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Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

Hall of Botany

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Tulips in June?!

tulip tree specimen sheet

Collected on this Day in 1920

Your tulips may be long gone as spring has faded, but tulip trees are in full force! Although it’s hard to catch a glimpse of them way up in the canopy, tulip tree flowers are just as stunning. Completely unrelated to tulips, Liriodendron tulipifera (called tulip tree, tulip poplar, or sometimes yellow poplar) is named such because its leaves have a distinctive shape reminiscent of tulips.

photo of tulip trees with flower

Found across eastern North America, Tulip trees are one the tallest and fast-growing trees native to Pennsylvania, growing up to nearly 200 feet tall! Tulip trees are relatively shade intolerant and therefore are especially common in young forests (early successional). However, the species can still be found in older forests too. Its tall straight trunks can be impressive, and its wood is widely used by woodworkers, who often refer to it as “poplar.” The tree is not related to true poplars (Populusspecies), which are in the willow family, Salicaceae. Tulip trees are a member of the magnolia family (Magnoliaceae). This beautiful specimen was collected on June 6, 1920 near Trafford, Pennsylvania by Otto Jennings. Jennings was an influential botany curator at the museum for many years.

Find this stunning specimen 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 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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Plants with bladders?

Collected on this Day in 1940

bladdernut specimen on herbarium sheet

This specimen was collected on May 29, 1940 by Leroy Henry along Pine Creek, north of Wildwood outside of Pittsburgh. Leroy Henry was a mycologist (studied fungi) and botanist who was curator at Carnegie Museum from 1937-1973.

bladdernut flowers
bladdernut flowers

Aptly called “bladdernut” (Staphylea trifolia), this charismatic native understory shrub produces clusters of white flowers in the spring. These dangling flowers develop into striking bladder-like fruit. In each “bladder” pouch are seeds. These fruit often persist through fall and some linger through winter, though the plant is leafless.

bladdernut fruit

Bladdernut has a wide range across eastern North America, and can be found in relatively undisturbed forests in our area, often forming thickets.

Find this specimen 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 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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Many ways to be a forest wildflower

photo of flowers with white petals and yellow centers

What exactly is a wildflower? Well, that depends who you ask!

Wildflowers in the broadest sense are any flowering plants growing naturally outside of gardens.  These could include trees, shrubs, and non-woody (herbaceous) plants. However, most people tend to think of herbaceous plants with showy blooms. Wildflowers are present all year long, but they are exceptionally noticeable during the spring. For most plants, spring is a time of new growth. Our landscape blossoms with new life, both figuratively and literally.

Arisaema drawing by Allison Heberling.

I can state without reservation that scientists in the Section of Botany love wildflowers of all types, sizes, shapes, colors, and smells. I have fallen in love with forest wildflowers. My research is largely focused on wildflower diversity in the understory in our woods, which is collectively known as the herbaceous layer. Though comprised of plants of diminutive size, the collective role of the herbaceous layer in forest ecosystems is immense.  In fact, this layer comprises the most plant diversity in forests, ranging from two to ten times more species than in the overstory!

photo of purple wildflowers

Forest wildflowers in our deciduous forests have diverse strategies, all of which depend upon the timing of when leaves and flowers are produced. Most fit into one of three categories based upon their growth strategy. “Spring ephemerals” include plants that produce leaves and flower early in the spring, completing their aboveground activity before being shaded out by trees. “Summer-greens” include plants that produce leaves and flower just before or around when overstory tree canopies begin to produce leaves. These plants keep their leaves late into summer.  Finally, other species have leaves year-round and can legitimately be termed “evergreen.”

Mason Heberling is Assistant Curator of Botany at 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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Spring is in the Air, Botanists are in the Field

Antennaria solitaria in Ryerson Station State Park. Photo: BL Isaac.

With the arrival of warmer weather, botanists stop dreaming about what plants will be blooming and get out and look. CMNH botanists managed to make an early spring trip to the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, visiting Ryerson Station State Park in Greene County. At Ryerson, we found some of the more common spring flowering species along with some non-native invasive species. While collecting more than a dozen plants as current vouchers for ongoing phenology comparisons with older specimens, we also visited a known site for a Pennsylvania proposed Endangered plant species, the single headed pussy-toes, or Antennaria solitaria.

