What is a Herbarium and what is it for: Jamestown's famous weed

Today for my blog post I figured I would do a traditional blog post (for this blog, anyway) along with a "Part 2" that talks a bit about what a Herbarium is and what use it has to science. I've been talking a bit in recent blogs about my personal herbarium that I'm making with my Garden List species, and I've also done a few for the Herbarium at Western of species I've found on campus that only recently appeared. I'm a creature of habit and tend to walk the same path to go to the same place; because I happen to pay attention to the "green stuff" covering the ground, I usually notice when something weird pops up that wasn't there before. I'll talk a bit about one of my favourite weedy plants, which also happens to be my very first plant collection in the herbarium! Sandra, who I featured in a sneaky picture in a previous blog post HERE, is the Herbarium Assistant and Acting Herbarium Curator until the position is filled and she found it hysterical how excited I was about collecting and pressing my very first Herbarium specimen. Since then...I'm hooked. Anyone want a plant collection pressed and dried? I'm your girl. Even better (because it's more fun), want a pressed and dried collection glued and mounted on herbarium paper? Let me know.

Here we go! My favourite weed. :)

Species name: Datura stramonium

Common name: Jimson weed, Jamestown weed, devil's cucumber, datura

Location: UWO Campus

Jimsonweed (or Jimson weed...same plant, along with about 20 other common names this plant has) is my favourite weedy species that we have here in North America. Not just because of it's many common names (HOW AWESOME is the name "devil's cucumber"?!), but because of the rich history it has in the making of the identity of North America today. Without this plant, I doubt anyone living in the United States or Canada would have the same kind of "national identity" that we have today. This plant is widely believed to have originated in North America, but was spread across the globe very early for its recreational uses and so that's difficult to confirm. Since I really like this plant, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's native to North America...because I can :) It can be weedy and spread quite quickly, so if you do decide to plant it you'll want to make sure you dead-head the flowers before the seed pods form (or, if you like the appearance of the seed pods make sure you pick them off the plant before they crack open and disperse their seeds).

Jimsonweed is in the nightshade family (Solanaceae), which is the same plant family that we find the edible food crops potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants, as well as some ornamental species like henbane, mandrake, belladonna, and deadly nightshade (which, contrary to its common name is actually one of the plants that's least likely to kill you in this family, unless you're a small child or a beloved family pet). Like many of the species listed above, this plant is deadly poisonous. And when I say deadly, I mean deadly. Consuming the seeds from one seed pod would be enough to cause catastrophic organ failure in an adult human which would very quickly lead to death. Should you decide to only consume a few seeds, maybe 25 or so, it would also lead to catastrophic organ failure. This circumstance, however, results in a very slow, very painful death as your body slowly shuts down. Consuming only a small number of the seeds of this plant *may* result in a hallucinogenic trip, but it has equal likelihood in resulting in nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, and you wishing that the world would end right then and there (but you'll live). A few years ago there was a string of deaths of high school students in the United States, and it turns out that they all died from consuming Jimsonweed seeds. One of their friends had read on the internet that they're a free way of getting high, so they all ate them. Kids, don't believe everything you read on the internet! This plant is not worth it...trust me. Jimsonweed is fun to look at (how awesome are those seed pods?!), the flowers have an absolutely wonderful aroma, and they provide some nice fall colour to a garden. But don't, under any circumstances, eat it. Ever!

