the plant press - arizona native plant societydocuments the identity of true plants (kingdom...

The Plant PressTHE ARIZONA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY

Volume 37, Number 1 Summer 2014

In this Issue:The Herbaria of Arizona1 The Herbarium3 Arizona Western College4 Arizona State University8 Desert Botanical Garden

10 University of Arizona14 Deaver (Northern Arizona

University)16 Grand Canyon Museum

Collection17 McDougall (Museum of

Northern Arizona)18 Cochise County

& Our Regular Features2 President’s Note6 Product Review:

2800 Arizona Wildflowers12 Who’s Who at AZNPS13 Welcome to Claire McLane14 Book Review: Flora of the

Four Corners Region

19 Spotlight on a Native Plant

©2014 Arizona Native PlantSociety. All rights reserved.

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Specimen sheets from the ASU Herbarium.

Introduction

An herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of dried preserved specimens thatdocuments the identity of true plants (Kingdom Plantae), ranging from the highervascular plants to the nonvascular plants such as the bryophytes. But herbaria can alsoserve as repositories for other groups of “plant-like” organisms such as the algae(Kingdom Protista), the fungi (Kingdom Fungi), and lichens (composite organismsformed by a symbiotic relationship between an alga and a fungus). The herbarium is aplace of special wonder and excitement for those who love plants and wish to know moreabout their occurrence, distribution, and variation. This issue of The Plant Press is devotedto a brief discussion of the importance of the herbarium and its history, followed byindividual articles describing the major, and some of the smaller, Arizona herbaria.

The Herbarium A Priceless Resource for Botanical Documentation,Research, and Understandingby Douglas Ripley, Arizona Native Plant Society

President’s Noteby Douglas Ripley [email protected]

2 The Plant Press Arizona Native Plant Society Summer 2014

Having just perused the latest issue of ourquarterly newsletter Happenings, I am onceagain pleased to reflect on the scope andrange of the many activities and initiativesour Society continues to sponsor. Thoseactivities include interesting monthly chaptermeetings, hands-on botanical trainingthrough the Plant Atlas Project of Arizona(PAPAZ) initiative and the Science,Technology, Engineering and Mathematics(STEM) program for middle-school students,field trips to many fascinating locales, andnative plant restoration projects. Also, severalChapters sponsor and fund importantpublication and research grant programswhich make a significant contribution to ourunderstanding of native plants. In Februarythe Society was pleased to host the annualArizona Botany Meeting 2014 in cooperationwith the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.That event was a great success thanks to themany outstanding presenters and field tripleaders. We are now making initial plans fornext year’s meeting which we anticipate willbe held in mid-February 2015 at the DesertBotanical Garden. I would also like to alertyou to the Society’s annual three day fieldtrip/workshop to be held at the SouthwesternResearch Station in the ChiricahuaMountains on 5-7 September 2014.Registration information is available throughthe AZNPS website. I believe that all of theseworthwhile activities and projects reflectextremely well on the AZNPS and itsmembers who have contributed so much oftheir time and energy to make them happen.

This issue of The Plant Press is devoted to thesubject of herbaria and provides a generaldiscussion of the history and importance ofherbaria, followed by individual articles thatdescribe the major, and some of the smaller,herbaria in Arizona. Anyone interested innative plants should be aware of theinvaluable resources represented by our State’sherbaria. We hope that these articles willprovide our members with the informationthey will need to begin using their localherbarium to support and reinforce theirinterest in native plants.

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The Importance of Herbaria

The estimated 350,000,000 specimens housed in the world’sapproximately 3,400 herbaria represent a priceless record of botanicalhistory that continues to help inform our understanding ofbiogeography, evolution, and ecology and serve as source material formany other disciplines such as cytogeography, biochemicalsystematics, palynology, and genecology. (Thiers [continuouslyupdated]). In addition to their enormous value and usefulness asrepositories for plant diversity, many herbaria sponsor events rangingfrom extensive symposia to more informal seminar programs. Almostall herbaria solicit the assistance of volunteers to help with the never-ending tasks associated with herbarium maintenance. As such theynot only provide both the professional scientist and general plantenthusiast with a source of invaluable information on specificresearch projects but they also offer an intellectually stimulating placeto learn more about botany and to meet and associate with other like-minded people.

History

The earliest record of formally pressing and drying plant specimensand organizing them into an herbarium is attributed to the Italianphysician and botanist Luca Ghini (1490-1556) who is also creditedwith establishing the first European botanical garden (Mayr 1982).Unlike the current practice of mounting specimens on separate sheetsof heavy paper and storing them horizontally in cabinets, the earliestherbarium practice involved binding individual specimen sheets intovolumes. Linnaeus is credited with introducing the current mountingand storage practices although the bound volume technique persistedin some herbaria into the 19th Century (Stearn 1957). In recentdecades, many significant innovations have improved the storage andmanagement of herbarium specimens, such as compacting herbariumcases that greatly reduce the amount of aisle space required betweencases and the introduction of new and significantly less dangerous

The Herbarium continued

above Luca Ghini’s Bound Herbarium Specimens. Courtesy University ofFlorence, Museum of Natural History, Botany Section.

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www.aznativeplantsociety.org The Plant Press Arizona Native Plant Society 3

measures to control herbarium insect pests. Digitaltechnology now allows for the scanning of herbariumspecimens through which specimen images can be accessedon line or transmitted electronically anywhere in the world.And, of course, the power of modern computer technologyis now used to search and manage huge herbariumcollections in a way that was previously difficult andenormously time consuming.

Major Herbaria

The Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (NationalMuseum of Natural History, France), which was establishedin 1635 is the largest herbarium in the word withapproximately 9.5 million specimens. Other major Europeanherbaria include the Komarov Botanical Institute of theRussian Academy of Sciences (7.1 million specimens) andthe Royal Botanic Garden Kew (7 million specimens). InNorth America, the largest herbaria include the New YorkBotanical Garden (7.2 million specimens), MissouriBotanical Garden (6.3 million specimens), HarvardUniversity Herbaria (5 million specimens), United StatesNational Herbarium, Smithsonian Institution (4.3 millionspecimens), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México(National Autonomous University of Mexico) (1.2 million

specimens), and the Royal Ontario Museum (860,000specimens) (Thiers [continuously updated]).

Arizona Herbaria

The remaining articles in this issue of The Plant Pressprovide information on the major Arizona herbaria as wellas several smaller herbaria. All are priceless resources forArizona’s professional and amateur botanists seekinginformation on plant identification, research, andunderstanding.

aReferences

Mayr, E. 1982. The growth of biological thought – Diversity,evolution and inheritance. The Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity, Cambridge, MA.

Stearn, W. T. 1971. Sources of information about botanicgardens and herbaria. Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 3:225-233.

Thiers, B. [continuously updated]). Index Herbariorum: Aglobal directory of public herbaria and associated staff.New York Botanical Garden’s Virtual Herbarium.http://sweetgum.nybg.org/ih/

The Herbarium continued

The Arizona Western College (AWC) Herbarium is locatedin the new Agricultural and Science Building on the collegecampus. Recently rededicated in 2010, it features state-of-the-art facilities for storage and collection management. TheHerbarium houses over 1,000 specimens representing theregional vascular flora, primarily limited to southwesternArizona. Many of the specimens were collected by AWCstudents and faculty. Local agenciessuch as the Yuma office of theBureau of Land Management andU.S. Army Yuma Proving Groundhave also donated their collectionsto the Herbarium. Currently, accessto the collection is limited to staff,students, and upon request. TheHerbarium intends to make thecollection virtually available to thepublic via the SEINET website in

the near future: swbiodiversity.org/seinet/collections/index.php?catid=2. Please contact Marie Stubbs, the ScienceDivision Administrative Secretary at 928.344.7656 for moreinformation, or visit: www.azwestern.edu/academic_services/instruction/science.

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above The AWC Herbarium is located in the College’s new Agricultural and Sciences Building.

Arizona Western College Herbarium (AWC) Yumaby Dr. Megan Lahti, Science Department Head, and Valerie Morrill, Yuma Chapter, Arizona Native PlantSociety


Arizona State University Herbarium (ASU) Tempeby Elizabeth Makings, Collection Manager, Les Landrum, Curator, and Walter Fertig, Lichen and DigitalData Collections Manager

Introduction

An herbarium is a collection of pressed, dried plants referencedin space and time, and systematically arranged. Herbaria canbe thought of as ‘libraries of the plant world’ — unique andimportant repositories of public information for reference andstudy. An institution’s program for managing and caring for itscollection exists within the context of its resources and goals.Like most herbaria, Arizona State University (ASU) seeks todocument the ecological and geographical distribution of theregional flora, facilitate research, support teaching, andpromote conservation.

