Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

collected on this day

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Collected on this Day in 1906

(Not quite yet) flowering dogwood

This specimen of flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) was collected on January 21, 1906 in Fern Hollow, Frick Park, Pittsburgh by Otto Jennings. The specimen was collected 13 years before Frick Park became a city park, bequeathed by the well-known industrialist Henry Clay Frick after his death. Otto Jennings was an influential botanist in western Pennsylvania, serving as curator at the museum for many years.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again –  specimens without leaves are cool!  Why did Jennings collect this specimen?

Flowering dogwood has distinctively big flower buds through the winter.  The flower is in there, remaining dormant, waiting to blossom in the spring.  Like many other woody species in our area, the leaf and flower buds are pre-formed  by the previous fall. They remain dormant until they reach their chilling requirement (number of cold days), the air temperature warms, and/or the days get longer (in plants, this is called “photoperiod”).  Different species have different requirements, with some species being more conservative than others to prevent premature leaf out in the middle of winter.

Only about two and half more months until flowering dogwood awakes in western Pennsylvania. In the meantime, you can admire the species in the spring diorama in Botany Hall, or look for their buds outside.

Find this specimen and more here.

Check back for more! Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They are in the midst of 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.

Mason Heberling is Assistant Curator of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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From cultivation to invasion: a common route

Collected on this Day in 1937

This specimen of princess tree (Paulownia tomentosa) was collected on January 13, 1937 in Schenley Park, Pittsburgh by R.J. Templeton and J.R. Steck.  Though subtle, note the heading on the label “Flora of Cultivation.”  This header suggests that this tree was planted in the park, rather than naturally occurring on its own.

Princess tree has a remarkable presence – large wide leaves larger than your face (though you can’t see that in this winter collected specimen) and very showy, fragrant flowers that burst from large buds in the spring.  Signs of the flowers/fruits remain obvious on the branches year round.

Princess tree is a common urban weedy tree that is not native to Pennsylvania or the United States. Rather, it is native to Central and Western China.  It was brought to Europe in the 1830s (and then to the US) by the Dutch East India Company, with many historical medicinal and ornamental uses, as well as its wood. The tree was named after a Romanov princess, the Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna.

Princess tree can still be found in Schenley Park.  It is especially noticeable, with its flowers at eye level, as you walk or drive across the bridge from the museum to Phipps Conservatory (Schenley bridge).

Listed as invasive by the state, Princess tree should not be planted in Pennsylvania.  It grows quickly and actively spreads beyond its planting, into roadsides, streams, and disturbed forests with potential to displace native plants.

Find this specimen and more here: http://midatlanticherbaria.org/portal/collections/list.php?db=all&catnum=CM120710&othercatnum=1

Check back for more! Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They are in the midst of 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.

Mason Heberling is Assistant Curator of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Collected on this Day in 1898

Spring goes on! Spring seems to happen fast, which makes it all the more special and worth our attention. Comfort can be found in the new life of spring, a time of change.

Happy official first day of spring! For many people, spring conjures images of sunshine (and rain), birds tweeting about, and plants emerging from winter. Trees flower and leaf out high up in the canopy. Wildflowers emerge below, many playing a delicate balance between getting injured by cold or frost but taking advantage of the longer sunny days before being shaded out by tree leaves.

Many deciduous trees flower before, during, or just after they produce a new spring flush of leaves. That’s right – trees flower too! Keep a careful look out for them now and over the coming month. Many trees flower early in the spring, with small clusters of flowers. These easy to overlook flowers 40 feet or more up in the canopy are easy to overlook.  They are often quite small and are wind pollinated. That means that rather than relying on insects, the wind blows their pollen, transferring it to female flowers. (And also…as many with allergies know, we breathe in pollen too.)  Upon fertilization, seeds begin to develop. Flowering early, before leaves are out, is adaptive because the flowers are not blocked by vegetation.

This specimen of silver maple (Acer saccharinum) is in flower, but leaves are not yet emerged. Silver maple is native to swampy, wet areas such as around lakes across eastern North America.  It is also planted, so it is now found in many habitats. It has beautiful bark that forms distinctive strips and with “maple-looking” leaves that are deeply loped.

Beyond the science, this specimen also tells an important cultural story about the history behind the Carnegie Museum. This specimen was collected by Otto Jennings in Olena, Ohio in 1898.  Otto Jennings was one of the first curators of botany at the museum. This specimen was collected when he was only 20 years old, six years before he moved to the museum. He was born in 1877 on a farm in Olena, Ohio. He collected this specimen not far from his childhood home.  Jennings started his 60-year tenure at the Carnegie Museum six years later, in 1904. He made many contributions throughout his career, serving as the Curator of Botany, Director of Education, and eventually Director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.  He also was 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.

So many stories behind these specimens.

Find this specimen and the 304 other specimens Jennings collected near his childhood home here.

Check back for more! Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They are in the midst of 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.

Mason Heberling is Assistant Curator of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Collected on this Day in 1951: Bedstraw

This bedstraw specimen was collected on March 18, 1951 by Bayard Long in Philadelphia county, Pennsylvania.

Bayard Long (1885-1969) was a Philadelphia-area botanist and an active member of the Philadelphia Botanical Club (founded in 1891 and still exists today).  He was a prolific collector and served as Curator of the Club’s Local Herbarium for 56 years (housed at the Academy of Natural Sciences).