While out and about, I am always interested to see how well plants that have been labeled are identified. Over the years I have found some gross misidentifications on signs along trails. Last year I visited a boy scout camp that had a tree trail with over half of the trees misidentified. I found an especially egregious label along one of the trails in Ryerson Station State Park. This one was not on a park sign but was placed there by some misguided soul. What is obviously a beech tree (Fagus grandifolia) is clearly labeled as a goose (Branta canadensis). Evidently there were no scientific editors around when this mislabeling abuse took place by someone who not only can’t tell the forest for the trees but can’t tell a tree from a bird.

Beech tree in Ryerson Station State Park. Photo: BL Isaac.

All silliness aside, as spring moved along important field work stalled. With visits to Yellow Creek State Park and Cook Forest State Park in the works, we were notified by the Bureau of State Parks that all scientific permit holders must suspend collecting in the parks until further notice. So, our state park project, which has been running since 2017, was temporarily suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Collecting restrictions were lifted weeks later, however, we have missed one of the most important seasons for our long-term state park phenology study. With our 10-year plan in place it may be another decade before we can collect to evaluate Yellow Creek State Park flora. Hopefully we can double up on parks next year, so we won’t have to wait another 10 years to get these parks involved in our phenology project.

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.

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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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A Lot to be Fascinated By in the Herbarium

wildflowers in the woods

Are you fascinated by plants? Fascination of Plants Day is upon us (don’t worry, we didn’t know it was a thing either, but agree celebration is in order!). As you might guess, we in the Section of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History are definitely into any and all things plants. Plants are inextricable from our daily lives and play critical roles in our environment.  Plus, they are just pretty cool, too. Amid chirping birds or a lion chasing a gazelle, they might be easy to overlook, but they are well worth your attention. From the sidewalk cracks in front of the museum to a remote tropical rainforest, there is a lot to celebrate.

With over half a million plant specimens in the Carnegie Museum herbarium, we have a lot to be fascinated by. Botanists here at the museum and across the world are making new discoveries about plants through these collections. On this 5th annual Fascination of Plants Day, I’d like to share some exciting new work in our collection – extracting fungal DNA from herbarium specimen roots collected over a hundred years ago.

plant specimen with long roots on herbarium sheet

Unexpected inspiration often comes from looking at old specimens in new ways. Museum specimens were collected for many different reasons. The uses of specimens are many, and recently, being used in new ways.  Museum specimens have a lot to tell us. If we look.

Recently, I became fascinated by something often ignored – roots on herbarium specimens. Why do herbarium specimens have roots?

dried plant specimen on herbarium sheet

It is standard practice for botanists to collect the entire plant when possible.  Of course, that isn’t possible for a huge tree, but many plants can fit nicely on an herbarium sheet, roots and all. And  not only do many specimens have roots, but they have soil too.

For some plants, roots can be very helpful for identification. But for the most part, roots on herbarium specimens have not been generally used. But what can 100-year-old roots tell us?

With this new fascination with herbarium specimen roots, I contacted  Dr. David Burke, a microbial ecologist and expert in belowground forest ecology at the Holden Arboretum in Kirkland, Ohio. David studies belowground microbial soil communities and their interactions with plant roots. Nearly 75% of all flowering plant species form close relationships with mycorrhizal fungi. Many plant species in our forests across the eastern United States rely upon these mycorrhizal fungi to obtain water and nutrients necessary for growth. In return, the fungi get food (sugars) from the plant.

herbarium sheet of dried flower with roots

Can herbarium specimen roots tell us about relationships between mycorrhizal fungi and plants?  And perhaps more importantly: Have human activities affected these plant-fungal relationships over the past century?

David Burke had not extracted fungal DNA from herbarium specimen roots, but he was eager to try. (In fact, to our knowledge, no one had done this with herbarium specimen roots before.)  We sampled roots from herbarium specimens of four common forest wildflowers collected in western Pennsylvania between 1881 to 2008. These species included some favorites familiar in our area: red trillium, large-flowered trillium, false Solomon’s seal, and jack-in-the-pulpit.

red-purple flower in the woods

David was able to extract and sequence fungal DNA from plant roots as old as 137 years old! We published our results in a special issue on belowground botany in Applications in Plant Sciences. You can read the full study here.  While there is still much to be done, we showed that museum collections across the world hold enormous potential to provide new insights in the basic belowground biology of plants. They can also help us understand how human activities may affect the web of life in overlooked ways.

Herbarium specimen roots have a lot to tell us about the past, present, and future of our forests in the Anthropocene. And that is fascinating!

woods with many spring wildflowers in bloom

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.