Each herbarium also has individual strengths andidiosyncrasies. For example, the ASU herbarium is particularlystrong in Cactaceae cytological vouchers. Floristics has alsobeen an emphasis of study for graduate students at ASU, andthe Herbarium is embellished with comprehensive collectionsfrom botanical inventories all over the state.

Importance of Herbaria

Herbaria deepen our knowledge of the plant world and arecritical to understanding the value plants bring to life. ASU,being a large university herbarium, serves the diverse botanicalcommunity of academics, government agency scientists, non-governmental groups, and the general public. Physicalspecimens and their associated data are powerful tools forvalidating species-level investigations, and herbaria have beenused in a variety of ways to address important academic,fundamental, and applied topics — some broad categories arelisted below.

Biogeographical

p Biodiversity assessments past and present

p Plant distributions, population trends, patterns inendemism, etc.

p Records of alien plant occurrences, abundance, anddispersal

p Source of information on species rarity

Environmental

p Identifying pollution trends, pests, and diseasesthreatening human health or agricultural activities

p Identifying cycles in climate and phenology

Fundamental and/or Applied research

p Basic materials for taxonomic revisions and monographs

p Index of the variability within species includingmorphological changes over time

p Tissue banks for molecular phylogenetic andmorphological studies

p Planning and implementation of restoration projects

p Elucidation of land-use history and management

p Answering questions dealing with extinction and globalchange

p Valuable for modeling species distributions and analysis

p Identification resources for agency scientists, academics,and laypeople. For numerous reasons people need to knowthe identity of plants — Is it poisonous? Is it a rare species?Is it a new to science? Is it edible? How big will it grow?Herbaria provide reference material for positiveidentification.

Brief History of the ASU Herbarium

Many of the earliest ASU plant collections were made by FredIrish, an Iowa transplant hired as the first science teacher atwhat was then Tempe Normal School. Irish is described as theoriginal “yes” man — he taught every science class, coached thefirst football team, and women’s basketball (gads! women insports?) and seemed to be in charge of everything — studentpublications, organization of the library Dewey Decimalsystem, Drillmaster for the Cadet Company, founder of suchgroups as the Cactus Walking Club and the Redheads Club.Early Irish collections (~1900) represent some of the mosthistorically important vouchers of the Salt River Valley andgive us insight into the profound environmental changes thathave occurred since then. The ASU Herbarium also has anumber of historical collections from other important Arizonafigures such as J. J. Thornber, C. W. McClellan, and J. J. Stitt.

Irish retired from teaching and moved into administration inthe late 20s and the collection of herbarium specimens wassubsequently overseen by faculty such as John Gillespie (30s),Martin Mortensen (30s to 40s), James McCleary (40s to early60s) and Norman Russell (early 60s). The collection grewmodestly from the 30s to the early 60s with contributions fromthese botany professors and other ASU faculty in the lifesciences.

In 1962, Elinor Lehto was hired as Curator of the Herbarium inthe Botany/Microbiology Department, and continued in thisrole until 1980. Dr. Donald Pinkava was hired in 1964 and itwas during the Pinkava/Lehto era that the ASU Herbariumgrew significantly in number of collections and theirimportance. Pinkava registered the collection with IndexHerbariorum, began exchange programs with collectionsaround the world, and secured thousands of dollars in grant

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money to collect plants throughout the state. Pinkava raisedthe money, and Elinor loved to collect plants. The collectiongrew tenfold from 1962 to 1980 — from a disparate assortmentof 11,000 sheets, scattered in several different buildings, to112,000 sheets and a large space on the third floor of the LifeSciences C-wing. Research was not a mandatory part ofprofessorial duties when Pinkava was hired at ASU, but in theearly 70s, when the trends changed, he embraced the researchcomponent and he and his graduate students contributedsignificantly in the areas of systematics, cytology, and floristics,while placing valuable vouchers in the ASU collection.

When Pinkava was promoted to Director of the Herbarium,Tom Daniel, a recent graduate from the University ofMichigan, was hired as Curator. Daniel continued the trend ofexchange and growth and contributed important collection ofAcanthaceae, until he moved to the California Academy ofSciences Herbarium.

Les Landrum took over as Curator in 1986, after postdocs atthe New York Botanical Garden and the California Academy ofSciences and part-time teaching assignment at UC Berkeleyand San Francisco State University. Landrum’s life work hasresulted in one of the most important collections of AmericanMyrtaceae in the world, and the Landrum era continues to beproductive. Landrum has been an organizer of proposals forcollaborative NSF grants to database and photographspecimens at ASU, ARIZ, ASC, and DES. These grants havecontributed to the early and continued growth of SEINet:swbiodiversity.org/seinet/index.php. Recently, two MellonFoundation grants to ASU have allowed for the imaging of allthe vascular plant types at ASU, ARIZ and DES, part of theGlobal Plants Initiative.

Important Activities: Virtual Tools

SEINet

The need for taxonomy as the basis for biological inventories isgreater than ever as we experience global loss in biodiversitydue to climate change, habitat loss, and biological invasions.Natural history collections of the world are assuming a newimportance, probably unimagined by their founders, as vastrepositories of data become digitized. A lot of work has goneinto acquiring, processing, and curating these specimens. Thegoal of the regional consortium of herbaria associated withSEINet is to make the resource conveniently accessible toeveryone so that it may be exploited to its fullest extent. Beloware some of the web tools offered:

p Collection database >2 million specimens from regionaland national herbaria, including all Arizona holdings atASU, ARIZ, ASC, DES, and several smaller herbaria

p Image library of >300,000 herbarium sheets, field photos,and scans

p Mapping applications plotting species distributions

p Species lists from numerous regional localities

p Custom checklists of plants from any delineated area

p Interactive identification keys

p Fun stuff like plant name games

Canotia, an online journal of Arizona Botany and Mycology

From 1992 to 2003, new treatments for the Vascular Plants ofArizona (VPA) project were published in the Journal ofArizona-Nevada Academy of Science. In 2005 we started a newjournal, Canotia, to publish these treatments and other articleson Arizona plants and fungi. You can find past treatments ofthe VPA project at www.canotia.org as well as floristic studiesand checklists. The Arizona Native Plant Society has kindlycontributed to the publication costs of Canotia.

Some Statistics

p >290,000 specimens (vascular plants): ~ 45% Arizona,25% Latin America, 25% North America and Canada, 5%Old World and Cultivated

p >100,000 lichens from around the world

p 521 type specimens

p Per year, there is an average of… 917 specimens loanedout, 882 specimens loaned in, 4,458 growth, 1,371exchange in, 2,074 exchange out, and 220 visitors

“The Move”

As early as 2009, the ASU administration initiated a mandateto move natural history collections out of School of LifeSciences buildings. In 2011, renovation of a recently purchasedwarehouse-type building was agreed upon as the new space.The “Alameda Building,” as we are calling it for the moment, islocated about 2½ miles southwest of the main campus betweenRoosevelt and Hardy in Tempe. Planners and architects begansubmitting preliminary designs in October 2012 andconstruction began shortly thereafter. As one might imagine,

ASU Herbarium continued

above 1903 ASU botany class using specimens from the ASUHerbarium.

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the logistics of such a major transition were (are) monumentaland many people have been (are) working hard to relocatehundreds of thousands of biological collections — wetcollections in fragile jars, boxes of pinned arthropods, shelvesof heavy fossils, mammals in drawers, and of course,herbarium specimens. All collections are not completelymoved, but for the most part, the Herbarium is open forbusiness and the “Big Move” is over. Staff, faculty, students, andstudent workers are currently organizing, unpacking, andsettling into our new home on Alameda.

Since curatorial complexities and challenges are oftenunderestimated, sustained institutional support can bechallenging to maintain. We are especially grateful to the

School of Life Sciences for recognizing the importance of ournatural history collection and securing a wonderful new facilityto grow and move forward — addressing biodiversity issuesand engaging in community outreach. The wealth of ancillarydata associated with herbaria can be the basis for exploringgaps in our knowledge of life on earth, and filling these gaps toelucidate the beauty and biodiversity of our planet continues tobe our motivation. Ultimately, the long-term viability of theHerbarium will depend on its “perceived value” — that anactive plant collection is the foundation for scientific researchas well as a critical resource for the botanical community; andthat knowing the answer to “What species is that?” isprofoundly important on many levels.

Stay tuned for our “Grand Opening” announcement. Hope tosee you there.