Fogg writes of his collections in 1970 in the journal Rhodora: “It is doubtful that anyone ever possessed a higher standard for the quality of an herbarium specimen than Bayard Long.  Every leaf had to be laid out flat, every inflorescence properly displayed, every flower part clearly shown. Extra flowers and loose fruits and seeds were placed in pockets affixed to the sheet. Root systems (collected in their entirety whenever possible) were scrupulously clean, habitats were accurately described, and localities were identified to the nearest tenth of a mile and closest compass point. All of this seems the more remarkable when it is realized that Long collected close to 80,000 numbers, not including collections made as a member of Fernald’s expeditions.”

Bedstraws (species in the genus Galium, in the coffee family Rubiaceae) are common and memorable in our woods. They have many historical and traditional uses. In particular, they were used to stuff mattresses, hence the funny name. Also called cleavers or catchweed, the stems are sticky (due to fine hook hairs) and can be fun to stick on your clothes. They have likely stuck to you or your pet. This specimen is Galium aparine. An annual plant, seeds germinate in spring and produce tiny white flowers. They are emerging now, poking through the leaf litter.

Find this specimen and more here.

There are >64,000 specimens collected by Bayard Long currently digitized and online.

Check back for more! Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They are in the midst of 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.

Mason Heberling is Assistant Curator of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Collected on this Leap Day in 1984

Unnamed, but not forgotten!

Today, we celebrate the 9th birthday of this specimen collected 36 years ago.

This specimen was collected on leap day, February 29, 1984 in Brazil by Keiichi Mizoguchi.

Fun fact: In the Carnegie Museum herbarium, there are 85 specimens collected on leap day, collected between 1872 until 1990.  That’s a lot of leap years!

Aside from it being collected on leap day, the specimen label might seem even more unique.  Where most herbarium specimen labels have the species name, this one is blank.  A big blank spot. The collector did not identify this specimen, nor has anyone else in the past 36 years (yet).  This is an “indetermined” or unidentified specimen.  It is filed in the sunflower family (Asteraceae) based on its flowers, but it is otherwise not identified.

We can’t forget about these unidentified specimens.  Especially those collected on leap day!

Specimens in the herbarium are arranged by plant family, then genus, then geography (where it was collected), and in nearly every genus, at the bottom of all these folders is a black colored folder labelled “undetermined” (also called “indet.”) that includes those specimens that have not yet been identified to species.  Of the over 525,000 specimens in the Carnegie Museum herbarium, about 2% (= 10,588 specimens), are not (yet) identified to species.

This specimen is most likely a member of a species already known to science, but an expert has not yet identified this particular specimen. However, many undetermined specimens may be undescribed (that is, new to science).  The name and description of new species (alpha taxonomy) is a major purpose of herbaria. A study in 2010 estimated that of the estimated 70,0000 species yet to be described, over HALF are lying in herbaria right now! They also found that only 16% of new species descriptions were done within 5 years of specimen collection, and 25% of new species descriptions involved specimens that were more than 50 years old!

Study abstract here: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/51/22169.abstract

Taxonomy (branch of science on classification of organisms) is always changing.  Species names are changed, what was once thought to be one plant species or family is split into many, and what was thought to be several species is lumped into one. And with further information or upon review by experts in particular plant groups, specimens are determined to be a different species than what the original collector called it. Annotation labels are added to specimens all the time – these labels revise the species listed on the original label. A typical annotation label includes the revised species name and details, the name of the person making the annotation, and the date.

Some specimens can have many annotations, which nicely demonstrates the community culture of science as a process with constant revision as we learn more about the world around us.

Find this specimen here. Check back, maybe it’ll have a species name on it by next leap year!

Check back for more! Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They are in the midst of 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.

Mason Heberling is Assistant Curator of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Collected on this Day in 2012: Wintercreeper

This specimen of wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei) was collected on January 31, 2012 along the Monongahela River in Fayette County, PA by Alison Cusick.  Alison Cusick is a current Research Associate in the Section of Botany at the museum.  He can be frequently found in the Carnegie Museum herbarium.  He has a unique wealth of knowledge on plants, herbaria, botanical history, and more.  He authored three books and more than 50 scientific papers on the flora of eastern North America. Before retiring, he was the Chief Botanist for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.  He continues to collect today, and many thousands of his specimens can found at herbaria across the country.  

Note the label on this specimen reads “Cusick, A.W.   37174”  The number following a collectors name is known as the…you guessed it… collector number (surprise!).  The collector number is the number assigned to a specimen by the collector.  It is common for several specimens to have the same collector number, if they are from the same individual or species in the same location on the same day (“duplicate specimens”).  Unfortunately, there are no universal rules on how collector numbers are used or assigned.  Collector numbers primary use is so the collector and/or others using the specimen can go back to the collector’s field notebook for additional information on the specimen.  Collector numbers are different from specimen numbers (which are assigned by the herbarium, such that every specimen has a unique ID for reference).  Most collectors number their specimens chronologically in order they were collected (but not always), but some collector numbers consist of dashes and/or letters, too.  

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that this specimen (Cusick 37174) suggests Alison has collected AT LEAST over 37,000 specimens.  The number is actually higher than that, with duplicates and an additional 8 years of collecting.  Not that numbers are everything, but Alison’s contribution to the herbarium record is clearly impressive and impactful.

Ok, now back to the plant!  Winter creeper (Euonymus fortunei), native to Asia, is commonly planted in Pennsylvania and many other places, and unfortunately has also spread to become invasive.  It is still commonly planted.  It is a woody vine that climbs trees, but also is a thick ground cover.  It has leaves that persist through the winter, with attractive fruits.  Despite those advantages, it can impact native species and habitats as an invasive species, and therefore, should not be planted.

Find this specimen and more here: http://midatlanticherbaria.org/portal/collections/individual/index.php?occid=12134036&clid=0

Check back for more! Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They are in the midst of 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.

Mason Heberling is Assistant Curator of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.