{"id":2257,"date":"2015-06-18T12:55:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T16:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=2257"},"modified":"2015-06-18T12:55:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T16:55:00","slug":"as-summer-awaits-a-scientist-ponders-springtime-at-nybg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2015\/06\/as-summer-awaits-a-scientist-ponders-springtime-at-nybg\/","title":{"rendered":"As Summer Awaits, A Scientist Ponders Springtime at NYBG"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gregory M. Plunkett, Ph.D.<\/a><\/em>, is Director and Curator of the Cullman Program for Molecular Systematics at The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"Magnolia-salicifolia-\"<\/a>
Magnolia salicifolia<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What a pleasure it is to stroll through The New York Botanical Garden, especially during springtime.\u00a0The landscape varies from hills to low places, from exposed vistas to the isolation of the ancient Thain Family Forest<\/a>.\u00a0Then there are the textures: deep rich soils, jagged bark, scoured bedrock outcroppings, and wide flat lawns.\u00a0And throughout\u00a0this season, it has been impossible to ignore an explosion of\u00a0color\u2014carpets of yellow daffodils<\/a>, spires of white magnolias<\/a> and pink cherries<\/a>, and the deep purples of grape hyacinths\u2014all set against the backdrop of the vibrant spring-greens of the renewed trees and grasses.\u00a0Simply amazing.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more than one way to look at the Botanical Garden and the beauty of the plant world.\u00a0In part, that\u2019s what the Garden’s scientists do every day.<\/p>\n

To understand this better, consider what it is like to stroll\u00a0through a great art museum, such as the Louvre in Paris.\u00a0Like the Garden, the Louvre is filled with great treasures for the eyes.\u00a0The museum itself provides the great landscape, through which we can appreciate the various textures, ranging from the hard stone of Greco-Roman statues to the soft canvases of\u00a0Renaissance paintings, the pliable wood of native arts, and the smooth, rich gold of the decorative arts.\u00a0And like spring in the Garden, the museum is ablaze with color. In each gallery, we can experience this variety in landscape, texture, and color on a purely aesthetic level\u2014truly one of life\u2019s great pleasures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But another approach is also possible.\u00a0Let\u2019s consider three movements in art history.\u00a0The Renaissance artists sought to marry classical idealism with realism, perfecting the expression of form and perspective and wrapping them in brilliant color.\u00a0By contrast, the Impressionists sacrificed one form of realism for another, in order to recreate our perception of light.\u00a0Monet\u2019s brushwork is more visible and heavier than Raphael\u2019s, but somehow he better captured the essence of dawn or dusk, of dark shadows and brilliant sunlight.\u00a0Then there is the post-impressionistic Pointillism of George Seurat.\u00a0Here, brush strokes disappear entirely, and\u00a0in their place are thousands of tiny dots that converge to provide a delight of color and light and only an illusion of form. Beneath\u00a0the pleasure of viewing a Da Vinci or Monet or Seurat, there is a technique that was applied.\u00a0If we understand that technique, we can gain a greater appreciation of the artwork.\u00a0It detracts nothing from the aesthetic experience but instead\u00a0adds a new avenue to enjoy it.<\/p>\n\"flowering<\/a>\n

And so it is with botany.\u00a0At NYBG, we have a staff of scientists dedicated to probing deeply into the amazing diversity of plant life.\u00a0There are more than\u00a0400,000 species of plants on Earth, and we are trying to unlock the secrets of where and when these plants originated.\u00a0We ask why some plants are found here in New York, while others are limited to tropical rain forests and others still to the arid deserts.\u00a0And what accounts for all the differences in the shapes, sizes, and colors of all these plants?<\/p>\n

At the Garden, we have some of the world\u2019s greatest facilities and resources to answer such questions.\u00a0The William and Lynda Steere Herbarium<\/a>, for example, has 7.4\u00a0million dried plant specimens, and the data stored with each specimen records the date, location, and conditions of the places where each plant was collected.\u00a0That data can then be used in conjunction with the Garden\u2019s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) lab to help map out the distributions of the plants and compare them to environmental conditions, such as temperature, rainfall, elevation, and soil types.\u00a0We can also trace these distributions through time, to learn if changes to global climate are causing shifts in where the plants live or changes in\u00a0when the plants produce flowers or seeds.\u00a0We can use the same information to return to original collection sites, whether\u00a0in Westchester County or the Amazonian rain forests.\u00a0Once relocated, we can sample DNA from those plants and bring it\u00a0back to the Garden\u2019s Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory.\u00a0There, we use the DNA as a source of information for building \u201cfamily trees\u201d of species relationships to understand the plants\u2019 evolutionary histories and to discover which genes underlie the amazing variety of shape and size and color seen in the plant kingdom.<\/p>\n\"Daffodil<\/a>\n

As I walk through the Garden\u2019s grounds each week, not only in spring but in every season, I think about all the ways that Garden\u00a0scientists are increasing the world\u2019s understanding of plant diversity.\u00a0Just like understanding the technique behind an artist\u2019s approach to painting, our scientists\u2019 discoveries do nothing to diminish our enjoyment of the Garden\u2019s beauty but only\u00a0provide new ways to appreciate the astonishing complexities of the plant world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As summer awaits, Gregory M. Plunkett, Ph.D, ponders springtime at NYBG.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":2261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[123,544],"yoast_head":"\nAs Summer Awaits, A Scientist Ponders Springtime at NYBG - Science Talk Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2015\/06\/as-summer-awaits-a-scientist-ponders-springtime-at-nybg\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"As Summer Awaits, A Scientist Ponders Springtime at NYBG - Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As summer awaits, Gregory M. 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