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ASU Herbarium continued

PRODUCT REVIEW by Ries Lindley, Arizona Native Plant Society

2800 Arizona Wildflowers, A Standalone Smartphone App Available at the Google Play Store, $9.95

Flora ID Northwest, LLC, has recently released a phone appthat serves as a field guide and electronic key combined.For those of you who just groaned and rolled your eyes,please feel free to continue carrying five- and six-poundbooks with you to “identify” plants in the field. I will carrymy phone. I was going to anyway, and now it has some helpfor those times when a plant name does not come to mindor the plant just doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen.For me, that’s most of the time.

So what is this fascination with electronic keys? Mostly,they contain a lot of information. 2800 Arizona Wildflowershas, well, 2,800 plants in itsdatabase; most field guideshave about 300 species. Thereare no grasses in this app,probably because there are sofew good close-up photos ofgrass inflorescences. Thereare 4,200 species of plants inArizona, and without grassesand the plants you aren’tlikely to see, that leaves about3,000 plants. That’s prettygood coverage. If you thinkthat’s too many plants for afield guide, you are absolutelycorrect, and that’s why theapp’s electronic key functionsare so important.

Let’s see how that works with a simple example. You aretrying to identify, or perhaps remember, a tree. You open2800 Wildflowers and touch the tab at the right-hand upperside of the main screen labeled “key.” Then touch the itemlabeled “general” on the list that appears. Now you see a listin which there is an item labeled “woody plant habit.”Touch that, and in the next list that appears, touch the item“tree.” Your list now has only 151 plants. If your tree hasleaves that are “even pinnate,” then you are left with onlyseven plants to browse through. If you don’t remember

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what even pinnate means, touch the question mark icon atthe bottom of the screen. That brings up the definitionand an entire page of leaf illustrations.

One common shortcoming of electronic keys is theirinability to handle the characteristics of large families likecomposites, cacti, or buckwheats. Onthe first page of the key-tab in thisapp, the user is offered a menu called“family and genus.” Touching thatleads to a list that offers “specialfamily/genus menus” with specialkeys for such families. TheAsteraceae menu allows you to dosuch things as distinguish ray flowersfrom disk flowers, answer questionsabout the involucre (illustrated in thecontext-sensitive help), or even notewhether the plant has ray flowers atall.

Here are a couple tips on making themost of this electronic key. Each timeyou select a plant characteristic, thekey adjusts the number of possiblecandidates. The number appears inparentheses next to the word“browse” on the browse tab. A littlepractice will teach every user thatsome characteristics have a muchbigger effect on this number thanothers. For example, there are 1923plants in this database with alternateleaves but only 675 with oppositeleaves. (If you noticed those twonumbers don’t add up to 2800, that’sbecause this key distinguishes plantsthat have both types of leafarrangement on the same plant.) Anelectronic key is like a game in whichyou want to reduce the number ofcandidates by using the fewestpossible and most unambiguouscharacteristics. It’s hard to mistakewhether a leaf arrangement isopposite or alternate, and if a planthas opposite leaves, this onecharacteristic reduces the candidatesto less than a quarter of the total.

What characteristics should youavoid? Try to avoid those with highvariability or high risk of

misinterpretation. I’m not sure about your experience, butmine is this. The plant I am looking at never falls in themiddle of those comfortable size ranges listed in any key,written, electronic or otherwise. The leaf I am looking at isalways in the size-and-ratio range that overlaps withanother species. (Sphaeralcea anyone?) This is not a

problem with electronic keys; it is aproblem with all keys. Keys are toolswe use either to help us rememberwhat we know or to find a list ofspecimens to compare with theunknown plant in hand. If you reallywant to be sure what you have, takethe plant to your nearest herbariumand compare it with knownspecimens. The experience can beenlightening.

Once you have pared your list in theapp to a small enough number tobrowse, you will not be able to breezethrough nice big photos at the speedof light as you would in a computer-based program like SEINet. This is aphone app, and the pictures aresmall, sometimes cropped, and alittle fuzzy, even on a SamsungGalaxy 4. Often, you will need toclick on pictures of each species toview them in full resolution. Is thatsuch a high price to pay for getting tocarry five pounds of water instead offive pounds of field guides or floras?

2800 Arizona Wildflowers is a user-friendly and well-thought-outpackage. At a price of $9.95, it wouldbe hard to pass up if it only had the8600 field photos. But it has a veryuseful electronic key, which makes ita practical field tool. Like any tool,the app requires that the user has thepatience and experience to fullyrealize its potential. For those who dohave the patience and take the timeto gain the experience, its benefitsshould far outweigh the cost of theapp.

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2800 Arizona Wildflowers continued


“The herbarium program represents the pursuit of excellencein the ongoing process of acquisition, curation, and long-termpreservation of plant specimens and associated data collectedfrom arid and semi-arid regions. Access by a wide audience ofusers to these scientific collections and information directlysupports the creation, dissemination, and application ofknowledge about these plants and the unique environmentsthat sustain them.” — Desert Botanical Garden HerbariumMission Statement

The Garden’s commitment to having a herbarium dates to itsfounding in 1939. DES, like the Garden, has always focusedon plants of arid and semi-arid regions of the world withspecial emphasis on Southwestern U.S. and Northern Mexico.In the early 1950s, over 1,000 Mexico specimens werecollected by George Hinton, and numerous collections fromArizona were collected by E.R. “Jim” Blakley and RoseCollom, the latter a charter member of the Garden and recentinductee into the Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame. In 1972, abuilding and curator (J. Harry Lehr) were dedicated to theherbarium collection and in 1974 DES was designated as aNational Resource Collection by the Advisory Committee forSystematic Resources in Botany. In 1984, Wendy Hodgsonbecame the Herbarium Curator and Research Botanist,positions she continues to hold. DES received a grant fromthe Institute of Museum Services (now the Institute ofMuseum and Library Services) in 1994 for new cases and atrack system, and in 2001 a new, 2,080 square foot herbariumfacility was built as part of the Nina Mason Pulliam Researchand Horticulture Center. In 2009, DES, in collaboration withArizona State University herbarium, received a grant from theNational Science Foundation (NSF) to digitize, geo-referenceand database its collections, making DES one of the firstvirtual herbaria in the country. Herbarium staff recentlyapplied for funding to acquire additional cases toappropriately house the existing collection.

DES houses a diverse collection of nearly 75,000 specimensrepresenting 227 families that are further categorized into thefollowing collections:

Biogeographical

The majority of specimens are from the Southwest andNorthern Mexico. Arizona’s flora is particularly well-represented in DES, which houses specimens of 80-85% of thestate’s known taxa. Many collections are from historicallyunder-collected areas such as the Grand Canyon region andMogollon Rim.

Taxonomic

The largest families represented in DES are the Sunflower(Asteraceae), Legume (Fabaceae), Cactus (Cactaceae), Agave(Agavaceae), Grass (Poaceae), and Mint (Lamiaceae). Thenumber of Cactaceae and Agavaceae specimens is relativelylarge, geographically well-represented (primarily from NorthAmerica), and well curated. The Cactaceae is represented bynearly 5,000 specimens, representing ca. 58% of the 16 knowntaxa. The Agavaceae is represented by nearly 2,700 specimensrepresenting ca. 60% of the known taxa. The genus Yucca iswell represented in DES, especially in Arizona and much ofthe Southwest. DES includes a relatively high number of highquality (material and data) specimens representing themajority of taxa of families from Arizona, the Southwest, andBaja California. Very detailed plant and locality data andphoto images are included on the more recent collections byresearch/herbarium staff from both families. Thesecollections were used as the basis of several taxonomicpublications by Garden research staff, including:

p Edward Anderson’s treatise The Cactus Family (2001)

p Pinkava, et al. Intermountain Flora (2012)

p Howard S. Gentry’s Agaves of Continental North America(1982)

Desert Botanical Garden Herbarium (DES) Phoenixby Wendy Hodgson, Curator of the Herbarium and Senior Research Botanist, and Andrew Salywon, PhD, Assistant Herbarium Curator and Research Botanist

above Various specimens from the DES Herbarium.

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p Several new species. In addition, collections are the basisfor the planned Cactaceae of Arizona monograph

Type Specimens

DES houses 101 types representing 33 families, with themajority being in the cactus and agave families.

DES also contains horticultural collections from the Phoenixmetro area, the DBG Living Collections (an ethnobotanicalcollection representing vouchers for major publications andthose plants represented on the Plants and People of theSonoran Desert Trail) and a synoptic collection used solelyfor educational classes.

The herbarium staff are actively involved in several floristicstudies: including Grand Canyon, Arizona Trail, and thoseunder the PAPAZ (Plant Atlas Project of Arizona) citizenscience botany program. Staff are also engaged in ecologicalstudies, such as Las Cienegas, Arizona rare and endemicspecies studies and documentation, cacti, Agavoideae andBrassicaceae systematics, and ethnobotanical research. Futurework will focus on a more complete representation of speciesfrom Arizona and the Southwest, including those that are rareand endemic, as well as cacti and Agavoideae taxa fromNorth, Central and South America.

