Memories of The N e w York Botanical Garden, 1960-1980 HOWARD

S. IRWIN

Irwin, H. S. (97 North Pamet Road, Box 846, Truro, MA 02666-0846, U.S.A.). Memories of The New York Botanical Garden: 1960-1980. Brittonia 48: 365-371. 1996.--Memories of employment at The New York Botanical Garden between 1960 and 1980 are given.

I first set foot on the grounds of The N e w York Botanical Garden in the late 1930s. It was a Long Island grade school class trip to the Bronx Zoo that included a swing through the G a r d e n grounds, then redolent with spring bloom, and a stop at the Conservatory. Inside the stainless steel Bauhaus entrance I beheld the great palm house, as silent as a great cathedral, as humid as a Y M C A indoor pool, its streaming Cissus lianas, soaring Alpinia leaves, and smooth, towering palm trunks imprinting an image that proved indelible. A year or two later I went back on my own to savor again that experience and then went on to explore the grounds and study the exhibits in the M u s e u m Building. Little did I realize that N Y B G was to b e c o m e the focus of m y professional life. My e m p l o y m e n t at the Garden began in June 1960, when I started work as a research associate in the herbarium. I was formally hired by William C. Steere, Director (later President), after having been interviewed at the Garden some months earlier by Bassett Maguire, Head Curator and Coordinator of Tropical Research, and various staff members including Arthur Cronquist, David Rogers, Clark Rogerson, Caroline Allen, Stephen Tillett, and Harold Rickett. Later I met G e n e v i e v e Grigalonis, Eugene Jablonski, J o s e p h M o n a c h i n o , E d w a r d Alexander, and Frank MacKeever, also on the herbarium staff. Bassett's enthusiasm for the herbarium as a prime instrument for taxonomic research was as memorable as his fierce loyalty to the Garden. He extolled the taxonomic work of the Garden's founder, Nathaniel Lord Britton, in the West Indies as the logical forerunner of his own work in the Guayana Highlands, and explained how the then planned expeditions in Guyana (then British Guiana), Suriname, Guyane (French Gui-

ana), and Territ6rio do Amap~i in adjacent northeastern Brazil would be a natural extension of this geographic progression. The eastern limits of the Guayana Shield were not entirely clear then, at least floristically speaking, and he hoped that a survey of the scattered sandstone caps on the known higher peaks and, it was hoped, still unknown ones, would lend clues and that any new taxa would help establish the temporal span and morphological extent of disjunction. Impatient with interruptions to his work, Bassett reflected his anger and disappointment o v e r the recent departures of Richard Cowan and John Wurdack for the Smithsonian. " T h e i r defection," as he called it, was in response to the Smithsonian's " s t a f f raiding," hotly denied in Washington but never to Bassett's satisfaction. He looked upon young N Y B G staff members as institutional investments who profited by affiliation and in time were expected to yield returns. I felt uneasy with the analogy but was too caught up in the exciting novelty of being on the Garden staff to dwell on it. I had just c o m p l e t e d my doctoral program at the University of Texas under Billie Turner, with the systematics of Cassia (now Chamaecrista) section Xerocalyx the topic of my dissertation. At that time, c h r o m o s o m e numbers were the rage in plant systematics, thanks in part to Bill Turner's enthusiastic promotion of that line of evidence, especially in the legumes. In addition to working out the taxa in section Xerocalyx, I also got first c h r o m o s o m e counts for numerous species in other sections of the genus. However, I resisted elevating the three Benthamian subgenera of Cassia to generic level; s o m e h o w I felt beholden to Bentham, who had done the last comprehensive generic revision in the 1870s and resolutely declared in a paper read to the Lin-

Brittonia, 48(3), 1996, pp. 365-371. 9 1996, by The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458-5126

