{"id":2752,"date":"2016-07-01T16:05:03","date_gmt":"2016-07-01T20:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=2752"},"modified":"2016-07-01T16:58:42","modified_gmt":"2016-07-01T20:58:42","slug":"collected-on-the-fourth-of-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2016\/07\/collected-on-the-fourth-of-july\/","title":{"rendered":"Collected on the Fourth of July"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stevenson Swanson<\/a> is the Science Media Manager at The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"Dichanthelium<\/a>
Dichanthelium latifolium<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Watching some fireworks, going to the local parade, grilling burgers and hot dogs, maybe even finding time for a nap. Sounds like a classic Fourth of July. Collecting plant specimens is notably missing from this list. And yet, for botanists, our nation\u2019s birthday is not necessarily a day off.<\/p>\n

A search of the C. V. Starr Virtual Herbarium<\/a>, where The New York Botanical Garden\u2019s digitized herbarium specimens are made available online to researchers and the public, reveals that it includes no fewer than 6,808 specimens that were collected on a Fourth of July. They come from around the world, but more than 1,000 were snipped or dug up in the United States on Independence Day. They eventually found their way to the Botanical Garden\u2019s William and Lynda Steere Herbarium<\/a>, where they are now part of the 7.8 million specimens that are preserved there and are now being digitized for the Starr Virtual Herbarium.
\n
\nGathered here are a few Fourth of July specimens collected by scientists of the past and present, including, most notably, the Garden\u2019s founding Director-in-Chief, Nathaniel Lord Britton. Since the Garden is celebrating its 125th Anniversary this year, it\u2019s only natural to wonder whether he was out in the field collecting on the Fourth in 1891, the year the Garden was founded.<\/p>\n

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No such luck: Perhaps he was enjoying a well-deserved break from laying the groundwork for what the Garden\u2019s charter calls \u201ca public botanic garden of the highest class.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is one tantalizing specimen from that date, however. It\u2019s a broadleaf grass collected by Eugene P. Bicknell \u201cbetween the Hudson and Bronx Rivers,\u201d according to its label. There\u2019s no further indication of the location, except the single word \u201cWoods.\u201d Maybe, just maybe, the industrious Mr. Bicknell plucked this grassy specimen\u2014with permission, of course\u2014while enjoying an Independence Day stroll through the old-growth forest<\/a> at the newly established Botanical Garden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching some fireworks, going to the local parade, grilling burgers and hot dogs, maybe even finding time for a nap. Sounds like a classic Fourth of July. Collecting plant specimens is notably missing from this list. 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