Bryology at The New York Botanical Garden, past and present WILLIAM

R. BUCK

Buck, W. R. (Institute of Systematic Botany, The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458-5126, U.S.A.). Bryology at The New York Botanical Garden, past and present. Brittonia 48: 399-403. 1996.--Bryology has been a field of study at The New York Botanical Garden since its founding. Brief biographical sketches are provided for Elizabeth Gertrude Britton, Robert Statham Williams, and William Campbell Steere. The important bryological collections that have been acquired by NY are enumerated with a brief explanation of the circumstances.

Introduction

Staff

Although bryology is frequently a neglected field o f botanical study, such is not the case at The N e w York Botanical Garden. Since its very inception, the Garden has had an active bryological program and has consequently grown to be the largest bryophyte herbarium in North America, despite a number of other bryophyte herbaria being older. Although the story is perhaps apocryphal, a contemporary of Elizabeth Britton (wife of the first Director of the Garden and a bryologist in her own right) claimed that during an 1888 visit by the Brittons to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, it was Elizabeth Britton who had the idea for a similar garden in N e w York (Strong, 1942). Considering the source of this p r o p o s a l - - a strong-minded w o m a n with an interest in mosse s - - i t comes as no surprise that bryology would be from the outset an integral part of the scientific program at the Garden. The Garden has maintained, with occasional interruption, a bryological program ever since. There are two aspects to the history o f bryology at The N e w York Botanical Garden: the people and the collections. Although not in a cohesive way, both have been topics of numerous articles and notes. Therefore, my goal is to arrange the information, with appropriate bibliographic citation, into a comprehensive picture of the most active bryological center in North America, complete with an understanding of the acquisition o f collections.

The scientific staff of The N e w York Botanical Garden was largely derived from the faculty of the Department of Botany of Columbia College (now C o l u m b i a University). As a consequence, the initial staff of the Garden was heavily weighted toward bryology. When the Garden actually began a scientific program in 1901, Lucien Marcus U n d e r w o o d (1853-1907) and Marshall A v e r y H o w e (1867-1936) joined as part of the Columbia faculty. Early in their careers, both of these scientists specialized in hepatics, but both m o v e d on to other specialties at about the time of the founding of the Garden. Underw o o d ' s hepatic work flourished between 1882 and 1896. Thereafter he worked primarily on pteridophytes. However, his hepatic herbarium, rich in California Hepaticae, came to the Garden. H o w e ' s hepatic activity also dramatically waned about the time of the Garden's founding and he subsequently shifted his research interests to marine algae (Stout, 1937). Again, though, his herbarium became part of the Garden's legacy. Additionally, even John Kunkel Small (1869-1938) dabbled in bryology, issuing moss exsiccatae. Despite the abandonment o f bryology by Und e r w o o d and Howe, the Garden still had an active bryological program with Elizabeth Gertrude (nde Knight) Britton (1858-1934; Fig. 1) and Robert Statham Williams (1859-1945). Elizabeth Knight was a published botanist and an active local m e m b e r of the Torrey Botanical Club prior to her marriage to Nathaniel Lord Britton on 27 August 1885 (Slack, in press). Subse-

Brittonia, 48(3), 1996, pp. 399-403.

9 1996, by The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458-5126

ISSUED: 16 Oct 1996

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FIG. 1. Elizabeth Gertrude Britton, bryologist of The New York Botanical Garden. quently they became a botanical couple and Elizabeth developed into a prominent scientist (Barnhart, 1940). She became Editor of the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club in 1886-1888, probably the first woman editor of a scientific journal in North America (Buck, 1996), and a charter member of the Botanical Society of America (Slack, 1987). For her entire tenure at the Garden, she was unpaid but maintained the title of Honorary Curator of the Mosses (Howe, 1934). Elizabeth Britton is also responsible for the Garden's long-term activity and interest in the West Indies. Elizabeth's paternal grandfather

owned a sugar estate in the vicinity of Matanzas, Cuba, and much of her childhood was spent there, where she developed a love of nature, a fascination with "The Pearl of the Antilles," and an easy facility with the Spanish language. Thus, it was natural that once the Garden became interested in exploration beyond North America, it would turn to the Caribbean. Elizabeth's fluency in Spanish facilitated the numerous expeditions that she and Nathaniel Lord Britton would take to Cuba and Puerto Rico, and she so endeared herself to her contacts in Puerto Rico that, upon her death, the governor of the island himself wired condolences to Dr. Britton, and