ISSUED: 16 Oct 1996

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nean Society that any tolerably competent botican Flora. At least half of the hundreds of heranist could recognize a cassia and not confuse it barium cases on the second and third floors of with anything else. It seemed good company to the Museum Building were beautifully made keep at the time. varnished oak cabinets with glass-panelled doors Before beginning graduate work, I had spent and brass hinges and latches, all dating from four years in Guyana as a Fulbright instructor in Britton's time. Many of the thousands upon biology at Queen's College, a government sec- thousands of genus and species folders were tatondary school for boys in Georgetown. It was tered and dog-eared but bore notes in Britton's while there, in the early 1950s, that I developed unmistakable script, as well as those of N. L. a career interest in tropical botany. On the side, Brown, N. Y. Sandwith, H. A. Gleason (who I was a stringer for Time magazine and submitspent part of a summer re-arranging his beloved ted articles on tropical agriculture and forestry, melastomes), and hundreds of others. However and helped photo-essayist Alfred Eisenstaedt venerable all those cabinets were, and however with the rain forest volume in the "'World We daunting any major changes in the herbarium Live In" series. I made several excursions into would be, Bassett saw that the time had come the interior to such seemingly otherworldly placfor the Garden to be a better steward of this es as Orealla, the Rupununi savannas, Orinduik botanical treasure; thanks to a substantial facilFalls, the majestic Kaieteur Fall, and the largest ities grant from the National Science Foundaand loftiest of the great flat-tops, the legendary tion, he boldly set in motion the simultaneous Mount Roraima. At Kaieteur I learned that Bas- replacement of all the wooden cabinets with new sett and Celia Maguire had departed just a few steel double-door sealed cases and the long days before. I also made a reconnaissance trip overdue expansion of the entire herbarium colto Belo Horizonte and Viqosa, in Minas Gerais, lection to relieve cr o w d i n g - - a dusty, dirty proBrazil, there laying the groundwork for the cess that involved all hands. He then turned to year's residence I spent working on my disserme to help organize the replacement of folders tation (and learning the Portuguese language as and to be sure that all historical notations were spoken in Brazil). clipped and preserved. Of course, this was to be At the Garden, I immediately began leading a long-term undertaking, and, even after the inithe three lives, professionally speaking, that tial replacement was completed some years later, were de rigueur among the herbarium profesit continued indefinitely at a somewhat slower sionals. One was at the Garden itself, where I pace and involved many staff members. continued work on Cassia, pursuing a study of At that time, the herbarium offices were clusfloral pigments and other secondary substances tered at the west end of the second floor of the by means of paper chromatography, in collabo- Museum Building, and in the open hall space ration with Ralph Alston at Texas and later with we all gathered around a large library table for David Giannasi of NYBG and ultimately the brown-bag lunch each day. Visiting botanists University of Georgia. I also made a seminal from afar often joined us, along with associates excursion into the then embryonic field of nusuch as Rupert Barneby, Boris A. Krukoff, and merical taxonomy in collaboration with David Harold Moldenke. In an informal way, Bassett Rogers, nominally NYBG's economic botanist often presided, asking questions and offering but, in fact, an early computernik. We did a comments that stimulated repartee, with most of study of Cassia (now Chamaecrista) section us puffing on an after-lunch cigarette. It was ofApoucouita, a well-defined group whose species ten sweltering in the offices and out in the herwere confused, but had to wait days or weeks at barium as well, with the oppressive summer hua time to get access to the only available commidity unrelieved by anything but box fans until, puter, a room-filling mainframe installation at somewhat later, window air conditioners were Fordham. In time, I planned a comprehensive installed. The uncontrollable oven-like steam monograph of the entire genus, at least as repheating in winter could be moderated only by resented in the Americas. cracking open windows. Short-sleeved shirts My second life, also sited at the Garden, was seemed in order the year round. During the winin the herbarium. I completely reorganized the ter of 1960-1961, to facilitate changes in eleclegumes, which were still filed under Britton's trical service, plumbing, and heating, everyone generic names as they occur in the North Amerhad to vacate the Museum Building. The entire