So why did I say above that this plant is probably the single most important plant species for the development of the identity of North America as it is today? Well...it comes from this plant's other major common name, the Jamestown weed. This name comes from Jamestown, Virginia, which was the site of Bacon's Rebellion. Long before Europeans sailed across the ocean blue to settle in what is now the United States, there were people already living there. In fact, there were a lot of people. About 14,000 people lived in and around Jamestown in the early 1600s when the first wave of settlers arrived. The local people were used to the types of harsh conditions to be expected in the winter months, but the Europeans were not so lucky. Many of them died, and it is widely speculated that the few that remained turned to cannibalism in order to survive. During the second wave of settlement, the "new Americans" were smarter: use the locals to build us shelters and show us how to gather food, and kill them if they refuse. There were many clashes between groups, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Nathanial Bacon decided he had had enough of the British fighting with the local people, and started an uprising. Governor William Berkeley had started teaming up with the local people to start building a nation. This angered some of the early settlers, since these same people were responsible for the deaths of many of their friends and family (it swings both ways, but I guess that wasn't the point). Bacon gathered people (estimates are between 300 and 500 people) to fight against Berkeley, eventually driving him out of Virginia and back to Britain. One of the major turning points in the rebellion was when British soldiers started flipping sides and fighting against their countrymen and their own Governor...all because they had been drugged. Bacon observed the local people preparing tea made out of a benign green plant (likely some kind of mint or other species which has a strong flavour, since Jimsonweed is reported to not taste very good) and sprinkled with 2 or 3 of the seeds of the Devil Plant. He prepared this same tea to offer to the freezing British soldiers, who promptly hallucinated for two weeks and became violently ill. While hallucinating, the soldiers were manipulated into amusing Bacon and his supporters, and once the drug's effects wore off they returned to normal, confused as to where the time had gone. When they were ostracized by their fellow soldiers for the actions performed while "under the influence," they decided to flip sides and help drive Governor Berkeley out of their new settlement. Berkeley retreated across the river, but with Bacon's death in 1676 a new leader of the Rebellion took over: John Ingram. Unfortunately, Ingram wasn't a very smart man. He decided to start a fight against the Pamunkey people, which were loyal supporters of Berkeley and even supplied him with warrior fighters. Between the British and the Pamunkey, the Rebellion was defeated and the rebels were driven out of the new settlement. The "good guys" had won. It has been speculated that if the British soldiers drugged with Jimsonweed hadn't flipped sides, Ingram never would have had enough supporters to wager a war against the Pamunkey people. Without this pivotal attack, Berkeley might have decided the war wasn't worth it and retreated back to Britain. What would this side of the world look like if this had of happened? It's impossible to speculate, but I bet it would be very different than what it is today. All thanks to a plant.

Jamestown, Virginia actually has an incredibly fascinating history in the early settlement of North America, and the independence of the United States. If you'd like to read more about the waves of settlement, the clashes that occurred, and the REAL story of Pocahontas (yes, that happened in Jamestown, too!) you can read more on the Wikipedia page HERE.

This plant isn't all bad. The active ingredients leading to hallucinations (and ultimately death) are alkaloids called atropine and scopolamine. Some of you might recognize these two compounds, as atropine is one of the most successful drug compounds used in treating severe asthma. In large amounts, atropine causes the paralysis of the lung tissue and the dilation of the bronchioles which increases air flow. In smaller amounts the paralysis occurs to a much smaller extent allowing the patient to still be able to breathe, but dilates the bronchioles to increase air flow. Scopolamine is also a very important drug in modern medicine; it's used to treat symptoms of Parkinson's disease and is one of the most effective anti-tremor medications (in small concentrations, of course!). Datura itself (the combination of these two alkaloids) is used to treat morphine addiction. Because of the effects on the body that it has, there are certain conditions that it will aggravate like glaucoma or difficulty urinating. Glaucoma is caused by an increase in pressure of the fluid of the eye, which can be aggravated by atropine (which causes the dilation of blood vessels, which would increase blood flow to the eye and increase the pressure even more). One of the main effects of both atropine and scopolamine is the inhibition of the parasympathetic system, which is responsible for the regulation of urination. If you're already having trouble urinating, inhibiting this further could be disastrous. But, again, this plant WILL KILL YOU if you try to make some kind of medicinal concoction on your own. Prescribed drugs have these compounds in very small, controlled amounts. The plant does what it pleases. Don't be stupid.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Now that you know why this plant is just so awesome, I figured I would talk a bit about this "Herbarium thing": what it is, what it's used for, why they're important, and what is stored in them.

