Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

Botany Blogs

These blogs are written about and by our Section of Botany researchers. The herbarium at the museum which contains approximately 3,000 type specimens--specimens that define an entire plants' species. These type specimens only represent about 0.6 % of the collection.

Mason Heberling, head of the section, regularly shares herbarium specimens that have been "Collected on this day" in history.

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Collected on This Day in 1995

by Mason Heberling

common ragweed

Fall allergies causing you grief?

Ragweed is a plant many people are (all too) familiar with.  Or at least their bodies are.  Common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) is actually native to North America, but has been introduced across the world.  In many cases, this plant (or other ragweed species) are to blame for seasonal pollen allergies known as “hay fever.”  In summer and early fall, ragweed plants produce copious numbers of pollen grains, which are dispersed in the wind.  Don’t blame those insect-pollinated plants with showy flowers for your allergy troubles.  Wind pollinated plants like ragweed are your culprit.

ragweed specimen

This ragweed specimen was collected by Bonnie and Joe Isaac in Lawrence county, Pennsylvania on October 8, 1995.  Bonnie is the collection manager in the Section of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, an active plant collector and field botanist, and an expert on the plants of Pennsylvania.

Although ragweed is native to the US, historical records (pollen deposited in sediment cores) suggest that this species was far less common in North America before European colonization.  This is perhaps not too surprising considering the species thrives in disturbed habitats that came with European colonization and urbanization.  A study published in 2014 by Martin and colleagues in the journal Molecular Ecology extracted DNA from nearly 500 historic herbarium specimens dating back to the 1800s to measure the genetic makeup prior to widespread changes to the landscape in the late 19th century. Combined with data from recent collections, they found shifts in the genetic makeup of ragweed populations as the species was expanding in the United States.

Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They have embarked on a three-year project to digitize nearly 190,000 plant specimens collected in the region, making images and other data publicly available online. This effort is part of the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis Project (mamdigitization.org), a network of thirteen herbaria spanning the densely populated urban corridor from Washington, D.C. to New York City to achieve a greater understanding of our urban areas, including the unique industrial and environmental history of the greater Pittsburgh region. This project is made possible by the National Science Foundation under grant no. 1801022.  

This specimen is now online: Ambrosia artemisiifolia.

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Botany Near Home

by Mason Heberling

dandelion outside Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Human activities are changing our very notion of what is “natural.”  We are surrounded by nature, no matter whether we are in an asphalt parking lot in Pittsburgh or deep in the Allegheny National Forest.  This conclusion was a central theme (and namesake) of the recent exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History titled We Are Nature: Living in the Anthropocene.  The Anthropocene is an interdisciplinary, far-reaching conceptual framework for understanding, managing, protecting, and celebrating our natural heritage in a new era of global human influence on the Earth’s systems.

Is there value to nature in the city?  How about the mowed lawn in your backyard? Or the weeds in sidewalk cracks? It’s easy to overlook nature in human dominated environments, but it is something special.

While the Anthropocene as a formal term is quite new, many of the basic concepts behind it are far from it.

I recently stumbled across an inspiring, forward thinking essay by Otto Jennings entitled “Botany Near Home.”  I do not know the date or where it was published.

Affiliated with the Carnegie Museum from 1904 until his death in 1964, Jennings made many contributions throughout his career, serving as the Curator of Botany, Director of Education, and eventually Director of the museum.  He also was Professor and Head of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, having advised many students.  His legacy remains to this day for his influence on the museum, botany, conservation, and environmental education.

Specimen of Taraxacum offiniale (dandelion)
Specimen of Taraxacum offiniale (dandelion) collected by Otto Jennings on Sept. 9, 1919 in the lawn outside of the museum.

In his short essay, Jennings asserts that you do not need to go far to teach and learn botany hands-on. He writes, “…the teacher need not have to break up regular class schedules or to go to the trouble of organizing a field-trip to some more or less distant place.”

He continues, “Various plants grow in backyards and vacant lots which were not planted there by anyone. How did it get there?  Our back in a semi-business part of Oakland, in Pittsburgh, has had ailanthus trees, wild cherries, elderberries, southern fireweed, plantains, smartweeds, asters, a goldenrod, a thistle, and many dandelions. How did they get there?  Such a question might well be put to the school children as a quiz contest – and let them work out the answers.”  Jennings then focuses the rest of the essay on the fascinating biology of the common dandelion and advocates the use of this often overlooked, common plant to teach botany.

Drawing of dandelion by Otto Jennings 
Drawing of dandelion by Otto Jennings

While this basic essay may not seem like much, there is an important point.  We often think of “nature” as something far away, something you visit.  But indeed, you can find botany near home.  And once you look for it, it is a fascinating world. Even the common species aren’t as boring as you might think, once you take the time to look closely.