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both branches of the Puerto Rican legislature passed resolutions of appreciation and sympathy (Howe, 1934). Contemporary at the Garden with Elizabeth Britton was R. S. Williams. During his early years, Williams travelled to Montana and the Yukon as a miner and, more importantly, a businessman. During these years he accumulated enough wealth to be a scientist of independent means from 1899 until near his death. Although active in various financial ventures, Williams maintained a vigorous interest in plants, and his numerous collections from his p r e - N e w York years are in the Garden's herbarium. In 1899 he arrived at the newly formed New York Botanical Garden and was appointed M u s e u m Aid for 1899-1906; in 1906-1910 he was Assistant Curator, in 1910-1932 Administrative Assistant, and in 1932-1936 Research Assistant in Bryology (Barnhart, 1945). Williams never formally retired but his failing health, complicated by a financial setback in the 1930s, finally caused him to return to his boyhood home of Minneapolis, Minnesota (Steere, 1945). Williams was entirely self-taught, and in his first 10 years at the Garden he travelled to the far ends of the earth, primarily collecting mosses. In 1901 he journeyed to Peru and Bolivia and stayed about two years, collecting numerous bryophytes that he himself worked up and large numbers of vascular plants later identified by H. H. Rusby (Dorr, 1991). In 1903 he was sent by the Garden to the Philippines, where he collected until his return in 1905. Finally, in 1908, he went on a short expedition to Panama. Despite his lack of a formal education, Williams went on to identify and publish on all his exotic collections. W h e n W i l l i a m M i t t e n ' s h e r b a r i u m c a m e to the Garden in 1906, Williams made good use of it and b e c a m e one of the premier A m e r i c a n bryologists with an interest in and ability to identify exotic mosses. There are numerous stories about the purportedly stormy relationship between Williams and Elizabeth Britton (Steere, 1977). Elizabeth Britton first commissioned Williams to collect mosses while he was in Montana, and thus initiated Williams into the field of bryology. Beyond that, Mrs. Britton obviously allowed him to continue at the Garden since he was there for 45 years. Steere's (1977) citation of correspondence between Mrs. Britton and John Macoun

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indicates that she held Williams in high regard, both professionally and personally. After Williams's death in 1945 (and even for the few years before that), bryology at the Garden fell into decline. However, in the post-Depression years the staff in general was small, and it was not until the 1960s that the number of scientists once again increased. William Campbell Steere (1907-1989) came to the Garden in 1958 as Director. His title changed, but he remained head of the institution until his retirement in 1972. During his tenure he made a concerted effort to build up the staff. Steere himself was a world-famous bryologist who had published extensively on both North and South A m e r i c a n bryophytes (Crum, 1977). Although preoccupied primarily with administrative duties, Steere still found time to keep an active field program, have graduate students, and maintain a research program. Even while busy with administration, Steere continued to make regular trips to the North American Arctic, where he had worked for many field seasons. His interest in Antarctica resulted in the Garden being designated an official repository of Antarctic bryophytes. W h e n he retired in 1972 it was if he had been reborn. Free now of administrative work and its trappings, he devoted himself almost exclusively to bryology. As late as 1982 he accompanied me on a field trip to the Dominican Republic, an area of special interest to him in his later years. During his retirement years he tackled with a vengeance the tremendous backlog of unidentified mosses that had accumulated at the Garden in the previous ahnost 50 years. He was active almost to the day of his death, working on a catalog of the mosses of Ecuador. Steere's last student in his role as a Professor at Columbia University was Gary Lane Smith (b. 1939). After Smith completed his dissertation in 1969, he became the first official bryologist at the Garden since the death of R. S. Williams. Smith's work centered almost exclusively on the Polytrichaceae. However, in 1977, due to a financial crisis at the Garden, Smith was released. He is now at the Field M u s e u m of Natural History in Chicago, and he has changed his name to Gary Lane Smith Merrill. With a return to fiscal health, the Garden hired William Russel Buck (b. 1950) in 1979. I have been in the position since that time, specializing