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FIG. 1. Howard S. Irwin, Ghillean T. Prance, Noel H. Holmgren, and Thomas R. Soderstrom (left to right) at the plant driers in camp at Kaisergebergte, Suriname, in August 1963. herbarium staff, including the shipping department, was squeezed into the Snuff Mill, accompanied by a multitude of books and boxes upon boxes of specimens. I couldn't wait for the next expedition! This leads into the third facet of professional life on the herbarium staff: getting ready for, travelling to, and working in the field--in my case back in northern South America--for several months each year (Fig. 1). Most immediately, once my family was settled, I flew to Belrm and then to Amapfi to join Bassett and Dutch graduate student Lubbert Westra on an expedition to the headwaters of the Rio Oiapoque (boundary between Brazil and Guyane or French Guiana). The expedition was cohosted by the Instituto Agronrmico do Norte, with its taxonomist, J. Murqa Pires, one co-leader, and by the Museu Goeldi, with its director, Walter Egler, also a coleader. In all the on-site arrangements-construction of four large dugout boats with transoms for outboard motors, hiring of 12 boatmen-field assistants (mostly locally quartered soldiers on special leave), purchasing of provi-

sions--Bassett was firmly in charge. My assignment was the preparation and delivery to New York of multiplicate sets of well-prepared, fully noted specimens representative of as much of the flora as we principals deemed significant. Our geographic target was the east-west Tumuchumac range, an arcing ridge of wooded hills mostly under 1000 feet, separating the lower Amazon basin and the eastern Guiana area and linked to the much larger Wilhelmina Gebergte to the west in Suriname. By established plan, Bassett, accompanied by his wife, Celia, soon left the Oiapoque party to head up another expedition. But for logistical complications caused by unseasonably heavy rains, our work was absorbing and challenging, and it brought to light many species I knew from my British Guiana years and others entirely new to me. Occasional sandstone outcroppings appeared on some of the higher hills, but nothing even remotely approaching the great tepuis of Guayana and certainly none of the floristic endemism found on their summits. True to my charge, I prepared and noted several thousand numbers, mostly in sets