In the city blocks around the Carnegie Museum of Natural History alone, there are currently 104 species of plants recorded by citizen scientists in iNaturalist.  That’s right, 104! And I would presume this is far from a complete inventory.

Peruvian daisy in a sidewalk crack
You can see a surprising amount of diversity in sidewalk cracks. Pictured here thriving in a sidewalk crack outside the museum is Galinsoga quadriradiata, commonly known as Peruvian daisy.  This species is common to urban environments.  So common to Pittsburgh, it is even known as “Pittsburgh Weed.”

What about urban diversity captured in the museum herbarium?  Of the 170,000+ plant specimens collected in Pennsylvania alone, over 15,000 (!) were explicitly described by the collector as growing in a human-made habitat (defined broadly, including words such as urban, sidewalk crack, vacant lot, roadside, railway, waste area, industrial, etc).

Despite the importance of appreciating life in human-dominated environments, it is also important to recognize the inherent and functional value of “pristine” nature. Managing for the “natural” is one of many difficult topics to tackle in the Anthropocene. What exactly is nature?  What should nature be?  Is there inherent value in all species? What species are priorities to conserve? How do we balance the perceived needs of human society with that of biodiversity?

These are just some of the many questions without easy answers.  But as we define our collective future in the Anthropocene, let’s always appreciate “botany near home.”

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For more on the urban plants of Pittsburgh, be sure to check out the book Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast published in 2010 by Peter Del Tredici. https://librarycatalog.einetwork.net/Record/.b29413795

Also, be sure to check out the recent activity book published by the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.  It was designed for use by parents and teachers to engage young people with nature, even in the city.

Mason Heberling is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Section of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences working at the museum.

Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History have embarked on a three-year project to digitize nearly 190,000 plant specimens collected in the region, making images and other data publicly available online. This effort is part of the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis Project (mamdigitization.org), a network of thirteen herbaria spanning the densely populated urban corridor from Washington, D.C. to New York City to achieve a greater understanding of our urban areas, including the unique industrial and environmental history of the greater Pittsburgh region. This project is made possible by the National Science Foundation under grant no. 1801022. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Collected on This Day in 1982

by Mason Heberling

Corn is a staple crop known well by many across the world.  Corn is used in a variety of ways including human food (from corn on the cob to corn syrup), animal feed, ethanol production, and especially this time of year, fall decoration and corn mazes. Corn is an economically important crop worldwide, with over 81 acres expected to have been harvested in the US alone this year.  But where did this plant come from?

corn specimen

Corn, better known to many as maize (Zea mays), is a domesticated plant.  Yes, plants can be domesticated, just as your pets.  Corn was domesticated from a wild grass species known as teosinte in Mexico approximately 8,700 years ago.  Like many other food crops, corn was domesticated by humans through artificial selection – that is, through selective breeding for traits of interest over many generations, causing the evolution of a species.  In the case of corn, teosinte evolved through human intervention by selecting seed from plants with desirable traits (such as large cobs), planting those seeds, again selecting the “best” plants, and repeating over decades.  Eventually, teosinte evolved from a many branching grass with small seed cobs to what we recognize as corn today – tall, unbranched plants with large, tasty cobs.

This specimen is of a species of teosinte (Zea mays subspecies parviglumis) that is thought to be the close relative of the domesticated crop we know today (Zea mays subspecies mays).  This specimen was collected near the site of domestication in Mexico on October 2, 1982 by Hugh Iltis, a botanist and geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studied teosinte species, and an influential conservationist.   Note the species name on the label “Zea mays L. subsp. parviglumis var. parviglumis Iltis and Doebley” – his name at the end denotes Iltis was one of the scientists who named the taxonomic variety new to science in 1980. It was also collected in the “type locality,” meaning from the same spot where the specimen used to describe the species was collected.

Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They have embarked on a three-year project to digitize nearly 190,000 plant specimens collected in the region, making images and other data publicly available online. This effort is part of the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis Project (mamdigitization.org), a network of thirteen herbaria spanning the densely populated urban corridor from Washington, D.C. to New York City to achieve a greater understanding of our urban areas, including the unique industrial and environmental history of the greater Pittsburgh region. This project is made possible by the National Science Foundation under grant no. 1801022.  

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Scientists Live: Mason Heberling

Mason HeberlingPostdoctoral Research Fellow, Mason Heberling, will do a broadcast on Facebook Live to share the importance and power of museum specimen digitization! Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History have recently embarked on a three-year project to digitize nearly 190,000 plant specimens collected in the region. This effort is part of the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis Project (mamdigitization.org), a network of thirteen herbaria spanning the densely populated urban corridor from Washington, D.C. to New York City to achieve a greater understanding of our urban areas, including the unique industrial and environmental history of the greater Pittsburgh area. How have the plants of Pittsburgh changed over the past century? In this interactive broadcast, Mason will introduce the plant collection at the museum (>0.5 million specimens strong, dating back the 1800s), the uses of these specimens to understanding the world around us, and the value of digitization and making specimens freely accessible to scientists, students, and the public. Each specimen has an important scientific and cultural story to tell.