In addition to its collection, DES also has 1) a closeassociation with the Library, Living Collection and otherdepartments including Horticulture and Education, 2) anactive research department with 15 staff members and amodern molecular DNA lab, 3) strong, dedicated volunteerparticipation, 4) dedicated, highly experienced andknowledgeable herbarium staff, 5) an active collectingprogram, including the Living Collections voucher program,6) strong relationships with other Southwest herbaria andland management agencies, 7) a database program that is atthe forefront of digitization allowing easy access of specimens,8) active, extensive outreach activities and programs, and 9)access to trained botanical illustrators to illustrate researchpublications.


Visitors to DES are many and varied. Most are fellowbotanists and/or plant systematists from Arizona or outsidethe state, studying particular rare species, working ontaxonomic treatments or preparing floras. Our DBG botanicalillustrators have and continue to use the herbariumextensively, providing illustrations of rare and sensitivespecies of Grand Canyon National Park, Brassicaceae ofArizona, Cactaceae for Intermountain Flora and Cactaceae ofArizona monograph, Fabaceae of Arizona and themonograph on Ephedraceae. Native Americans or thoseinvolved with Native American plant programs also visit theherbarium, including Hualapai, Yavapai, and Navajo Nations.Land management agency personnel, including Bureau ofLand Management, U.S. Forest Service, and National ParkService frequent the herbarium, often to garner informationon rare or invasive plant species. ASU professors and studentsaccess the herbarium, including archaeologists who obtaininformation from present collections to decipher plantdistributions and their use in the past. Our specimens havealso assisted in ecological, molecular, and bio-geographicalstudies, forensic cases and illegal plant trafficking/collectionlitigation. Many have stopped by simply for assistance in plantidentification or to inquire where certain plants are found.Tours of the herbarium are often provided to university andcollege classes, Garden members, and other groups.

DES is situated in the Nina Mason Pulliam Research andHorticulture Center in the Garden; it is open by appointment,Monday through Friday, 9 am – 5 pm. An even easier way tofigure out what a certain plant is and where it grows is toaccess SEINet, the Southwest Environmental InformationNetwork (swbiodiversity.org). This database incorporates overa million herbarium specimens and their data, including plantnames, images, descriptions, and locality information ofthousands of plant species from Arizona and the Southwest.

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DES Herbarium continued

Left Volunteers at the DES Herbarium provide invaluable assistance in thepreparation and maintenance of specimens. Center Tours of the herbarium areoften provided to university and college classes, Garden members, and othergroups. Right DES herbarium cases mounted on tracking system.


From Arizona’s earliest steps in higher education to today’smodern research university, the University of ArizonaHerbarium in Tucson has served as a focal point for plantdiversity research and education.

Beginnings and Growth of an Arizona Herbarium

The University was established by an act of the TerritorialLegislature in 1885, though it did not offer a course of studyuntil 1891. James William Toumey, a graduate (A.B. andA.M.) of another land grant institution, MichiganAgricultural College, after teaching a year at Michigan, cameto Arizona at the age of 26 as Assistant Professor of Botanyand Entomology (one of six original faculty) to teach “first-term freshman botany.” Five students enrolled for his course,over half of whom were women. On October 3, the termopened and he wrote in his ledger “Work began in the fallwhen no flowers were to be found.” The first term closed Dec23, 1891. The next term opened with three of the studentscontinuing in “physical botany” the latter part of December1891 for two hours a day from 1-3 p.m. The day followingtheir examination on March 8, the same three studentscontinued into the spring term in “systematic botany,” untilMay 26, 1892. The focus was in plant families: “At the openingof the term a number of flowers were in bloom and we beganon the Cruciferae. Each student was required to have amicroscope and work out and make drawings representing hiswork… the first hour’s discussion was given to observation ofLesquerella gordonii and the method of tracing it down withartificial key.” In the fall term of 1892, Professor Toumey’s“structural botany” grew to eight new students, though theonly two males soon “changed his course” making it anotherall-female class. In the summers (except 1893 when heattended Harvard), Toumey made collections all around theTerritory to build the herbarium. Specimens “selected fromherb” were sent to Michigan and Harvard (Dr. Charles S.Sargent) for identification and Toumey received hundreds ofspecimens on herbarium sheets of eastern plants “for theherbarium” in Arizona. He sent 500 specimens “collected intrip from Tucson to Grand Canyon, 1892” to U.S. Departmentof Agriculture (Dr. Fredrick Coville), and received 500,“including about 100 mounted specimens.” Some of the treespecimens he sent East were species new to science, forexample in his ledger he wrote “Received to Oct 1894 of Dr.Sargent about 100 species of eastern and foreign trees andshrubs,” and “Dec 5, 1894 plants sent to Dept.- set of Ariz.oaks,” of which one now bears his name Quercus toumeyi. By1897 (the year he married in New Haven, Conn.) he wasProfessor of Biology, and Director of the Arizona Agricultural

Experiment Station, and in 1900, began the campus plantingsof cacti that promised to be of economic value. Toumey wasappointed in the summer to the U. S. government’s newDivision of Forestry, in charge of research in tree planting. Inthe fall of 1900, when the Yale School of Forestry opened,Gifford Pinchot selected Toumey, a seasoned westerner, as itsfirst professor of dendrology (one of two original faculty),where he remained, becoming Dean. He brought with him toYale his own herbarium of 2,500 specimens, many duplicatesof his Arizona collections, thus establishing the core of thefuture collections there.

The Thornber Era

With the University’s land-grant mission to fulfill, John JamesThornber was selected a month after receiving an A.M.degree in Botany at University of Nebraska. In late July 1901,he arrived in Tucson at the age of 29 with Mrs. Thornber, totake up an appointment as Professor of Biology, and Botanistfor the Agricultural Experiment Station for the next 41 years.His salary would be $58.33 a month for his work at theStation, same as Toumey, though soon raised to $83.33, plussalary from the College of Agriculture similar to Toumey’s$108.33 a month. In the interim 10 months after Toumey left,Dr. David Griffiths assumed charge of range work undercooperation of the U.S.D.A. and the Experiment Station.Professor Thornber became curator of the herbarium ofplants, which included collections of fungi and lichensaccumulated by Toumey, and Thornber quickly engaged indocumenting the flora of the area. In the first two months ofhis new position, which began August 1, 1901, ProfessorThornber had already collected nearly 400 plants, half beinggrasses, from the University’s campus “Forage Garden” ofplants useful to livestock, and from the Experiment Station’s“Small Range Reserve” (four sections of land along theSouthern Pacific Railroad near Wilmot Siding southeast ofTucson, set apart for the purposes of range study by ExecutiveOrder in October 1900), as well as from visits to theUniversity’s farms near Tempe and Maricopa. In April 1902,President Roosevelt established the Santa Rita Forest Reserve,of which the Experiment Station’s “Small Range Reserve” wasmade to constitute the northern limit of this larger reserve,for the study of grazing range problems. Thornber’s researchpromoted the notion that Arizona rangeland can be restoredby fencing and alternate grazing pastures. He devoted a largepart of his time to study of Arizona flora, and, during his firstdecade, Thornber amassed over 6,000 plant collections for theherbarium, eventually contributing more than 10,000 records.

University of Arizona Herbarium (ARIZ) TucsonHalf a Million Specimens and a Century of Research, Service, and Educationin Plant and Fungal Biodiversity by George M. Ferguson, Collections Manager, and Dr. Michelle M. McMahon, Herbarium Director

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In 1923, Thornber was appointed Director of the AgriculturalExperiment Station and Dean of the College of Agriculture,though stepping down as Dean in September 1928 to returnto his teaching as Professor of Botany, and Botanist for theStation until his semi-retirement in 1942. The herbarium inthis era was housed in the Agriculture Building, in his office,and at his home on Olive Street where “his basement was alaboratory in itself ” (Arizona Daily Star, 27 Nov 1962). Heremained active for two more decades as part-timeTaxonomist at the Station and Emeritus Professor. Dr. LymanBenson was Assistant Professor of Botany in the early 1940sand, in consultation with Dr. Thornber, in 1940 produced TheCacti of Arizona as University of Arizona Bulletin Vol. XI,contributing over 1,000 specimens to the herbarium. TheUniversity acquired the approximately 3,000 specimenholdings from The Desert Botanical Laboratory on TumamocHill, including the herbarium of Dr. Forrest Shreve after theCarnegie Institute of Washington ceased operations in Tucsonin 1940.

