Plant Science Bulletin

The Plant Science Bulletin (Print: ISSN 0032-0919, Electronic: ISSN 1537-9752) is an informal communication published four times a year, with information on upcoming meetings, courses, field trips, news of colleagues, new books, and professional opportunities. It provides a means of advertising items or materials wanted. It also serves as a forum for circulating BSA committee reports, for distributing innovative teaching approaches and methods, and for discussing issues of concern to Society members such as environmental policy and educational funding.

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SPRING 2010

Table of Contents

Books Reviewed
Books Received for Review
Peer Review in Plant Science Bulletin

Books Reviewed

A Guide to Florida Grasses. Walter Kingsley Taylor.  2009.  ISBN: 978-0-8130-3319-8.  361 pages.  University Press of Florida. Gainesville, Florida.

Taylor’s book is a handy-sized field guide complete with a cm ruler inside the front cover and an inch ruler inside the back cover (though the book is metric throughout). His preface lays out the goal of the book which is to rectify the  unfortunate fact that most wildflower guide books do not include grasses, even though in every sense they are indeed wildflowers.  His stated goal is to get the user to know 200 of the 450 or so grasses of Florida from the way they appear in the field and when further examined, with only the aid of a hand lens.  Because many grasses have such characteristic growth habits, his hope is that identification can be accomplished by anyone interested in plants without having to resort to difficult keys or detailed measurements of minute characteristics of such unfamiliar characteristics as glumes, paleas and lemmas.  

After a generally enthusiastic introduction to grass classification and their uses, there is a chapter which describes the various parts of a grass in which the part names are usefully in bold type.  Photographs and drawings supplement the descriptions of terms such as internode, ligule, sheath and collar and even the parts of the spikelet, including the glumes, lemmas, paleas.  All of these structural terms also have a brief definition in the glossary, although terms describing growth habit such as reedlike or solitary (e.g. Smooth Cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) do not appear in the glossary.

The guide then plunges right into the Andropogonaea, the first (alphabetically) of the 16 tribes of grasses in Florida.  Each tribe is introduced with a brief description of the important characteristics of the tribe and with a list of the genera and number of species in Florida.  Descriptions of a number of species in the tribe then follow alphabetically by genus, with the common name displayed first, even though in his introduction, he does note that many of the common names are not useful, and scientific names should be learned if possible.  For each species there is at least one (usually excellent) color photograph of the plant and/or parts of the plant, and for some there are also very good drawings.  He lists for each genus a generic description, and for each species: native/non-native, annual/perennial, growth habit, distribution in Florida, habitat and the characteristics of the culm, leaf/sheath/ligule, inflorescence/flower,  reproductive phenology, varieties (if any) and recent synonyms.  For each species there are usually some additional comments about the distribution, taxonomy or other aspects of the grass that might be useful or interesting.

This is definitely a knowledgeable and well-illustrated field guide.  One could, as one often does with a wildflower guide, thumb through and look for pictures of a grass in hand.  However, it does present a few problems for identifying plants. Because the total lack of “keys” or at least a summary of “key characteristics”, even at the tribe level, it’s hard to see how to get started with an unknown grass. Perhaps a symbol with a drawing of the key feature of each tribe could have been listed at the beginning, with the symbol up in the corner of the page as is done in some field guides.  For each species a few words here and there in the description are italized in order to emphasize key characteristics.  For example, for Shortspike Bluestem (Andropogon brachystachyus) the culm has….many branches…usually arching and for the racemes, …about 2 cm long, usually exserted at maturity… and for Hairawn Muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris) the panicles are ….usually purple… (which in late fall is all you really need to know!).  I didn’t notice this italicizing feature for quite awhile, but these particular words do seem to be key to separating the one species from another in a genus.  Perhaps a listing of the categories to be covered for each species with examples of each topic and an explanation of the meaning of the italics would have been helpful before beginning to describe the tribes and species.  Finally, the photos (except for varieties) and drawings appear embedded in the text without identification.  The text runs throughout the book without page breaks for species, genera, or tribes and the photos can appear before and/or after the species description and therefore do not necessarily appear on the same page with the species name as for Pitted Beardgrass (Bothriochloa petrusa). The lack of a species name at the bottom of a image or set of images does make it difficult to find the associated species description, or to quickly look through at the photos. 

Because this guide highlights easily seen characteristics and growth forms, it would be very useful as a teaching tool especially starting with “known” grasses to understand the terminology for a variety of growth forms and inflorescence structures.   Although titled as a guide to grasses of Florida, because of the wide distribution of many grasses, the concise species descriptions and the many, often beautiful color photos in this guide could be useful in many areas of the country.  And it would be a very useful companion volume for those who have worked with an unillustrated grass key such as that found in Richard P. Wunderlin and Bruce F. Hansen’s “Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida” (2003).  This well-illustrated book should greatly help in demystifying grass identification, especially as more and more grasses enter the horticultural trade and become generally more familiar and interesting to the public.
 
