from this information attempted to come up with a model with a sequence in the chloroplast genome because it is peculiar to
an evolutionary perspective about how the existing types could plants, is small, and has been well-studied in a number of spe-
be related to each other through genetic change. cies. Their criteria were that the sequence had to be relatively
Since I had just learned about racemes, etc. in my morphol- short, between 300 and 800 base pairs (bps) in length (CO1 is
ogy class, this topic interested me. Here was a way of joining the about 600 bp), the sequence needed to be variable enough to
genetic world I am more familiar with to my new-found interests, differentiate among species, and it had to be found in all land
though I must admit that things got quite technical when the plants.
authors introduced a theoretical 3-D morphospace. But basi- When the NMNH group screened chloroplast genomes,
cally, they focused on two architectural genes from Arabidopsis, they came up with several candidate regions. Further study led
TFL1 and LFY. A mutation in either gene produces a plant with them to decide that a sequence called trnH-psbA was the best
inflorescence changes, so form alteration is related to genetic bet; it was about 450 bp in length, was a noncoding region so
change. The authors argued that these changes are, in turn, it was variable, and it was found in most plants whose genomes
related to fitness in particular environments; for example: “With they studied. Using this sequence they were able to accurately
unlimited pollination and a growing season of fixed length, the identify 80% of the species they tested. Meanwhile, workers at
optimal inflorescence architecture is a panicle ... because the Kew had taken a different tack and used coding regions from
plant can delay flowering by keeping its meristems in a vegeta- the chloroplast genome. As with the iBOL project, it is essential
tive state until the latest time needed for fruit production, thus that there be consensus on the sequence to be used and a final
maximizing branching and the number of fruits” (p. 1455). But decision will be made soon. Kress had just come from a meet-
in areas where the climate is less stable, this strategy may not ing of the groups involved in this work, so he probably has a
work, and it may be more adaptive to produce racemes or cymes good sense of what the final answer will be. Though he didn’t
where only a fraction of the meristems produce flowers at any make any firm statement, he did suggest that a likely outcome
one time. A study like this suggests that James Collins is right: would be to use two sequences, Kew’s coding region as well as
it is important to attempt to create a theoretical structure which NMNH’s trnH-psbA.
will not only link different kinds of biological information—in Even used together, the identification rate with these
this case evolutionary concepts, genetics, and modeling—but sequences is 88% as opposed to the animal identification at
also create a foundation for further investigation. 95%. But Kress noted that even when the process doesn’t yield
the right species, it usually does give the right genus and family.
Barcoding He ended his presentation by illustrating how barcoding might
eventually be done in the field, because that is the ultimate
The last presentation I went to at the Congress was one aim of this project: to document the diversity of life around the
of the best. W. John Kress of the National Museum of Natural globe. One of the aims of barcoding experts is to create a hand-
History spoke on DNA barcoding. While I had read about this held device into which a small piece of tissue could be inserted
idea and its implementation, I feel that after this talk, I finally and analyzed. This gadget would be linked via satellite to data-
have a grasp of what it involves. Kress began by describing the bases for sequence comparison. Before you run to RadioShack to
basic idea: find a DNA sequence that is common to all species look for it, I should note that now the devices used for barcoding
and yet is quite variable across species. In essence, this sequence are table-top size, but there are already prototypes for smaller
becomes a unique barcode—or fingerprint—that can be used to versions, so Kress thinks it’s possible that small devices will be
easily identify species. Like the human genome program, this available for testing within a few years.
project has gone from the wild idea phase to implementation
in a relatively short period of time. The concept of DNA barcod- Some taxonomists and other biologists consider the very
ing only surfaced in 2002, and today there are several projects idea of barcoding as going in the opposite direction to the route
already working to make the barcoding of all species a reality. biology should be taking. The very term has connotations of
The acronym for this plan is BOL: the Barcode of Life. There is commodification and simplification, while biologists should be
now CBOL, the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (http://www. using their resources to study the complexity and richness of
barcoding.si.edu/AboutCBOL.htm), and iBol, the International life. Barcoding seems to strip biology of its exquisite intricacy
Barcode of Life project that is based at the University of Guelph even more than gene sequencing, the other large-scale project
in Canada. iBol aims to barcode five million specimens for a that many biologists see as overly reductionistic. I can definitely
half million species in five years (and I have to mention that this see their argument. Describing an orchid species in terms of a
includes FISHBOL for the piscine world). However, little of this few hundred DNA base pairs does seem the ultimate in sterility,
work has dealt with the plant world. but if this is the quickest way to identify a plant as a new species,
a new source of wonder in nature, then it may be worth it. Kress
One of the fundamental problems in barcoding is to find a emphasized that barcoding is not a replacement for the work of
sequence that is both variable and ubiquitous. CBOL uses the taxonomists, it does not provide phylogenetic data, but rather it
cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 gene (CO1) from the mitochon- is identification tool and another data set to describe a specimen
drial genome because it provides 95% accuracy of identification or species. As someone who is outside the fray, I see barcoding
for animals, and there are just a few groups without enough vari- as a fascinating development that can illuminate the living world
ability. Kress then explained why it has proven difficult to find a in a new way, and is also interesting study in the sociology of
comparable sequence for land plants. CO1 doesn’t work because science, in how an idea is introduced, gains currency, and ulti-
it doesn’t have enough variability in plants, so several groups of mately becomes actualized and institutionalized.
490 THE AMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER, VOLUME 69, NO. 8, OCTOBER 2007
Conclusion this point in my life I need to learn about plants, and having to
teach about them this fall is daring me to do it now.
I learned a great deal at the Joint Congress, including how
little I really know about the plant world. My trip to Chicago pro-
vided a wealth of information and also gave me a sense of what References
botany and plant science are about today. I went to a symposium Allen, W. (2003). Plant blindness. BioScience, 53(10), 926.
on leaf shape because that was a topic of interest to Agnes Arber
Arunika, H., Gunawardenaa, N., Greenwood, J. & Dengler, N.
(1879-1960), a plant morphologist who is dear to my heart. (2004). Programmed cell death remodels lace plant leaf shape
There I discovered that the basic questions she explored, such during development. The Plant Cell, 16, 60-73.
as how much of leaf shape is adaptive, are still being studied;
no clear answers are available. There I also heard an interesting Brainard, J. (2007, April 20). The big deals in biofuels. The Chronicle
of Higher Education, A19-A22.
presentation by Nancy Dengler on how compound leaves form
in monocots, the plants that Arber herself studied. Dengler has Davey, M. (2007, July 11). A beetle and balmy weather may bench a
found evidence that compound leaves form more by schizogeny baseball staple. The New York Times, A1, A14.
or splitting of the whole leaf rather accomplished through pro- Flannery, M. C. (2005). Agnes arber in the 21st century. The
grammed cell death rather than by mechanical rupture the tissue Systematist, 24, 13-17.
(Arunika, 2004). This presentation was very specific and circum- Griffin, G. (1995). Season of the Witch: Border Lines, Marginal Notes.
scribed, very different from the one on the barcoding of all life Pasadena, CA: Trilogy Books.
on earth. These examples show the breadth of the Congress and
explain why I came away from it even more excited about plants Prusinkiewicz, P., Erasmus, Y., Lane, B., Harder, L. & Coen, E.
(2007). Evolution and development of inflorescence architec-
than I had been before. I just read an essay on teaching in which
tures. Science, 316, 1452-1456.
Gail Griffin (1995) writes that we teach what we need to learn.
That comment is ringing in my ears. For a variety of reasons, at Reay, D. (2007). Spring-time for sinks. Nature, 446, 727-728.
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