Mid-century Organizing of the Herbarium

Dr. Frank W. Gould replaced Thornber in the fall 1944 asAssistant Professor of Botany and Assistant Botanist at theAgricultural Experiment Station. His study of grasses (Elymusin particular) after receiving his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley ledto the addition of his grass collections from California andArizona to the herbarium, about 2,300 records throughout his5-ear tenure at the University of Arizona. His book Grasses ofthe Southwestern United States published by UA Press in 1951is still an important reference. In 1949, Dr. Kittie F. Parkerjoined the University’s Botany Department and becamecurator of the herbarium. Her collections of the sunflowerfamily, especially tribe Helenieae, added about 1,500 plants tothe herbarium. Her 1958 Arizona Ranch, Farm and GardenWeeds, prepared for the Agricultural Extension Servicecircular 265, was later published by UA Press as An IllustratedGuide to Arizona Weeds with drawings by Tucson artistLucretia B. Hamilton.

Dr. Charles T. Mason, Jr., came to the University of Arizona in1953, following four years’ instructorship at the University ofWisconsin, and after completing his doctorate at UC Berkeley.His graduate committee included his uncle, Herbert L.Mason, and he received training in running a herbarium fromthe curator of the UC Herbarium, Annetta Carter. He began aprofessorship in the Plant Sciences Department and assumedcuratorship of the herbarium. Things were in a state ofdisarray, as emphasis during the “Thornber Era” had been onadding specimens, so Dr. Mason took on a career-longendeavor to create a museum of regional and internationalimportance for both its historical and newer collections. Theapproximately 4,000 moss collections of Mrs. Inez Haring andcolleagues were acquired during Dr. Mason’s time, and by1957, the University had acquired the 7,300 plant collections

of Robert H. Peebles and Thomas H. Kearney at the USDAField Station at Sacaton, prior to its closing, and theapproximately 10,000 specimen herbarium of Leslie N.Goodding from the Soil and Conservation Service. Dr. Masonorganized trips around the state, and to Mexico, taking hisgraduate students along. Many of his former students regardhim as a supportive mentor and outstanding teacher, and haveappreciated the cultivation of lasting friendships amongstudents and staff at a vibrantly active herbarium. Theherbarium’s home since 1962 was the basement of the Shantzbuilding, where it remained for 42 years. Adjacent to it werethe extensive holdings in the Fungal Mycology collection ofDr. Robert Gilbertson. Upon becoming Emeritus Curator ofthe herbarium, Dr. Mason had been a preeminent botanist inArizona for more than 50 years and had built a strongregional collection of accessions from the state, as well asnorthern Mexico. His book (with his wife Patricia), AHandbook of Mexican Roadside Flora in 1987 by UA Pressremains a popular guidebook.

The Move to Herring Hall

In 1992, Dr. Lucinda McDade came from Duke University asAssistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, andDirector of the Herbarium. Phil Jenkins was hired asCuratorial Specialist where he provided the herbarium’spublic service function for many years, in particular,responding to queries by the Cooperative Extension, thestate’s Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, and the Poison andDrug Information Center. The Howard Scott Gentryherbarium had been acquired in 1989, with over 10,000accessions, most significantly Agave including typespecimens, and other plants from the Rio Mayo Region ofSonora, Mexico, though many were duplicates of Gentry’searlier distributions. Being a visionary, Lucinda McDadesecured grants to continue the processing of these accessionsplus a backlog of unprocessed sheets from Thornber andother early collectors. Computer databasing efforts began, awebsite was initiated for the herbarium, and grants were won

ARIZ Herbarium continued

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above Historic Herring Hall, constructed in 1903 as agymnasium, has been home to the ARIZ Herbarium since 2004.Photo courtesy George Ferguson.


for compactor shelving of some cabinet rows. Meanwhile theholdings continued to grow from donations of voucher specimensfor Gentry’s Rio Mayo Plants, UA Press, 1998. Notably, associatedresearchers contributed thousands of records over the years — Dr.Richard S. Felger, mostly from Mexico, and Dr. Thomas R. VanDevender, as well as Dr. John R. Reeder and Charlotte GooddingReeder (grass experts retired from Yale University) — all theircollections together totaling at least 30,000 specimens.

This recent growth was addressed by Dr. Steven P. McLaughlin, aformer student in Biology with Dr. Mason on his graduatecommittee, and Professor in the Department of Arid Lands, whenappointed Director of the Herbarium in 2001. The following is hisdescription of the move: “The very first item I had to deal with was aconceptual plan for moving the Herbarium from Shantz to a to-be-remodeled Herring Hall. This conceptual plan had ARIZ occupyingthe basement and a new mezzanine of the building; about 20miscellaneous College of Agriculture and Life Sciences offices weredesignated for the main floor. After briefly studying this plan, it wasobvious to me that the Herbarium could not be fit into the spaceallocated for it. Essentially it provided for storage of herbariumcabinets but lacked any of the necessary work spaces. After furtherdiscussion, it was decided that Herring Hall would be dedicated tohousing both the vascular plant herbarium and the mycologicalherbarium, along with an office for the Campus Arboretum. Beforefinal plans were drawn, I convinced the College to include new railsystems on both the main floor and the mezzanine that could beused to expand the compactor systems, which would allow bothcollections to grow. In 2002 we had received an NSF grant incollaboration with ASU and NAU to produce an online data base ofall of the collections from the state. We thus needed desk space forup to four students to work on entering label data into the database.All these recommendations were included in the final design.Construction took place during most of 2003, and the move of theherbaria from Shantz to Herring required most of 2004. We invitedLucinda McDade back to present the keynote address at thededication, which took place on September 3, 2004. The remodelingof Herring Hall and relocation of the vascular plant and mycologicalcollections would not have been possible without the support ofDean Eugene Sander, Experiment Station Director Colin Kaltenbach,and, particularly, Assistant Director Randy Ryan who listenedcarefully to all of our concerns and came up with the creativesolutions that made the project possible.”

The resulting well-lit and spacious work areas of Herring Hallprovided a wonderful place for the research and curatorial tasks of aherbarium. Constructed in 1903 as a gymnasium, Herring Hall, thesecond oldest building standing on campus, was placed on theNational Register of Historic Places in 1986. Hence, its interiorrenovation endeavored to reflect some of the building’s original uses;the main floor resembles a basketball court, the side walls have theoutline of bleacher seats and a basketball backboard and hoop aresuspended from the mezzanine providing for a most interesting andunique herbarium work space setting.

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Who’s Who at AZNPSBOARD OF DIRECTORS

Cass Blodgett Director, Phoenix Chapter Co-President

[email protected]

Suzanne Cash Director, State Secretary

[email protected]

Wendy Hodgson Director, Education, Outreach and

Conservation Committee Chair [email protected]

Diane Kelly State Treasurer

[email protected]

Ries Lindley Director at Large

[email protected]

Valerie Morrill Director, Yuma Chapter President

[email protected]

Mike Plagens Director at Large, Phoenix Chapter Co-President

[email protected]

Doug Ripley President

[email protected]

Andrew SalywomDirector at Large

[email protected]

Sue Smith Director, Prescott Chapter President

[email protected]

AZNPS COLLABORATORSSue Carnahan

Happenings Editor [email protected]

Marilyn HansonWeb Editor

[email protected]

Claire McLaneAdministrative Assistant [email protected]

Julie St. John The Plant Press Layout Editor [email protected]


ARIZ Today

Two years later, Dr. McLaughlin retired and in September2006, Dr. Michelle (Shelley) McMahon, a former student ofDr. McDade, arrived from U.C. Davis to take a position inPlant Sciences and as Director of the Herbarium. Dr.Elizabeth (Betsy) Arnold, also a former student of Dr.McDade, had been hired into Plant Sciences and as curator ofthe mycology collection the previous year. Together theyimmediately began seeking support for additional storage forthe collections; by then tens of thousands of plant specimensand nearly the entire fungal collection were at risk of insectinfestation. In 2008, the National Science Foundationawarded funding for mobile carriages and hundreds of newcases, to go on the floor rails that Dr. McLaughlin hadensured were in place for both collections. The mycological-botanical collaboration continues as ARIZ embraces thefuture, a future that includes continuing to open up thecollections to online access, bringing the collections in linewith modern systematics, and teaching students and visitorsto see the details that really matter for understanding ourbotanical and mycological floras.