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in pleurocarpous mosses and floristic studies in various areas of the Neotropics. More recently, the hepaticologist Barbara Mary Thiers (b. 1955) joined the staff as an administrator in the Cryptogamic Herbarium in 1982. She specializes in Lejeuneaceae. In addition to Gary Lane Smith, the Garden has produced a number of other graduate students through the years. This first began when E. G. Britton served as mentor to Abel Joel Grout. Subsequent bryological students who have matriculated from the Garden's graduate program include Yukinobu Kuwahara, Henry Obermanns Whittier, Steven Paul Churchill, and In6s Sastre-De Jestis. Collections The bryological collections of The New York Botanical Garden are the largest in North America, numbering over 600,000, and include both recent and valuable historic collections. The basis of the Garden's herbarium is that of Columbia University. When N. L. Britton left Columbia to take over the leadership of the newly founded Garden, he brought along its herbarium. However, before the Garden was even an idea, Elizabeth Britton was responsible for the acquisition of a private herbarium that is one of the most valuable collections now housed at NY: the herbarium of August Jaeger (1842-1877), containing numerous old European exsiccatae as well as type and authentic material of many exotic mosses, including many described by Carl Mtiller and Ernst Hampe. Jaeger's herbarium was first offered for sale in 1878 (Husnot, 1878), with its holdings cited as 302 genera and 3160 species. In 1885 Geheeb announced the sale of the herbarium to the Swiss philanthropist and botanist William Barbey, the son-in-law of Pierre Edmond Boissier. Subsequently Barbey sold the Jaeger herbarium. Elizabeth Britton (1893) wrote that, through "the generosity of several friends, it has recently been purchased and presented to the Herbarium of Columbia College." This was the first major acquisition by Elizabeth Britton. In 1887, through the interest of the Brittons, Coe Finch Austin's (1831-1880) moss herbarium was purchased for Columbia College (Britton, 1910). However, Austin's hepatics had previously been sold to W. H. Pearson and are now deposited in MANCH.

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Shortly after the founding of the Garden's herbarium, Elizabeth Britton arranged for the purchase of the William Mitten (1819-1906) herbarium. Mrs. Britton had met Mitten and arranged for the purchase prior to his death (Holmes, 1907). The Mitten herbarium was considered the richest private moss herbarium in the world, in terms of exotic material, by Mitten's brother-in-law, Alfred Russel Wallace (Anonymous, 1907). Thus it was quite a coup that E. G. Britton was able to obtain it for the Garden. R. S. Williams was sent to England to supervise the packing of the 20 boxes of mosses and 10 boxes of hepatics. Elizabeth Britton had other opportunities to purchase valuable personal herbaria, such as those of Nils Conrad Kindberg and Emile Levier (cf. Steere, 1977), but because of unneeded frugality or other complications, she did not acquire them. In the following years, many of the bryophyte acquisitions at the Garden were the result of the Garden's incorporation of orphaned herbaria. In 1945 the Garden acquired the herbarium of Princeton University. Bryologically this was important because of the collections of Per Karl Hjalmar Dus6n (1855-1926) from southern Argentina and Chile and the collections of J. B. Hatcher, identified by Dus~n, from the Princeton University Expeditions to Patagonia in 18961899. In 1968 the Arctic bryophytes of Stanford University (4580 specimens) were transferred to NY when W. C. Steere, previously Dean of the Graduate School at Stanford, moved to NY to take over the directorship. In 1969, through arrangements with Ronald L. McGregor, the bryophyte herbarium (excepting some few genera such as Riccia) of the University of Kansas was transferred to NY, with 4402 specimens. In 1973 the bryophyte herbarium of Florida State University was transferred to NY. This herbarium, containing 8158 specimens, had been developed primarily through the efforts of Ruth Schornherst Breen (1905-1987), W. C. Steere's first student, for her work on the mosses of Florida. Most recently, the ca. 35,000 bryophytes in the herbarium of DePauw University were transferred to New York. This collection was almost singlehandedly build up by the efforts of Winona Hazel Welch (1896-1990), who worked on the mosses of Indiana as well as neotropical Hookeriales and worldwide Fontinalaceae. The only other bryological herbarium of any

