Save Plants: July 2020 Newsletter

Mostly I have boring questions, such as “What are the units on this column labeled Plant Height?” But sometimes I stumble upon anecdotes in the locality notes that bring the collection record to life. One that I particularly enjoy is in UC Berkeley’s living accession of the Catalina Cherry (Prunus ilicifolia subsp. lyonii) originally collected on the Channel Islands, which notes the collectors’ urgent need to “abandon toyon seedlings and retreat from pigs” at one critical point.

This challenge of compiling data is not just a nerdy academic exercise—it has real conservation importance. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic closed the economy and drained state budgets, the California legislature approved a $3 million budget line item to collect seed from all remaining rare plant species in California not currently represented in the California Plant Rescue seed banking network. The California Plant Rescue Database—which CPC has operated and maintained since 2017—has been instrumental in determining the targets and facilitating collections planning. This database of seed and living collections from six of California’s largest botanic gardens (California Botanic Garden, San Diego Zoo Global, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, and Regional Parks Botanic Garden) contains 18,067 records of 2,547 species spanning collection dates from 1938 to 2019.

At the CPC National Office, one of our near-term goals is to consolidate these resources into a more unified platform and extend this software and collecting paradigm to other states and regions. We believe that the collaborative spirit of the CPC network lends itself exceptionally well to the divide-and-conquer mentality that will allow us to achieve our ultimate goal: to safeguard all of the imperiled plant species in the United States. Thank you to all of our partners, who have allowed me the opportunity to compile your data so that we can build a more collaborative and successful collecting community.

Tying together population and collection data, both with spatial data, CPC was able to develop a priority targeting tool for CaPR. With this tool, collectors can quickly find out what other species might be in an area they are already seeking to collect in and have permits for, or otherwise use to develop a target list.

By bringing together all CaPR partner data, we are able to track progress towards our goal, identify species that fit our funding source criteria, and much more. In this search we see that the county of Inyo has populations of 54 rare and threatened species, and that CaPR partners are targeting some of these species for collection.

There are currently about 100 Natural Heritage Programs now, covering all 50 states, the Navajo Nation, Canada, and several Latin American and Caribbean countries. Many still carry the Natural Heritage Program name (e.g., the North Carolina Heritage Program), while others have been folded into government or university programs with different names and, in some cases, expanded roles (e.g., the Oregon Biodiversity Information Center). Most of the programs have at least one botanist. Keeping up-to-date with all the rare plants in their jurisdictions is a tall order, however. Tennessee’s Natural Heritage Botanist, David Lincicome, has stated that it would take 19 years to monitor and update all rare plant population records in the state! According to our June Conservation Champion, Anne Frances of NatureServe, “Programs are always interested in learning and documenting newly discovered rare plants and rare plant locations,” and the opportunities for partnership are vast. The data for these programs then feed into the NatureServe database and inform NatureServe’s status assessments (determinations of how rare or threatened the plants are).

In California, a state tracking more than 2,400 rare or threatened plant taxa, partnerships are key to data collection. The botanists of the California Natural Diversity Database (CNDDB) rarely collect their own data. Instead, a large part of their job is to help others to submit their data to CNDDB and to encourage them to collect additional information. According to CNDDB botanist Kristi Lazar, a big focus is on getting data on population size and threats. These are “two key pieces of information that are often lacking from data submissions” but are clearly important for assessing conservation status. CNDDB has collaborated with partners in data collection to develop an app that encourages more complete population reports aligned with CNDDB fields.

A Rose by Any Other Name

Yes, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But would people know which beautiful bud you referred to? Naming and defining plants—or plant taxonomy—is essential to our understanding of plant evolution, relatedness, geography, conservation, and rarity. Accurate plant taxonomy is important when keeping data, and especially when sharing data. Make sure that rose means the same flower to those receiving the data as it does to you! Database managers need to check the names of species in their datasets against up-to-date taxonomies regularly, because names change more often than you might think.

As we learn more about plants and discover new ones, we are able to better refine our understanding of the relationships between them. New genetic data can split a genus, or merge two. Sometimes a whole family can be moved under another. For example, the former maple family (Aceraceae) is now recognized under the soapberry family (Sapindaceae). Because nature is not easily understood, defined, or categorized, experts have varying viewpoints on plant relationships and the names that represent those relationships. Although taxonomic experts do take time to meet, discuss, and agree upon changes based on the prevailing science, communication and general acceptance of these changes can be a thorny task.

The name changes definitely present a challenge for database managers. Taxonomic lists that report currently accepted names also make a point of listing current and former names (synonyms) for each plant species. Synonym cross-referencing helps botanists keep up with changes. Below is the list of taxonomic resources that CPC relies on to make sure we call a rose a rose.

1. ITIS. A very robust taxonomy reference for North America (with fairly good global coverage as well), ITIS includes names for animals, fungi, and microbes as well as plants. It is maintained in partnership with many US, Canadian, and Mexican agencies, including the Smithsonian and United States Geological Survey.
2. Plants of the World (POTW) and the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP). These resources, maintained by Kew, focus on comprehensive global coverage of plant names. WCVP (formerly known as The Plant List) is the taxonomy backbone, while POTW includes herbarium images and maps.
3. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Plants. Interestingly, the USDA maintains a database separate from ITIS. While it does include a large amount of taxonomy information, its strength is the wealth of images and plant trait data.
4. Regionally specific floras. The Jepson Flora is a key resource for CPC’s work with California Plant Rescue. Maintained by Jepson Herbarium at UC Berkeley, it is the primary taxonomy of state regulation in California.
5. The Flora of North America. CPC’s list of rare species will eventually conform to this taxonomy. A new website is available in Beta.