Online access to the label data allows researchers to aggregatedata in new and creative ways; projects using ARIZ specimendata have included studies on wild crop relatives, geographicdistributions of tree species, and current and projected rangesof invasives, to name a few. In addition to the “virtual” data,visitors travel to view the physical specimens; recent examplesinclude research on epidermal phytoliths, and pollen and seedmorphologies. Visiting researchers also work on regionalfloras, as well as taxonomic revisions, and thousands ofspecimens are sent on loan each year to other institutions fortaxonomic study. Modern taxonomic research frequentlyinvolves DNA analysis, and such research often results inbetter understanding of relationships among species. These inturn result in name changes, requiring updates to thespecimens and to the database. On a larger scale, the last fewdecades of very active research by the world-wide systematicscommunity has produced a substantial revision of ourunderstanding of plant families. In 2009 an internationalgroup of researchers, the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group,proposed a new classification (their third and most complete),nicknamed “APG III.” This system has been adopted in mostrecent texts and textbooks. The timing of the publicationhappily coincided with the cabinet installation project atARIZ, so the collection was rearranged according to the newevolutionarily-based classification scheme.

ARIZ currently holds an estimated 420,000 plant specimens,including algae, bryophytes, and vascular plants, and over40,000 fungal and lichen specimens. Four to six thousandspecimens are deposited each year, and every specimen that isadded to the collection is added to the online databaseaccessible through the website.

Hours of Operation and Public Outreach

ARIZ is open to the public 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, Mondaythrough Friday, and staff are available to help with plantidentifications, access to our extensive botanical literature(including the UA Science Library’s botanical holdings), andtraining in use of the collections. Campus courses and off-campus tours are frequent and welcome. As part of the UA,Arizona’s Land Grant Institution, ARIZ is particularlydedicated to providing plant identification services and isdoing so at an unprecedented rate (nearly 1,000 plants wereidentified last year), due in part to the ease of emailingphotographs. Workshops have been offered at the herbariumas continuing education for the public (for example, grassidentification) and future workshops are being planned. Formore information, visit ag.arizona.edu/herbarium or [email protected]

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Welcome to Claire McLaneAt the beginning of the year Claire McLanereplaced Anna Van Devender as the Arizona NativePlant Society’s Administrative Assistant. Since thenshe has been doing a superb job handling themany administrative details of the Society. Claire isa second-generation Tucsonan, with a strongconnection to the Sonoran Desert and culture. Shereceived her B.A. from Prescott College in CulturalRegional Studies, focusing on the U.S./Mexicoborder region. Claire is now a full-time mom of adynamic little boy, and she enjoys being outside asmuch as possible, gardening, photographing, andwriting. Thank you, Claire, for keeping the Societyon an even keel.


BOOK REVIEW by Al Schneider, President of the San Juan/Four Corners Native Plant Society

Flora of the Four Corners Region: Vascular Plants of the San JuanDrainage, Arizona,Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah by K.D. Heil, S.L. O’Kane, Jr., L.M. Reeves, and A. Clifford1,098pp. Missouri Botanical Garden Press, 2013. ISBN: 981-1-930723-84-9. $72.00

Let’s cut to the chase: BUY THIS BOOK! Whether you livein, near, or far from the Four Corners, and whether you are abook collector, a casual observer of wildflower beauty, abudding amateur botanist, or a professional working in thefield, you will more than enjoy owning this masterfullycreated book.

Facts: The book was 15 years in the making after the schemewas hatched over lunch at the Elk Ridge Café in Blanding in

1996. Major collectors were Ken Heil, Steve O’Kane, ArnoldClifford, and Wayne Mietty, with considerable assistancefrom Rich Fleming, Cyndie Holmes, Dave Jamieson, LesLundquist, Lynn Moore, J. Mark Porter, Tim Reeves, andGlenn Rink. The 60+ list of major contributors (especiallythose writing the individual keys and descriptions) reads likea Who’s Who of Botany.

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The Deaver Herbarium houses pressed, dried, vascular andnon-vascular plant collections comprising over 100,000specimens. Seventy-eight percent of the collections are fromArizona and most are from the northern half of the state.Compared to the rest of the U.S., much of this region is poorlyknown botanically. This makes the collections scientificallyvaluable and important resources for botanical research in theU.S. The Deaver Herbarium houses significant collections fromGrand Canyon and Petrified Forest National Parks and sixnational monuments — Tusigoot, Montezuma Castle, WalnutCanyon, Navajo, Wupatki, Canyon de Chelly, and SunsetCrater. Many collections have been made from the Coconinoand Kaibab National Forests, BLM land (including the “ArizonaStrip),” and Wilderness Areas within these entities.

Each permanent scientific repository is assigned a uniqueidentifier, which takes the form of an acronym. The DeaverHerbarium’s permanent acronym, ASC, was assigned whenNAU was called Arizona State College. All Arizona specimensat Deaver are cataloged and searchable, using the ASCdesignation, on the Southwestern Environmental InformationNetwork (SEINet) maintained at ASU (seeswbiodiversity.org/seinet/index.php). Historical out-of-statecollections, collected prior to 1990, remain uncataloged. In2012, all of the type specimens (8 holotypes and 52 isotypes)were removed from the general collections and are now storedseparately. In 2013, they were digitally imaged and added to theworldwide type project as part of the Global Plants Initiative.Important collections within the Deaver Herbarium includethose made by the following people: M. Baker, R.E. Collom,C.F. Deaver, D. Demaree, R.K. Gierisch, L.N. Goodding, G.

Goodwin, R.H. Hevly, M.E. Jones, T.H. Kearney, M. Licher,E.L. Little, Jr., V.O. Mayes, A.M. Phillips, III, G. Rink, C.G.Schaack, J.J. Thornber, and A.F. Whiting.

In 1965, the herbarium was named for its first curator,Chester “Danny” Deaver, who started the herbarium in 1930.Early collections included Deaver’s Flora of Oak Creek Canyon,Marcus Jones’ collections from the 1880s and Leslie Goodding’scollections from 1910 to the 1930s. At Deaver’s retirement in1965, the collections numbered 15,000. Deaver was succeededby Dr. James Rominger, a grass specialist and expert in thebristlegrass genus Setaria. His students completed 10 floristicinventories ranging from the San Francisco Peaks WildernessArea and Alpine Tundra to the Petrified Forest NationalMonument. Under Dr. Rominger’s direction, the herbariumgrew to 50,000 specimens housed in 52 cabinets. The RockyMountain Research Station collection (FSLF) of 1,000specimens was incorporated into the Deaver Herbarium in1989.

Dr. Rominger retired in 1989 and was replaced by Dr. TinaAyers. Under her direction, the collections were refiledalphabetically in color-coded genus folders. Ayers added 24used cases from Harvard University. Ten new cases, paid forthrough indirect-cost returns on National Park Servicecontracts, were added to house the vouchers for additionalfloristic studies, including Glen Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, andareas of the Coconino National Forest. In 2006, the growth inthe collections and new cases required additional space, so theherbarium incorporated the adjacent botany classroom as theprocessing and mounting room.

Deaver Herbarium (ASC) Northern Arizona University, Flagstaffby Dr. Tina Ayers, Curator and Associate Professor, Biological Sciences

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BOOK REVIEW continued The 4-pound Flora covers the Four Corners region drained by the San Juan Riverfrom its head waters at the Continental Divide at 4,292 meters to its confluence withthe Colorado River at 1,130 meters — an area of 65,382 square kilometers, or the sizeof West Virginia. The Flora covers this region in 1,098 pages cataloging 120 familiesand 2,355 taxa (41 endemics). There is a Glossary of 32 pages and over 23 pages ofLiterature Cited. The heavy stock pages are graced with 118 of Steve O’Kane’s superbphotographs splendidly reproduced; 200 lovely and valuable line drawings, almost allby Linda Reeves; eleven mesmerizing color botanical illustrations (some full-page) byCarolyn Crawford; a most unusual and ethereal set of fifteen Glenn Vandre landscapewatercolors of the vegetation associations and life zones covered by the Flora; andinside the front and back covers are full-sized political, topographic, and river mapsof the area covered. The type face is large and easy on the eyes. All of this is wrappedin a very handsome dust cover with picture sandstone on the front and an excitingfull-color collage of the area’s flora and terrain on the back.

The introductory material very nicely contains the expected scope of the project,methodology, geology, climate, plant communities, etc. But we also get an

above Many types of botanical materials are available for studyat the ASC Herbarium.

ASC Herbarium continued

The botanist for the Navajo Natural Heritage Program movedto the herbarium in 2002. The Navajo Nation Herbarium(NAVA) was moved from Window Rock in 2008 as part of along-term housing agreement. It is not incorporated into theDeaver Herbarium but kept separately in the adjacent room asstipulated in a memorandum of understanding between NAUand the Navajo Nation.

The herbarium staff includes one curator, one studentcuratorial assistant, currently Brittany Burgard,and a fabulous group of volunteers. The volunteerstaff includes two additional Ph.D. botanists andfour M.S. botanists (Greg Goodwin, AndreaHazelton, Sue Holiday, Gisela Kluwin, Max Licher,Vera Markgraf, Glenn Rink, and Randy Scott). Thestaff members serve as human resources at theDeaver Herbarium, act as regional editors for Floraof North America, and regularly review familytreatments using specimens in the DeaverHerbarium. They are also spearheading an effort toproduce a flora of the San Francisco Peaks andhelp organize and lead PAPAZ training andcollecting trips in Northern Arizona.