A herbarium is like a library, but for dried plant material. When you walk into a herbarium (which is climate-controlled to prevent insect infestation, so usually kept around 15 C) the first thing that you'll notice are rows upon rows of cabinets. The cabinets contain stacks of sheets of card stock, on which is glued (or sewn, if you've got a really old collection) a plant collection. This collection is identified by species name, a location of where the collection was made (which now includes coordinates), any important information to go along with the collection, who made the collection, and a collection number (often called an accession number). Herbarium specimens are very similar to books: they have titles, authors, years of publication, and a brief description (like liner notes) of what can be found on the page. These specimens are then preserved for all of eternity, and databased so they can be accessed by researchers from other institutions. Some herbaria have thousands of collections (the Western Herbarium has about 60,000 collections), while others like the New York Botanical Gardens or the Paris Natural History Museum have millions of collections (about 10 million at NYBG, 8-9 million in Paris). Herbarium collections are invaluable to science since they show a snapshot of the plants living in an area in any given period of time. The herbarium collections at Western are "young" compared to other institutions since our oldest specimen is from the late 1800s. For my research, the oldest herbarium specimen I received on loan was from 1799, and many were from the 1820s and 1830s. There are some collections in Kew and in Paris from the 1500s! Herbarium specimens have been used in a wide variety of different types of biological studies, from studies about taxonomy (where you study old and new collections of species to look for new species "lost" in herbarium collections or to help you determine whether what you collected is a new species or not) to conservation biology. Herbarium specimens are actually becoming more and more crucial in conservation and restoration biology as habitats are becoming more and more degraded. What plant species used to be present in a given area, compared to what is there today? Can species that used to be present even be located in the same area now? Has the composition of which species are present completely changed? What does this mean? There have even been cases of determining that a plant species is now extinct in the wild based on herbarium collections. The species was collected from an area, described, and hasn't been seen since.

So how do we make a herbarium collection? I figured it was only fitting that my very first plant collection ever to be stored in a herbarium should be my favourite plant: Jimsonweed. When I found the plant growing on campus I carefully pulled it out of the ground to get the root ball intact, knocked off all of the extra dirt, and brought it in to Sandra in the herbarium for pressing. Here's what the plant looks like, in front of a standard piece of herbarium paper (11.5" x 16.5") for scale: 

Now, it should be obvious even to someone who's never made a herbarium collection before that this isn't going to work. Half the plant is missing; it's about 2 times bigger than the size of the paper. So what to do? Well...cut it. All of this preparation of a specimen needs to be done before it's dried, or else the dried plant will just shatter when you try to manipulate it later. I cut the bottom off right at the edge of the paper, and the bottom half became "sheet 2 of 2" for this collection. Next, the collection needs to go between pieces of newspaper and pressed out flat in a herbarium press, which then goes in the dryer to dry the specimen as much as possible (which can take up to a month, depending on how juicy the plant material is!). When a collection is pressed, maintaining the integrity of the plant is very important, because if someone wants to see your collection in 60 years they have to be able to determine what it even is. Showing the upper side and the lower side of leaves is important, but never the same leaf. Folding leaves when drying makes them very fragile and should be avoided when possible. The flowers of the plant, if present, should be kept as visible as possible and all other plant material should be pulled away. The seed pods, if present, should remain on the plant and should also be easily visible. Once all of the manipulation is done, put the newspaper-plant-sandwich into the press, the press into the drying oven, and forget about it for at least a week.

Once the press comes out of the oven, the sheets of newspaper can carefully be removed and opened. Sometimes tweezers can help to carefully pick the newspaper off of the plant material, since sometimes plants "juice" when they're squeezed into a tight location like the herbarium press. As long as the collection is dry, it's ready to be mounted on herbarium paper.

Grab yourself some 11.5" x 16.5" rag-bond acid-free paper and some acid-free glue. Contrary to what you might think, the less glue the better (learned that one the hard way once...). Decide which side is "up" and which side is "down" of your collection, and dab some glue in important places on the side that will be down. Important places would be at major intersections on the stem where pieces could break in two, along leaf petioles, or where the flower attaches to the stem. One thing you DON'T want to do is glue the entire flower to the paper, or the entire leaf. When someone else looks at your specimens they like to be able to see the underside of all of these things, so leave some space where they could carefully be pulled up off the paper to inspect the underside. When all of that is done, the specimen needs to be weighted down onto the paper. Herbarium presses might be able to squish things pretty well, but some plants are great resistors to the squishing. No matter what you do, you just can't get them quite flat enough. Common washers and nuts can be used to weigh the plant material into the glue dabs until the glue dries enough that the plant can't escape it. Once it's all glued and weighted down, it looks like this:

Let the glue dry, and while you're waiting you can make yourself a label! The label needs to be laser-printed using acid-free ink on acid-free paper that is BRIGHT white (even brighter than normal printer paper) and needs to be formatted according to the herbarium that you're depositing your specimen into. This is what our herbarium labels look like, and all of the information that we put onto them:

(my collection is #53,018 in the herbarium! Woo!)