Joanne M. Sharpe, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Picturing Plants: An Analytical History of Botanical Illustration.  Gill Saunders.  2009.  KWS Publishers, Chicago and London.  153 pp.  ISBN 978-0-9817736-4-3 (Cloth US$50.00). 

Gill Saunders has produced a very pleasing and informative volume that examines the evolution of botanical illustration from c. 1500 to the present day.  What distinguishes this compact history of art from others is the author’s clear understanding of botany.  Scientific illustration must be both beautiful and true to its subject, and Saunders conveys a knowledgeable appreciation for both aestheticism and accuracy. 

The book draws on the collections of botanical art from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  However, Saunders transcends what could have been a narrow focus on a single art collection to produce a comprehensive general treatment.  The museum has been acquiring exemplary illustrations since its founding in 1856, so its holdings encompass a broad representation of the many different modes and media used in botanical illustration.  This range of collections allows Saunders to chart the development of artistic techniques as well as trends in printing, coloration, book-binding, and other aspects of publication.

Indeed, the publication quality, binding, and layout of this book are stellar, and make the volume both easy to read and a pleasure for the eye.  The works themselves are showcased individually on full pages, with an engaging caption appearing to the side that complements the text without being redundant.  The color reproduction is vibrant, even for older pieces.  The print resolution and production size are appropriate for capturing fine details and sensitively etched lines, while the book overall is manageably sized at 9 x 9 inches (and hence more reasonably priced than most “coffee-table books” in the art history genre).  Footnotes appear alongside text and are easy to follow.  A bibliography and logical, detailed index are provided at the end of the book.

Following a concise introductory overview, each chapter covers a different setting in which botanical illustrations have been used: herbals; florilegia and pattern books (primarily 17th-century texts for wealthy patrons in which pictures took primacy over text in celebrating plants); books documenting newly-discovered species; botanical treatises (in which illustrations helped inform taxonomy); horticultural illustration of new cultivars (usually shown in catalogues); floras and field guides (for use by amateur and professional botanists); and the “real thing” (photographs, nature prints, and herbarium sheets).  Because each of these vehicles attained popularity during different historical periods – with floras ascendant in the early Renaissance and field guides and photos being more prevalent in the past few decades – the treatment is roughly chronological, spanning four centuries.  Examples from the 1700s and 1800s receive the most attention, probably reflecting the intensity of museum acquisition during this period.  As a result, I found myself longing for more examples of modern illustration; only the last chapter delves much into works more recent than 1940.  

The book does not provide exhaustive global coverage, but does range widely in discussing illustrations produced in the European colonies of the 1500s-1700s, including India, South Africa, the United States, and South America.  We learn that occasionally, indentured native illustrators were trained to execute drawings in the western style in order to document new finds or stimulate the interest of collectors in the mother country to develop import markets.  Saunders traces how colonialism fostered the homogenization of styles among far-flung locales: new modes introduced to China were gradually adopted by Japanese illustrators, even during Japan’s period of self-imposed isolation from the West.  

Through exploration, scientists have come to understand the botanical diversity and richness of the world; and art has necessarily evolved to keep pace with the tempo of new discovery.  Saunders has a keen grasp of the qualities that make a botanical illustration both lovely and useful.  She is critical of fanciful drawings that reflect bias or ignorance of anatomy, recognizing that “...what we see depends crucially on what we know” (page 12).  She critiques horticultural drawings that spuriously depict late-bloomers alongside spring ephemerals in the same bouquet, no matter how pleasing this phenologically inaccurate picture might be.  She discusses the challenges of composing a drawing when a plant far outsizes the paper, and the need for illustrations to function as detailed, diagnostic snapshots of structures and colors that, unlike herbarium specimens, never decay.  Even today, 250-year-old illustrations provide sufficient reliable information to typify specimens and reconstruct past floras (Reveal 2009).

Because the book highlights the interplay between art and science so creatively, I would recommend Picturing Plants as a companion text for any introductory course in botany, as much as I would deem it appropriate for beginning scientific illustrators.  The exercise of drawing plants is invaluable for helping students actually see and comprehend plant structures (not to mention appreciating their sheer beauty); art and science go hand-in-hand in learning.  As both a botanist and illustrator, I learned much, and think that this interesting and economical volume will inspire the artist and scientist inside each of us.

Elizabeth J. Farnsworth, New England Wild Flower Society, Framingham, MA, USA.

References
Reveal, J. L.  2009.  Identification of the plant and associated animal images in Catesby’s Natural History, with nomenclatural notes and comments.  Rhodora 111: 273-388.

Books Received for Review

If you would like to review a book or books for PSB, the easiest way to do so is to: highlight and copy the book details, click on the Reviewer Requested link to the right of the book's details and paste the information into the email form that pops up. Remember to include your name, University/Department, all of your mailing details and the date by which the book will be reviewed (15 January, 15 April, 15 July or 15 October). Alternatively, email, write or call the Editor, including the details noted above, as soon as you notice the book of interest in this list because they go quickly! - Editor (psb@botany.org, Ph 620-341-5605)

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Plant Science Bulletin

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