The herbarium is the center of a good deal of activity thesedays. Staff and students are completing treatments of familiesfor the new flora of Arizona. Three recently completedtreatments (Rhamnaceae, Portulacaceae, and Fabaceae I(Errazurizia, Psorothamnus, and Marina) are published inCanotia. Four more treatments, Carex, Lamiaceae, part II,Phyrmaceae, and Scrophulariaceae, are nearing completion.Greg Goodwin is working on floristic inventories of theCataract and Espee Ranches. Gisela Kluwin and Vera Markgrafare working on their floristic inventory of the Truxton area.Max Licher and Glenn Rink are busy collecting all over the

Southwest but have particular fondness for Carex. Randy Scottis working on a monograph of the genus Brickellia. Thegraduate students also use the herbarium to complete M.S.theses that involve floristics or systematics projects. CurrentM.S. students at the Deaver Herbarium include Rich Crawford,Kimberly Hansen, Elizabeth Johnson, Wendy McBride, KateNoonan, Amy Prince, Shelley Silva, and Joe Talboom.

The Deaver Herbarium staff can identify plants and generatescientifically accurate labels when an acceptable specimen is

also donated by a non-profit organization, anindividual from northern Arizona, or members ofgovernmental agencies or the scientificcommunity. Free database access is available tothose same patrons, either in the herbarium or onthe internet. Plant identification, database accessfor non-internet archives, label generation,specimen processing, data collection, andphotograph identification are available at $50 anhour to for-profit patrons such as book authorsand private consultants.

The herbarium is located in Room 314 in theBiological Sciences building, 617 South Beaver

Street, in Flagstaff. The Deaver Herbarium is open to visitors,professional and non-professional. Staff is available to providetours for educational purposes or to demonstrate how to useherbarium resources to identify plant material. If you wishaccess or a tour of the collection, please make an appointmentby emailing [email protected] to schedule anappointment. For more information on current projects or tocontact our staff, visit nau.edu/ Merriam-Powell/Biodiversity-Center/Deaver-Herbarium.

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The efforts to found a Museum Collection at Grand Canyonbegan not long after the establishment of Grand CanyonNational Park, in 1919. A small “study collection” wasestablished for which park staff begancollecting materials that demonstrated thediverse natural and cultural history of thepark. Items from the collection could also beused by park staff for interpretive purposes,including talks and exhibits, to aidunderstanding of the park by park visitors.Natural and cultural collections and theirassociated records also provided baseline data,serving as scientific and historicaldocumentation of the park’s resources.

While the initial emphasis of collecting atGrand Canyon might have been on geology,for obvious reasons, over time that changed,as it was acknowledged that the size and depthof the Grand Canyon, encompassing five of the seven life zonesand three of the four desert types in North America, providedfor an incredible diversity of plant and animal life. Over 1,750vascular plant species, 167 species of fungi, 64 species of moss,and 195 species of lichen have been found in the park — moreplant diversity than at any other national park. The park alsoserves as an ecological refuge for undisturbed remnants ofdwindling ecosystems (such as boreal forest and desert ripariancommunities) and is home to some rare, endemic, andspecially protected (threatened or endangered) plant species.

Reflecting the diversity of what is found in the park, the GrandCanyon National Park herbarium houses over 12,500 botanicalspecimens onsite, including a handful of type specimens. Thesespecimens were collected by early park naturalists, including

Eddie McKee, Pauline Mead, John Merkle, and LouisSchellbach, as well as thousands of specimens collected bybotanists Rose Collom, Walter Cottam, and Wendy

Hodgson.Thousands of other Grand Canyonplant specimens are stored at other herbariaaround the country, but especially at theDeaver Herbarium, on the Northern ArizonaUniversity campus in Flagstaff, the McDougallHerbarium, on the campus of the Museum ofNorthern Arizona in Flagstaff, and at theDesert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. Thepark’s collection currently is composed mostlyof vascular plants, though lichens, fungi,moss, and tree ring samples are also included.The purpose of the herbarium collection is toserve as a reference collection to help thepublic and park staff, including maintenance,vegetation crews, and fire crews, identify

plants occurring in Grand Canyon.

Some of the Grand Canyon herbarium collection can be foundon the Southwest Environmental Information Network(SEINet) database at swbiodiversity.org/seinet.

The park’s herbarium collection is located in the MuseumCollection storage and research facility on the South Rim. Formore information about the collection and hours of operation,or to make an appointment, please call 928.638.7769, or [email protected].

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Grand Canyon Museum Collection Herbarium (GCNP) Grand Canyon National Park by Kim Besom and Colleen L. Hyde

above Wendy Hodgson, a major contributor to the GCNPHerbarium, collecting at the Grand Canyon. Courtesy LisaHarloe.

BOOK REVIEW continued

unexpected number of other pieces of very thoughtful andwelcomed information: a two page list of historical collectorsin the San Juan area, a list of endemics, one and a half pagesdefining “weed,” plant migration routes, and definitions ofmeasurements, such as,

“Flower length = Point of insertion of the pedicel to theapex of the longest petal.”

Because the Flora just came on the scene in September 2013,I have not had much time to work with its heart and soul, thekeys and descriptions, but those I have used and examinedare compact, accurate, and helpful. For example, plant keysoften require discriminating between annual and perennialplants, but how are we to do that? Certainly most of us can

tell a perennial tree from a Gilia but how about a Gilia froman Ipomopsis? The opening of the Lupinus key gives usassistance with that genus by asking us about its cotyledons:

1. Plants annual, the cotyledons commonly persistent1’ Plants perennial, the cotyledons not present at flowering

And let’s have a standing ovation for the Salix keys, yes,plural “keys”: vegetative, pistillate, and staminate keys.

The complete plant descriptions make it easy for the readerto focus in on specific plant parts by capitalizing and boldingkey words (STEMS, LEAVES, etc.). The completedescriptions also include, I am glad to say, the etymology ofthe specific epithet, synonyms, habitat, associated plantcommunities, a list of all the counties in the Four Corners

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above Living roof on the Easton Collection Center, which houses theMcDougall Herbarium. Courtesy the Museum of Northern Arizona.

The Museum of Northern Arizona’s McDougall herbarium islocated in the Easton Collection Center on MNA’s ResearchCampus. The McDougall herbarium focuses on plantcollections from the Colorado Plateau, containing plants fromnumerous botanists, including Alfred F. Whiting and Walter B.McDougall. Whiting, a former curator and ethnobotanist,studied and collected both native and cultivated plants fromthe Flagstaff area, Hopi mesas, and Hopi crops. McDougall, forwhom the herbarium was named, was a professor, naturalist,ecologist, and former curator known for his floras ofYellowstone, Big Bend, Death Valley, and Natchez Trace. Healso authored Plant Ecology, the first textbook on this subject,and two important plant keys for this area: Seed Plants ofNorthern Arizona and Grand Canyon Wildflowers. One of themany contributions McDougall made while curator wasgrowing the herbarium collection from 7,000 to over 26,000plant specimens.

Today, MNA’s McDougall herbarium houses approximately34,000 cataloged specimens. This important collection containsexamples of most of the flora of Northern Arizona and isparticularly strong in plants of the Grand Canyon region.Cataloged specimens represent 155 vascular plant families, 891genera, and 2,582 species as well as a significant collection ofnonvascular plants including mosses, liverworts, hornworts,and fungi. Numerous rare plants representing federallythreatened and endangered species are preserved in thecollection, as are a limited number of type specimens. Threeregional ethnobotanical collections are maintained in theMcDougall herbarium and include the Alfred F. Whiting Hopiand Havasupai collection, the Grenville Goodwin Apache

collection, and the Louisa Wetherill Navajo (ASM Collection)collection. These holdings contain indigenous food plants aswell as medicinal and ceremonial plants.

Plant collection information from the Museum of NorthernArizona’s McDougall Herbarium can be accessed through theSouthwest Environmental Information Network (SEINet), anonline, collaborative database resource:swbiodiversity.org/seinet.

The McDougall Herbarium is open to the public byappointment Monday through Friday, 9am–5pm by contactingJanet Gillette at [email protected] or 928.774.5211 x265.

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McDougall Herbarium (MNA) Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaffby Kirstin Olmon, Botany Research Assistant


area where the plant has been found (really amazing!),elevation range, flowering time, entire U.S. range, unusualcharacteristics, and Native American uses.