The broadcast will begin at 10:30 a.m. and will include a question and answer segment.

Tune in at facebook.com/carnegiemnh. A recording will be posted later for those unable to watch live.

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Collected on this day in 1944

by Mason Heberling

illustration of a wildflower

Herbarium specimens are both an art and a science.  This fact is no more apparent than in the collaborations between Andrey Avinoff and Otto Jennings, which culminated in the 1953 book Wildflowers of Western Pennsylvania and the Upper Ohio Basin.

Jennings was a longtime curator of botany, professor at University of Pittsburgh, and served many roles at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (including director from 1945-1949).

Avinoff was a lepidopterist (studied butterflies) and artist, who was Director of the Carnegie Museum if Natural History from 1926-1945.

“Probably never again will there be two scholars, each a master in his own field, who can work together as did these two.” – Agnes L. Starrett

The book features a detailed, scientific manual describing plant species found in the region written by Jennings, along with 200 watercolor paintings of a subset of these species by Avinoff.  Jennings would travel across Western PA in search of the perfect specimen to return to the museum for Avinoff to paint while still fresh and unwithered.  Avinoff is said to have dropped everything he was doing upon Jennings’ return, and stay through the night to paint the flowers from still life.  Avinoff estimated that it took him about 1,600 hours to paint them all.

illustration of a wildflower next to a wildflower specimen

A. Avinoff, referring to his wildflower paintings: “These were my guiding principles: (1) accuracy in form and color; (2) portrayal of the individuality of the plant as to the character, position, arrangement, and venation of the leaves and the texture of their surfaces; (3) decorative arrangement, composition, and spacing; (4) strictly water color technique—only transparent pigment and no opaque colors, no whit paint anywhere, not a single stroke used in the high lights. The whit is the paper and all light parts are lighter washes of the pigment—thoroughbred aquarelle has been observed throughout.”

Some of these specimens were then pressed and remain in the Carnegie Museum’s herbarium today.  We know of 50 specimens that were used by Avinoff for his paintings.

illustration of a wildflower next to a wildflower specimen

This specimen of squarrose goldenrod (Solidago squarrosa) is one of those specimens.  It was collected by Otto Jennings on September 21, 1944 on a ledge along the river bluffs near Bell’s Landing, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.

Both of scientific and cultural value, this specimen has a rich history, much more than “just” dried plants on paper.  While we know the history behind this particular one, each specimen has an important scientific and cultural story to tell.

Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They have embarked on a three-year project to digitize nearly 190,000 plant specimens collected in the region, making images and other data publicly available online. This effort is part of the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis Project (mamdigitization.org), a network of thirteen herbaria spanning the densely populated urban corridor from Washington, D.C. to New York City to achieve a greater understanding of our urban areas, including the unique industrial and environmental history of the greater Pittsburgh region. This project is made possible by the National Science Foundation under grant no. 1801022.  

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Hidden Treasure of Pittsburgh Found

by Bonnie Isaac

Recently I received a call from a woman who had bought an estate and discovered a hidden treasure in the basement. The basement contained 28 boxes of herbarium specimens. These boxes contained the private herbarium of Charles Boardman. Boardman was a research associate of Botany here at the museum from 1951 until his death on January 5, 1983. He had built his own herbarium space in his basement. These specimens are already mounted and in remarkably good shape for having been stored in a basement unattended for over 30 years.

Herbarium space built in the basement of Charles Boardman’s house with boxes of specimens.
Herbarium space built in the basement of Charles Boardman’s house with boxes of specimens.

Amazingly enough, there was also a letter with the collection with some details about his life. Charles Boardman was born in Buffalo, New York in 1903. Mr. Boardman attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and became a professional engineer. Charles was especially interested in mosses which led to his affiliation with Carnegie’s own Otto Jennings. Boardman accompanied Jennings on many field trips and collected specimens for the Manual of Mosses of Western Pennsylvania written and illustrated by Jennings. Boardman’s moss collection was donated to Duke University at his request shortly after his death. His vascular plant collection remained hidden in his basement until just a few weeks ago.

Water lily specimen
Water lily specimen found in Boardman’s personal herbarium.

Most of the specimens are from the 1930’s and 1940’s collected from Pennsylvania and beyond. In the coming weeks and months, we will process this amazing gift to see how many specimens are in this hidden treasure and put them into the main herbarium here at the museum for researchers to use in the future. You never know where a historic treasure may be lurking.

Bonnie Isaac is the Collection Manager in the Section of Botany. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.