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of ten, with one of each left with Pires for the hold the heavily laden craft, its engine inexpliinstitute herbarium, another with Egler for the cably dead, shouted in chorus "Salte, chefe, salmuseum's. We three worked well together: Pires, te!" (Jump, sir, jump!), then cried out in anguish having apprenticed with Adolfo Ducke, was as it slipped over the brink with him still seated. very knowledgeable of the flora and had a good To find his battered, piranha-chewed body eye for the unusual as well as an ecologist's sen- downstream a few days later, prepare a makesitivity for the changing floristic composition as shift grave, bury it, and mark the site for retrievwe moved from site to site; Egler's Germanic al was a devastating experience that all but background found expression in camp organieclipsed the fact that we had lost most of our zation, regulating the use of supplies and the specimens and much key equipment. Back in preparation of specimens, some of which were Belrm, Brazilian police were unconvinced that his nocturnal moths; I did most of the plant Egler's death was accidental and put me in jail, specimen preparation, made up and emptied the where, though adequately fed and quartered, I presses, and wrote all the notes. Camp language was queried daily for nearly three weeks until was Portuguese (except when the principals Egler's deputy, Eduardo Galv~o, responding to wanted to talk confidentially), thereby easing a telegram sent by Bassett back in New York, communication with the field hands and gener- managed to have me freed (by what means I ating a unitary spirit among us. After returning never learned) and driven to the airport, late one to New York by ore ship, I picked up the crates night, to board a waiting Pan A m plane for New of specimens at the dock in Brooklyn the day York; the message; "Irwin residence burned; all that I realized my senses were being dulled by safe." My house in Westchester, recently bought high fever. Malaria was taking hold; the chlo- from the family of Stephen Tillett, was gutted, roquine antimalarial we had been taking apparleaving my wife and children unharmed but all ently had no prophylactic effect on me. I spent of us temporarily homeless. frustrating weeks recuperating and months reAfter a year spent resurrecting our house, covering my strength. working in the herbarium, and pursuing some As one of the herbarium staff's few profesinitial studies in the numerical taxonomy of Cassionals with a family, I was concerned about the sia (now Chamaecrista) section Apoucouita in lack of medical coverage for my then wife and collaboration with David Rogers and his group, our two young daughters, and told Bill Steere I was enlisted by Bassett to head up an expedithat I might have to look elsewhere if coverage tion to the Wilhelmina Gebergte in Suriname. could not be provided. Word got to the SmithOnce again, I joined Bassett in the field, shortly sonian somehow, and Dick Cowan, by then di- after which he departed to conduct another exrector of the Museum of Natural History, offered pedition. The Wilhelmina field party (Fig. 1) inme a job in their herbarium. Fortunately, the cluded Smithsonian agrostologist Thomas SoderGarden's T I A A benefits and retirement prostrom, N Y B G graduate student Noel Holmgren, grams were soon instituted. and one or two Dutch botanists, all aided by The following year, in 1961, NYBG mounted Suriname Forest Department field personnel and two simultaneous but somewhat smaller expe- by several Djuka tribesmen (descendants of ditions to Amapfi: one to the Rio Araguarf, heademancipated slaves) who hunted, cooked, and ed by Pires with NYBG graduate student Gary navigated the boats. We were later joined by Irviue, and the other with Egler and me to the Ghillean Prance, who had just joined the NYBG Rio Jarf. Both were organized by Bassett, but herbarium staff, having completed his graduate early on he departed for another project else- work at Oxford on Chrysobalanaceae. Together where in Brazil. While the Araguarf project was we made a large collection over the three-month fairly successful, the Jarf expedition was cut field period from varied riverine, savanna, and short by disaster when Egler was killed after his montane habitats, including the sandstone cap of boat lost power and went over a 50-foot water- Juliana Top. fall. I was horrified by the sight (and continue The next year, in 1964, to facilitate my conto be haunted by the memory) of this energetic, tinuing study of Cassiinae, I changed geographic resourceful man sitting there with seeming unfocus and, with Bassett's encouragement and iniconcern as his field men, in the shallow, rushing tial involvement, I represented N Y B G in a new water, their feet braced against rocks, unable to collaborative exploration program with the re-

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cently established Universidade de Brasflia, situated in the middle of the Planalto do Brasil, or Central Brazilian Highlands, and where Mur~a Pires had become head of the botany department. As I had learned during earlier visits, the region is a treasure trove of legumes, especially Chamaecrista (including almost the entirety of the very large, diverse section Absus) and Mimosa, a fact that strongly attracted me. With the support of several NSF grants and much help from the university, including free campus housing for my family and me during a year of residence (1965-1966), and notwithstanding political instability (which temporarily shut down the university), frequent staff changes (including Pires's departure), and severe economic inflation, I mounted a long series of expeditions that continued through 1971, and thereafter a few more years under NYBG's William Anderson who was joined by Rupert Barneby and NYBG graduate student Joseph Kirkbride. Geologically distinctive areas in the Federal District and four surrounding states were studied for their plants, and some were revisited at different times of year. Participants included David Hunt and Raymond Harley of Kew (the latter eventually launching his own field program in Bahia), AIistair McKenzie of the Royal Geographic Society, Thomas Soderstrom and Dieter Wasshausen of the Smithsonian, Richard Maxwell of Southern Illinois University, Gary Smith of NYBG, Graziela Barroso of the Museu Nacional in Rio, Murqa Pires and Ezechias Heringer of the Universidade de Brasflia, and Romeu Beldm, a Brazilian student who went on to collect extensively in Brazil's Atlantic rain forest region. Throughout this period, fieldwork, vehicular service, and camp work were aided by a continuing cadre of four Brazilian assistants, two of them carried over from the Amapfi program. In all, some 35,000 numbers were recorded in the Planalto program, by far the largest and most comprehensive accumulation from the region, one specimen of each contributed to and forming the basis of the university's herbarium. The Planalto collections have been supportive of numerous subsequent monographic and other studies the world over, and were clearly the principal basis for Irwin and Barneby's American Cassiinae and, several years late~; Barneby's Sensitivae Censitae Mimosa.