Now it's time to glue the label onto the herbarium paper. They always go in the bottom right corner, so hopefully you saved space for it there (again, learned this the hard way once, too...). Glue it on with acid-free, extra-tacky label glue (which, of course, is different than specimen glue...). Make sure the glue doesn't leak out the edges! If it does, wipe it off right away. We want these looking pretty:

And now you can do any finishing touches! You can see that there are four of the big nuts weighing something down above the label on the sheet on the left. When the seed pods of Jimsonweed are dried, they split open to release the seeds. We want to keep these! Any plant material that falls off of a pressed herbarium specimen is still important material. These go into a little paper envelope, which is glued directly above the label of the specimen (or on page 1 of 2, if there is more than 1 sheet that goes with a single collection).

Now you're done! I was so proud of this silly specimen. It's just a dried plant glued onto paper, but it was my first dried plant glued onto paper! And hopefully it will be useful to someone some day. Now I've got nearly 90 others courtesy of my Garden List and trust me...botanical craft time never gets old :)

Sandra's Garden: The Last One

Species name: Syringa vulgaris

Common name: lilac

Location: Sandra's garden

Lilacs are some of the most easily recognizable shrubs used commonly for ornamental purposes. They have large heart-shaped leaves (although, not all plants that have "lilac" as a common name have heart-shaped leaves...), purple to white flowers, and the flowers have *THAT SMELL* that you smell it once and you never forget it. To me, it smells exactly like Myrtle Beach in South Carolina because that's the first place I was ever made aware of the smell; I remember walking to the beach from the camp ground past what must have been lilac bushes and a pond with baby ducks and snapping turtles that would eat the ducks. Thankfully I never actually witnessed a duck being eaten or else it might have scarred me for life. But I feel like I remember there being pens that people would keep baby ducks in so the turtles couldn't get them. Maybe I'm just making things up...this was back when I was 5 or 6 years old. I can barely remember last week!

And back to lilacs. They are native to Europe, from Croatia east to Moldova and south to Albania and Bulgaria. They had been introduced to the rest of Europe centuries ago and lilacs are now considered naturalized to most countries throughout the continent. The earliest settlers to North America brought lilacs as ornamental species, and so they have also existed in North America for many, many years. They are also considered naturalized here (it's even the state flower of New Hampshire), and have very little chance of becoming invasive since so few of their seeds are fertile. Normally you'd think a plant wouldn't do very well in the wild if the majority of the seeds being produced wouldn't be able to grow a new seedling, but this is relatively common in ornamental species (especially shrubs) because of their history of domestication: it was recently discovered that lilacs are actually hybrids of two drastically different species. When you hybridize two species that are closely related sometimes you don't even notice a reduction in fitness (or a reduction in the number of viable seeds being produced, which is a reflection of the potential number of offspring a single shrub could produce, called "fitness"). When you hybridize two species that aren't closely related then usually this reduction in fitness is quite drastic, if the hybrid takes at all. This hybrid shrub was likely a natural hybrid when it was first produced, and was since propagated over time.

Pruning lilacs is an art form to make sure it keeps flowering. If you just whack off the entire shrub at ground level (strangely enough, a "hard prune" is recommended by most garden centres for lilacs at least once every three or so years), you'll get a very "spotty" flowering on your shrub; these plants flower best on old growth. If you're cutting it off all the time, you're eliminating the possibility of getting really showy lilac flowers in the spring. The other side to this story is that lilacs can grow quickly if in optimal conditions, and so they can get to be an enormous size if left unchecked for too long. Dead-heading branches where flowers have been after flowering but before developing seeds can remove the branch's ability to extend further while at the same time promoting flower growth in later years. Win-win! Something to keep in mind too is that lilacs flower best every other year. So if you get one bad year, don't fret! A good one is probably on its way the next year.