When did you first fall in love with plants?

I grew up in Miami, Florida, and spent a lot of time outside as a kid. There is always something blooming in Miami, and almost always some delicious fruit to eat. (Side note: Right now it’s mango season!) In hindsight, I have always been interested in plants, but I had no idea I could be a botanist until I was in college. Still, I remember collecting air plants (Tillandsia species) on a Girl Scout camping trip because I was fascinated by them. (I did not know it was illegal to collect plants without permission.) We carefully attached the air plants to trees in our yard and watched them grow. I also got my first of many terrible cases of poison ivy on that trip and quickly learned how to identify that plant!

During college at UNC-Chapel Hill, I took a horticulture class that had local flora as a major component. I loved it and was thrilled to learn you could earn a living hanging out with plants!

What was your path to becoming a botanist with NatureServe?

My path to becoming Lead Botanist at NatureServe was long and winding. After finishing my bachelor’s at UNC Chapel Hill and backpacking in Asia, I interned at the North Carolina Botanical Garden. My experience there very much influenced my path towards conserving native plants. The concept of a native plant garden was new to me, and their “Conservation Through – Propagation” slogan stuck with me all these years.

After college, I insisted I would never go back to school and never live in Miami again. I moved to Washington, D.C., and worked at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation managing grants. Two years later I had an itch to return to field work and pursue yet another interest I could not seem to shake—ethnobotany. So, I applied to master’s programs and found myself attending graduate school at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami. Never say never!

My master’s work at FIU was an incredibly rewarding and humbling experience I conducted my master’s research in Costa Rica, studying the home gardens of an indigenous group called the Ngobe (or Guaymí) and their non-indigenous neighbors. My time at FIU solidified my interest in botany and conservation, which was bolstered by the partnership between FIU and Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. During this time, I also worked as a field botanist for the Institute for Regional Conservation and in the seed lab at Fairchild under Joyce Maschinski, where I first learned about CPC.

While I still have great interest in tropical botany and ethnobotany, working in Costa Rica ironically made me pivot my interests back to plant conservation in the United States. Witnessing the development in Miami throughout my life, coupled with the scientific knowledge of how development has impacted species and ecosystems, fueled a drive to work towards conserving plants in my own backyard. Thus, I followed an opportunity to pursue a Ph.D. working with a professor at the University of Florida (UF) to research the establishment of native wildflowers on roadsides.

From the beginning of my Ph.D., I knew I did not want to pursue the path of becoming a tenure-track professor. I wanted to do applied conservation and felt my career interests would be best met at a botanical garden, government agency, or non-profit organization. I had long thought that NatureServe would be a great fit for my desire to work on applied plant conservation and actually started my position there in October 2010. I find it hard to believe that almost 10 years have flown by.

What do you see as the role of NatureServe within conservation?

NatureServe’s data, along with data from our network, provide the backbone for conservation decisions in the United States and Canada. We often take for granted the knowledge of which plants are globally or locally rare and where they occur, but this information would not be readily available without the NatureServe Network. NatureServe makes the accumulation of vast and varied datasets easily accessible through compilation, curation, standardization, and interpretation. Without these steps, it would be nearly impossible to aggregate data across North America and assign conservation status—each user would need to compile, curate, standardize, and aggregate each data set of interest individually. We would all have a much harder time knowing where to focus our limited conservation resources.

What has been the most challenging aspect of your work? And how do you overcome it?

The most challenging aspect of our work is lack of funding and resources. There is so much to do, and not enough staff or funding or time to do it all. It can be overwhelming. Sometimes it can feel like trying to roll a boulder up a hill. Overcoming this challenge is a daily exercise that often involves stepping back for perspective and engaging with my awesome team at NatureServe and the larger plant conservation community. Sometimes you need someone else to hold the boulder in place while you take a break. And if that does not work, I channel Dory from Finding Nemo and “just keep swimming.”

What has surprised you about working with plants?

Two things have surprised me. First, there is so much we still do not know about so many plants—from the most basic questions, like whether a species is extinct or still extant, to more complex questions, like why it grows where it does and how it germinates. Second, it is amazing how variable and boundary-pushing plants are. For example, many plants regularly engage in both sexual and asexual reproduction or switch back and forth between the two depending on their environments. If we consider this from human perspective, that can be mind-blowing. The fact that some plants can hybridize across genera, let alone species, poses a serious challenge to the biological species concept. Another example comes from our work on the Global Tree Assessment, for which we are developing a list of trees for the U.S. It may seem straightforward to determine what a tree is, but this can be quite complicated, as some species can be trees in one habitat and shrubs in others. Do you include tree-like species such as the Saguaro Cactus and tropical tree ferns? We will be presented with challenges any time we try to fit living things into boxes, but plants provide some fascinating examples!

What current projects or approaches in plant research or conservation excite you most?

One of the most exciting projects we are working on is developing innovative ways to efficiently update the conservation status of North American plants. With a flora of nearly 20,000 plant taxa, maintaining up-to-date conservation status can be daunting with only five botanists on staff. With support from the Brico Fund, we are looking at ways to increase the efficiency of reviewing ranks by streamlining and automating more of our process. The project focuses on updating Global Ranks of some of our most imperiled plants and using the new tool we’ve developed to “port” the underlying assessment data from NatureServe’s database to the Red List database. We are also partnering with SAS to investigate using Artificial Intelligence to assist with some of the compiling, curating, and standardizing work we do. This work will ultimately help us complete our goal of having up-to-date global status assessments for our entire flora!

All photos courtesy of Anne Frances.