It was during the latter part of this period of intense activity in the Planalto, in 1971, that

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Garden president Bill Steere alerted senior staff to the possibility of the Garden competing for self-supporting expansion space outside New York City as a locus for hardy living collection development and a diversified horticulture department. Of particular interest was a large tract held by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust in the rural Dutchess County town of Millbrook, about 75 miles north of the Garden. Although several universities and national conservation organizations had demonstrated interest with formal proposals, Bill asked me to help him prepare NYBG's proposal to the Trust for the establishment of a new arboretum on the 2000acre parcel. After more than a year, punctuated by numerous meetings with the Cary Trustees in Millbrook, at the Garden, and in Manhattan, both before and after the Garden's proposal was submitted, the Trustees voted their approval, gave the Garden exclusive access to the property (later conveying ownership), underwrote construction of an innovatively designed, energy efficient, solar-heated and -cooled headquarters building with laboratories and library, and a paved internal road system, propagating greenhouses and nursery, and other necessary facilities. Before long, the nascent arboretum and its botanical and wildlife research activities were supplemented by a program of ecological research and contracted environmental assessment headed by Robert Goodland, the latter mostly in Latin America and imparting international scope to the rapidly developing scholarly work. During the intense and time-consuming process of setting up, staffing and equipping the arboretum, I was in Millbrook more than at the Garden in the Bronx. My research came to a standstill. I became troubled about having little or no time to devote to plants and instead finding my calendar filled up with meetings with contractors, town officials, the Cary Trustees, and Garden committees and the board of managers. I felt it would have been disloyal not to respond at this critical time in the Garden's history, but yearned for the day when I could return to the herbarium and especially to my research projects. Inexorably, things moved the other way; as operating the Garden became increasingly complex, especially with the new arboretum underway and as yet without a resident director, Bill Steere called on me to share the load. In spite of myself, I was caught up in the Garden's administration, representing the institution not only

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on site but in Manhattan, Albany, and Washington as well as at national and international gatherings. I sensed the intellectual challenge that gave spirit to Bill Steere's service but also saw that Bill was tiring after 12 or 13 years at it. In 1972 I was appointed executive director, the next year vice-president; shortly thereafter, on Bill's formal retirement, the board o f managers elected me president. It was a great honor, of course, but I felt rather swept into a c o m m i t ment I was unsure I could embrace. However, with expectations high on all sides, there was nothing to do but venture forth. Ironically, Bill returned to the research bench. I tried to reserve an afternoon a week, but it seldom worked out. Once the initial euphoria wore off. the full dimensions o f the presidency became apparent. It was a big j o b and offered little respite. The Garden's chronically fragile budgetary situation required constant attention, especially in light of N e w York City's mid-1970s financial collapse and rapidly diminishing support for its cultural institutions, exacerbated by the fact that private support was also wavering. I was tormented by the board's all but palpable expectation that somehow I would pull a rabbit out of the hat. I believed that m y responsibility lay primarily in running the place and seeing to it that a fair share of competitively awarded city, state, and federal funds was obtained. O f course, I also worked closely with the various committees of the board of managers as private supporters were sought, but success seemed meager. The process wasn't working well. The arboretum continued to prosper, with Thomas Elias as its first resident director, followed a few years later by Willard Payne. The Garden's multifaceted and highly respected publications program, in large part a legacy of Bill Steere, still yielded landmark books, such as Thomas Everett's Encyclopedia of Horticulture, and an unequalled array of important botanical journals, including Brittonia, as well as the new m e m b e r s ' magazine, Garden. Taxonomic and laboratory research, still largely supported by N S F and N I H grants, generated numerous scientific papers and an impressive number of books, such as Arthur Cronquist's seminal presentation of his general system o f classificat i o n - l o n g awaited and soon widely adopted. The library b e c a m e even more o f a M e c c a o f botanical reference, and the education programs