If you like the idea of a lilac but absolutely cannot risk having a non-native plant escaping from your yard into a natural area, you could always plant a "doubled" cultivar. These cultivars have been selectively bred to have their stamens (or the "boy parts" of the flower that produce pollen) replaced with petals, so there are eight petals in each flower instead of four. If a flower doesn't produce pollen it cannot produce seeds, so this is a great way of planting a lilac for the smell without worrying about the plant getting away from you.

The Brazilian jasmine native to Brazil, not the Chilean jasmine native to Argentina

Species name: Mandevilla sanderi

Common name: Brazilian jasmine

Location: UWO Greenhouse

Brazilian jasmine is native to (you guessed it) Brazil, and until recently was considered part of a separate genus from the rest of the Mandevilla species in the genus Dipladenia. Most of the species currently classified in Mandevilla are native to Ecuador; this is one of the only species that's not. It's also one of the only species in the genus that's not critically endangered. It is still relatively common in the Brazilian rain forest, although the forest itself is decreasing in area by about 5-10% per year, so it will also soon be at risk. The common name of this plant is sometimes Chilean jasmine, but that common name actually refers to another plant, native to Argentina (yet another reason why common names of plants bother me...)

One of the characteristics of this plant that make it so attractive to gardeners (especially those with an indoor green thumb) are the strongly scented flowers. When in the appropriate location (in full to partial sun), these vines can reach heights up to 10 meters tall if given a support system in one growing season. If you want to encourage bushier growth, pruning the plant back almost to ground level every fall to encourage new growth in the spring would be best. The flowers can be tricked into being produced repeatedly during the growing season if the old flowers are pinched off (also called dead-heading). When grown in a container (either indoors or outdoors), it will rarely reach a height taller than a couple of meters.

There are no reports of this plant being toxic, but also none of it being edible. It is sometimes used in the perfume industry because of its scent, but doesn't have any other value aside from an ornamental plant. In the garden it will attract hummingbirds and butterflies because of the shape and colour of the flowers (and also a few bees...!).

The story of the Champlain rose hybrid

Species name: Rosa "Champlain" (see hybrid discussion below)

Common name: the Champlain landscape rose

Location: Ontario

At the beginning of June I blogged about a rose that we have in our garden, the pink Damask rose. I discussed the modern uses of roses aside from their ornamental use, which you can read all about HERE. One aspect of ornamental roses that I wanted to discuss, is the point that humans go to great lengths to achieve what we consider beauty in nature. This unsuspecting hybrid cultivar, which my neighbours have planted in their garden, is a perfect example of this never-ending pursuit of beauty. In the genus Rosa, there are somewhere between 100 and 150 different species depending on what expert you consult, with each one having drastically different characteristics. If we could find a way to select characteristics from each species to display in different hybrids, we could (in a way) "create" hybrids that would be very successful garden plants. Which we did. Approximately 5000 different times. Yes, there are an estimated 5000 different cultivars of roses of varying hybrid origins. Isn't that incredible?! That's a boatload of determination. So what went into making this hybrid?

To make the Champlain landscape rose, the series of steps to get from beginning to the end product that's planted in my neighbour's garden is no less complicated from start to finish or finish to start. So to be different, let's start with the end product: to create a Champlain hybrid, you must hybridize a Hybrid Tea rose with a Floribunda rose. Seems easy enough.

But, of course, it's not that easy. Because each of those are hybrids within themselves. The Floribunda rose is a hybrid between two different rose species, Rosa chinensis (China rose) and Rosa multiflora (multiflora rose). Easy enough! To get a Hybrid Tea rose, you need to cross a Hybrid Perpetual with a Tea rose. Interesting.

How do you get a Tea rose? This is a hybrid of two rose species, Rosa chinensis and Rosa odorata (scented rose). Again, easy enough. To get a Hybrid Perpetual rose, this is where things start to get a bit muddy. Making a Hybrid Perpetual, an incredibly popular garden rose because of its continuous flowering during the spring, summer and early fall, is incredibly complicated because it's made up entirely of recessive genes. Since most of these genes also carry disease susceptibility depending on species, you need to pick and choose what genes you get from which species. The easiest way to do this? Cross more hybrids to make second-generation hybrids! Yay! So a Hybrid Perpetual rose is created by crossing, in some seemingly random order, Hybrid China roses, Hybrid Bourbon roses, and Hybrid Noisette roses.