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size acquired by the G a r d e n is that o f W i l h e l m R. U g g l a (1880-1957). At the advice o f H e r m a n Persson, W. C. Steere arranged for the p u r c h a s e o f the 13,000 s p e c i m e n s in 1959 f r o m U g g l a ' s w i d o w , Bertha. The h e r b a r i u m c o m p r i s e d primarily E u r o p e a n s p e c i m e n s that U g g l a had rec e i v e d on e x c h a n g e and only fractionally those that he had collected h i m s e l f in Sweden. T h r o u g h the years, s o m e o f the most significant additions to the h e r b a r i u m were the result o f staff collections. This is true for U n d e r w o o d , H o w e , Britton, Williams, and Steere, and continues to the p r e s e n t for Buck and Thiers.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Susan Fraser, Lars Heden~is, and Barbara Thiers for supplying m e with information. N a n c y Slack graciously sent m e page proofs o f an u p c o m i n g article she is publishing, and provided s u g g e s t i o n s on literature for insights into the G a r d e n ' s history.

Literature Cited Anonymous. 1907. The Mitten collection of mosses and hepatics. J. New York Bot. Gard. 8: 28-32. Barnhart, J. H. 1940. Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton as a scientist. J. New York Bot. Gard. 41: 142-143. 9 1945. Robert S. Williams. J. New York Bot. Gard. 46: 146-147.

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Britton, E. 13. 1893. The/~eger moss herbarium. Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 20: 335-336. ~ . 1910. Coe Finch Austin. 1831-1880. Bryologist 13: 1-4, pl. I. Buck, W. R. 1996. A short history of The Index to American Botanical Literature. Brittonia 48: 120123. Crum, H. 1977. William Campbell Steere: an account of his life and work. Bryologist 80: 662-694. Dorr, L. J. 1991. The vascular plant collections of R. S. Williams from Bolivia and Peru (1901-1902). Brittonia 43:211-239. Geheeb, A. 1885. Sammlungen. Flora 68: 15-16. Holmes, E. M. 1907. [Obituary of William Mitten]. Proc. Linn. Soc. 119: 49-54. Howe, M. A. 1934. Elizabeth Gertrude Britton. J. New York Bot. Gard. 35: 97-103. Husnot, T. 1878. A vendre: l'herbier des mousses de M. le Dr. J~eger, auteur de l'Adumbratio Muscorum. Rev. Bryol. 5: 15-16. Slack, N. G. 1987. Nineteenth-century American women botanists: wives, widows, and work. Pages 77-103. In: P G. Abir-Am & D. Outram, editors. Uneasy careers and intimate lives: women in science 1789-1979. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey. - - . In press. Botanical and ecological couples: a continuum of relationships. Pages 235-253. In." H. M. Pycior, N. G. Slack & R G. Abir-Am, editors. Creative couples in the sciences. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Steere, W. C. 1945. Robert Statham Williams (18591945). Bryologist 48: 93-99. ~ . 1977. North American muscology and muscologists: a brief history. Bot. Rev. 43: 285-343. Stout, A. B. 1937. Marshall Avery Howe. J. New York Bot. Gard. 38: 25-31. Strong, M. P. 1942. Appreciation. Typescript, New York Botanical Garden Library, Bronx.