Nothing is perfect; what are some of the problems in theFlora?

In some ways the large number of contributors that Imentioned above is good: we get the top experts in eachfamily writing the descriptions. But in other ways, confusioncan result — and does. For example, the AngiospermPhylogeny Group (APG) recommendations are followed bysome contributors (for Scrophulariaceae) but not others (forChenopodiaceae). Be prepared to be flexible and speakseveral botanical languages.

Colorado Flora very nicely indicates where its treatment of afamily, genus, or species is in conflict with the treatment in

the monumental Flora of North America. That same contrastand comparison definitely should have been carried out inthe Flora of the Four Corners Region.

I find it very unfortunate that the keys do not provide a wayfor you to backtrack when you make a mistake in keying. If,for instance, you arrive at choice #27 in a key and you realizethat you are in the wrong place, there is no indication aboutwhat number you were at before #27. You cannot easilyretrace your steps. Look at Weber and Welsh’s floras; theyboth provide this thoughtful, time-and-frustration-savingnumbering in brackets [ ].

The glossary gives fine definitions (and has some veryunusual and welcomed entries, such as: Hawkmoth, disjunctspecies, relict species, Ramah Navajo, Piki, Park, sub, tuff,Ant Lion, and 2 definitions of herb), but the glossary omitssome necessary entries: inflorescence, villous, limb, spp, sp,

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Founded in 2002 by Dr. Cecile Lumer, the Cochise CountyHerbarium (CCH) is associated with the University of ArizonaCochise County Cooperative Extension. Among its multipleuses are research of botanical, ecological, ethnobotanical, andother aspects of plants by scientific researchers. Gardeners andlandscapers interested in native plant species may also use theresources of the herbarium. Additionally,the herbarium provides educationalmaterial that can be incorporated intoplant, ecology and wildlife courses at thehigh school and college levels.

How the Herbarium Can Help You

The Sky Islands and San Pedro Rivercontribute to the unique habitats found inCochise County. The herbarium is arepository for plant species from thesehabitats, reflecting the variation anddiversity present in Cochise County andsurrounding areas. The herbarium is aplace where the general public, as well asprofessionals, can find information specificto these areas.

Herbarium Credentials and Resources

The Cochise County Herbarium has been given theinternationally recognized code of CCH. This code serves toidentify the CCH throughout the worldwide botanicalcommunity.

The CCH has all specimens entered into a Microsoft Access2010 database. The database contents and specimenphotographs are then made available for viewing on theinternet at www.cochisecountyherbarium.org. The CCH isalso a member of the United States Virtual Herbarium via the

Southwest Environmental Information Network (SEINet) atswbiodiversity.org/seinet/index.php.

The herbarium currently has 3,325 plant specimens with 1,392separate plant species available for viewing and study by thoseinterested. The herbarium also has a very fine library

containing more than 100 books which areavailable for viewing and study as well,ranging from novice to expert levels.

The herbarium is staffed by a dedicatedgroup of volunteers including Bob Ballard(Curator), Virginia Bealer, Dave Bly, CarolCampbell, Bob Herrmann, Mimi Kamp,and Cindy Sprecher.

Location

The Herbarium is located in a smallbuilding inside the southeast corner of thefenced-in area immediately to the south ofthe main campus of the University ofArizona Sierra Vista. 1140 N. ColomboAvenue, Sierra Vista, AZ 85635

Would you like to visit the herbariumor become a volunteer?

Please contact the CCH at 520.458.8278 x2172 and leave amessage. One of our volunteers will return your call as soon aspossible. Better yet, email [email protected] your request.

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Cochise County Herbarium (CCH) Sierra Vistaby Bob Ballard, Cochise County Herbarium Curator

above Sample CCH specimen sheet: Arizona caltrop(Kallstroemia grandiflora), James Mustard (collection). Photocourtesy Bob Herrmann.


ssp, dorsal (but ventral is there!), sori, sporophore,trophophore. Scale, awn, and bristle are not definedsufficiently to assist with keying Asteraceae.

There seems to be a bias for publishing illustrations of rareor uncommon plants in the Flora. The point of drawings isnot just to look good (which they certainly do), but also tohelp identify. It would have been nice to have illustrations ofsome of the common Astragalus or Erigeron as well as themore unusual plants.

I have developed a website to identify updates andcorrections for the Flora. Readers may find this a useful

guide when using the Flora: www.swcoloradowildflowers.com/floraofthefourcornersregion.htm

The bottom line is this: the excellence of Flora of the FourCorners Region enormously outweighs the few errors. Afterapproximately 20,000 miles of walking, 150 miles of horseriding, and 150,000 miles of driving to, from, and on fieldtrips to collect over 23,000 specimens (including 1,700county records, 42 state records, and 17 new species), Kenand Steve deserve a great thank-you from us and a long restfor themselves. The former they have been receiving; thelatter they have not taken, for they immediately began workon a flora of New Mexico, and if all goes well we can expectthat in the next few years.

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SPOTLIGHT ON A NATIVE PLANT

California Fan Palm (Washingtonia filifera)by Douglas Ripley, Cochise Chapter, Arizona Native Plant Society

Of the eleven palm species occurring in North America, the California FanPalm is the only palm species to occur in the Western United States andnorthern Baja California. Although widely grown in cultivation, its remarkablenatural occurrence in Arizona is confined to several steep crevices of an areaknown as Palm Canyon on the western edge of the Kofa National WildlifeRefuge in Yuma County. The only other natural occurrences of the CaliforniaFan Palm are located in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and Joshua TreeNational Park in California and near Tijuana in Northern Baja California. PalmCanyon is easily accessible by a well-marked road into the refuge off of Highway95. A short hike from the end of the road brings one to an excellent vantagepoint to observe these remarkable plants growing in the steep crevices above thetrail. A considerably more strenuous hike further up the canyon allows for amuch closer view of the palms.

This beautiful tree reaches a maximum height of about 45 feet with a crownspread of about 15 feet and a trunk diameter of more than three feet. Theindividual fronds are 3-6 feet in length and eventually form a skirt of deadfoliage around the trunk. The fruit derived from its three-lobed, funnel-shapedflowers consist of small, sweet berries about one-half-inch in diameter. Evidenceexists that Native Americans used the fruits for food and ground the seeds intoflour.

Such a widely disjunct distribution has led to speculation on the origin of theCalifornia Fan Palm in Arizona. One theory holds that the trees in Arizona aredescendants of palms growing in a much wider distribution during the lastperiods of the North American glaciation (about 12,000 years ago) thateventually retreated to protected niches as the climate warmed to desertconditions. An alternative theory is that the Palm Canyon trees were establishedfrom other populations as a result of long-distance dispersal by birds or coyotes

The genus Washingtonia was described in 1879 by the German botanist,renowned palm expert, and plant explorer, Hermann Wendland (1825-1903) inhonor of George Washington. The specific name filifera is derived from theLatin fili meaning “thread-like” and refers to the filaments that peel away fromthe leaf margins.

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above California Fan Palms in PalmCanyon, Kofa National Wildlife Refuge,Yuma County, Arizona. Courtesy the author.

below California Fan Palm Fruit. CourtesyM. Kat Anderson @ USDA-NRCS PLANTSDatabase.

THE ARIZONANATIVE PLANT

SOCIETYPO Box 41206

Tucson AZ 85717www.aznativeplantsociety.org

Nonprofit OrgUS Postage

PAIDTucson AZ

Permit #690

Printed on recycled paper.

Address ServiceRequested

Membership FormName:

________________________________________________________

Address:

________________________________________________________

City/State/Zip:

________________________________________________________

Phone/Email:

________________________________________________________

Chapter preferred: m State only m Cochise County m Flagstaff m Phoenix m Prescott m Tucson m Yuma

Enclosed: m $15 Student m $75 Commercialm $30 Individual m $100 Plant Loverm $35 Family m $500 Patronm $50 Organization m $1,000 Lifetime

Mail to: Arizona Native Plant SocietyPO Box 41206, Tucson AZ 85717

New Members Welcome!People interested in native plants areencouraged to become members. People mayjoin chapters in Flagstaff, Phoenix, Prescott,Cochise County (Sierra Vista), Tucson, orYuma, or may choose not to be active at achapter level and simply support thestatewide organization.

For more information, please write toAZNPS (see return address above), visitwww.aznativeplantsociety.org, or contactone of the people below:

Cochise: Doug Ripley,[email protected]

Flagstaff: Dorothy Lamm, 928.779.7296

Phoenix: Cass Blodgett, 480.460.0725, andMichael Plagens, 602.459.5224

Prescott: Sue Smith, 408.507.7706

Tucson: Ries Lindley,[email protected]

Yuma: Valerie Morrill, [email protected]

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