Alright, this is starting to get ridiculous. Because now we've got three more hybrids that we need to figure out how to make before we can even begin. To get a Hybrid Noisette, you have to cross Rosa moschata (Musk rose) with Rosa chinensis. To get a Hybrid China, you have to cross various cultivars of Rosa chinensis (can you see why I'm not a rose breeder now? This is giving me a headache). And last but not least, to get a Hybrid Bourbon you have to cross a Damask rose with one very specific cultivar, the "Old Blush" China rose (Rosa chinensis).

This brings us to our last hybrid cross, getting that Damask rose back that I first blogged about: a hybrid between Rosa moschata and Rosa gallica (French rose). Oh, what fun!

So to sum up, the species that go into making the genetic background of one cultivar of Hybrid Landscape rose are: Rosa chinensis, R. multiflora, R. odorata, R. moschata, and R. gallica in what seems like no less than one hundred steps. This doesn't even include the number of times a rose breeder had to cross different Hybrid Landscape roses together to get this specific flower colour, leaf colour, glossy leaves, red border around the leaf edge, red twig coloration, disease resistance, cold tolerance, and odor level. If this sounds like fun to you, perhaps you should strongly consider a career in rose breeding! There are about 5 companies that are giants worldwide for hybrid rose production, and I'm sure they're constantly looking for new staff. I'm not sure what would happen first: a new marketable rose cultivar or insanity...

Pardon Me also has a lily

Species name: Hemerocallis sp. (Hemerocallis 'Pardon Me')

Common name: daylily

Location: Ontario

This cultivar of daylily is a dark maroon-red with a greenish yellow throat (since the flower is tube-shaped, where the tube attaches to the flower stalk is called the throat). It's also an award-winning daylily, although ours is struggling somewhat (likely due to the obscene amount of Madagascar periwinkle strangling it out at the bottom, which can be seen completely covering the ground in the top photo). It's supposed to be a reblooming cultivar, which means it will continue to make flowers if you dead-head, or pull off the spent flowers before they can produce seeds. I have yet to see this plant produce more than one round of flowers!

To read a more in-depth blog about daylilies, please click HERE.

June's official flower: the Rose

Species name: Rosa x damascena

Common name: Damask rose

Location: Ontario

Most species in the rose family are native to Asia, although a few are native to Europe and North America. This particular hybrid is a natural hybrid of rose originating in Europe from a cross originally of Rosa moschata and Rosa gallica, then the offspring of that cross was mated with Rosa fedtschenkoana (your guess is as good as mine for how to pronounce that one!). It wasn't long after this happened naturally that humans decided this was an unusually beautiful rose hybrid, and it was propagated in gardens across Europe, eventually making their way to North America. Most garden roses would be unlikely to survive in the wild since they have so many petals. This makes it exceedingly difficult for insects to find the stamens and ovaries of the flowers, and sometimes roses have been bred to completely lack sexual organs. For this reason, roses truly are an example of a domesticated crop. Roses are the official flower of June.

In general, there are two different types of Damask roses (named after Damascus): one type that only blooms in the spring, and one type that blooms in the spring and then again in the fall if the rose blooms are "dead-headed" (meaning you pick off the flower head as the petals start to fall off). Dead-heading roses prevents the formation of fruit, which often tricks the plant into flowering again. This isn't always in the best interest of the plant, since this does produce a significant strain on the plant. Dead-heading for a few years then allowing the plant to fruit on its own and produce seeds is the best way to ensure a long life out of your rose bushes. The types of fruit that roses produce (not all, but most ornamental roses do) is called a hypanthium, or a "hyp" for short. This is where we get the term "rosehip," and if you pick the fruit when it's ripe and dry it you can make a wonderful fruity tea. I'm not so sure I would just eat them since they are a bit tart (a "bit tart" is a "bit" of an understatement! They're about the same sourness as a ripe cranberry), but steep with some mint leaves and pour over ice. A great summer iced tea!