{"id":561,"date":"2013-12-30T15:45:27","date_gmt":"2013-12-30T20:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=561"},"modified":"2019-06-03T15:41:42","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T19:41:42","slug":"flashes-in-the-twilight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2013\/12\/flashes-in-the-twilight\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashes in the Twilight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lisa Vargues is a Curatorial Assistant at The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>\u2019s William and Lynda Steere Herbarium<\/a>. Her work includes digitizing plant specimens for the C. V. Starr Virtual Herbarium<\/a>, with a focus on the West Indies, the Amazon Basin, and historical specimens from the United States, Canada, and Mexico.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"Lisa<\/a>
Lisa Stina (Photo by Tommy Westberg)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One evening as twilight settled over the garden of Hammarby, an idyllic farm near Uppsala in Sweden, a botanically inclined young lady noticed flashes of light emanating from her family\u2019s nasturtium flowers (Tropaeolum majus, <\/em>commonly known as Indian cress, or indiankrasse<\/em> in Swedish). Intrigued by this phenomenon, she wrote a paper about it, which was published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1762, when she was 19. Her name was Elisabeth Christina von Linn\u00e9, and she was a daughter of the preeminent scientist Carl Linnaeus (also known as Carl von Linn\u00e9), who devised the system for naming species that scientists use to this day.<\/p>\n

As a woman, Lisa Stina (as she was known) was not permitted to have formal schooling, but she developed a great interest in botany, which her father supported. The mystery of the \u201cflashing flowers\u201d came to be known as the \u201cElizabeth Linnaeus Phenomenon,\u201d which some believed to be caused by phosphorescence or electricity. Professor F. A. W. Thomas of Germany, however, explained in a 1914 paper that the phenomenon is optical, a result of the way our eyes perceive the flowers\u2019 colors in the twilight.
\n<\/p>\n

\"Nasturtium\/Tropaeolum<\/a>
Nasturtium\/Tropaeolum (P. J. Redout\u00e9, 1833)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nasturtiums were not all that shone in Lisa Stina\u2019s eyes. Daniel Solander, the renowned Swedish naturalist and explorer who became Carl Linnaeus\u2019s star pupil, fell in love with Lisa Stina. But Solander pursued his career in England and, in 1768, sailed off on the HMS Endeavour<\/em> with Captain James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks on their famed exploratory voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Alas, Solander never returned to his \u201csweetest mamselle Lisa Stina\u201d in Sweden.<\/p>\n

The year that is now reaching twilight marks the 270th anniversary of Lisa Stina von Linn\u00e9\u2019s birth and the 280th of Daniel Solander\u2019s. Pictured below is a preserved 1769 specimen of Chiliotrichum amelloides<\/em> collected in Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on Captain Cook\u2019s first voyage. It is now one of 7.3 million specimens stored in The New York Botanical Garden’s William and Lynda Steere Herbarium. The handwriting on the small note has been identified as Daniel Solander’s.<\/p>\n

\"Chiliotrichum<\/a>
Chiliotrichum amelloides<\/em>, as collected by Daniel Solander<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

Lisa Stina image courtesy of bioresurs.uu.se<\/a><\/em><\/span>
\nNasturtium image courtesy of plantillustrations.org<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carl wasn’t the only von Linn\u00e9 furthering our botanical knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Flashes in the Twilight http:\/\/wp.me\/p43v41-93","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[150,180,177,176,175,31,178,179],"yoast_head":"\nFlashes in the Twilight - 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\/2013\/12\/flashes-in-the-twilight\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Flashes in the Twilight - Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Carl wasn't the only von Linn\u00e9 furthering our botanical knowledge.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2013\/12\/flashes-in-the-twilight\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-12-30T20:45:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-06-03T19:41:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Lisa-Stina.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"215\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"368\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lisa Vargues\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/\",\"name\":\"Science Talk Archive\",\"description\":\"Exploring the science of plants, from the field to the lab\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2013\/12\/flashes-in-the-twilight\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Lisa-Stina.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Lisa-Stina.png\",\"width\":215,\"height\":368,\"caption\":\"Lisa Stina (Photo by Tommy Westberg)\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2013\/12\/flashes-in-the-twilight\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2013\/12\/flashes-in-the-twilight\/\",\"name\":\"Flashes in the Twilight - 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