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took up the then novel theme o f environmental responsibility. Outside, however, the visible trappings o f the Garden itself---the buildings, grounds, and horticultural displays---conveyed a disappointingly shabby image that was dissonant with the institution's reputation for scholarly e x c e l l e n c e . Moreover, because appearance does matter in the world o f fund raising, I sensed that this aspect of the Garden compromised its effectiveness in winning private support. Bill Steere and I often discussed the situation; he tended to downplay the importance of so superficial a factor, holding that what transpired inside far outweighed the Garden's " s h e l l " in the halls o f beneficence. At first I was at turns opposed to or ambivalent about the planned multimillion-dollar restoration of the conservatory, but concluded that, with substantial city support, this costly, long overdue reincarnation, even if phased o v e r several years, would probably serve as a magnet for future help, Suddenly the restoration was in crisis when N e w York City's financial collapse caused the abrupt withdrawal of all municipal support, but just as quickly the crisis evaporated when Enid Haupt c a m e on the scene with her offer to stand in and fund the entire project. Instead o f being elated, though, I found my interest waning. I was six years into this new realm and began to dread the days. The presidency was a suit that did not fit, and I was doing no one a favor by pretending otherwise. With the discovery of a serious accounting error hitherto kept from me, I was near collapse and resigned in August 1979, 20 years after that first interview with Bassett. I suddenly felt vastly relieved and ready to face whatever the future held. M a n y staff and board members were warmly sympathetic and supportive, as was my second wife, Anne; s o m e urged me to reconsider, but I k n e w I had done the right thing, both for the Garden and for me. Although I had hoped to return to the herbarium as a staff m e m b e r and again pursue the research I had put aside, it was too late. For personal reasons it was time to turn the page and go on to something else. It was m y great fortune and the Garden's that Rupert Barneby had been able to c o m e to the Garden full time in the 1970s, to collaborate in and ultimately complete the long-term study of A m e r i c a n C a s s i i n a e , firmly establishing the three segregate genera Cassia, Senna, and Chamaecrista with clearly discernible characters,

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working up the keys and descriptions, preparing the distribution maps and citation lists, and arranging for the numerous line drawings, all reflective of his great p o w e r to synthesize c o m p l e x masses of data into a logical, readily usable system and couch it in language that is crystal clear in precision and poetic in composition. Thanks to Rupert, I had made my break with Bentharn at last! His M i m o s a monograph, also heavily based on Planalto collections, is equally masterful. With these two large-scale studies completed, not only have the Garden and N S F been superbly served, but the international taxonomic community has before it comprehensive studies on a scale few taxonomists would want to undertake using purely classical methodology. It was a great privilege to be associated with Rupert, and it is a comfort to k n o w that his work continues on other large neotropical groups. When A n n e and I vacated the Stone Cottage in June 1980, not only was the Garden left behind but so was my taxonomic research. After some private consultation projects and a few years teaching and handling special projects at L o n g Island University, I joined the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and helped revive its suburban branch, Clark Botanic Garden, in Nassau County, a mile or so from m y boyhood home; it was a great h o m e c o m i n g and a satisfying final decade in my work life.

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Although now situated too far away to exercise the honorary curatorship so kindly conferred by N Y B G , I serve as a volunteer botanical consultant to the Cape Cod National Seashore, as author-editor of the 4th edition of the B u s h - B r o w n s ' A m e r i c a ' s G a r d e n B o o k under Brooklyn Botanic Garden sponsorship, as a gardening columnist for a local newspaper, as director of a new not-for-profit test nursery to determine the suitability of various ornamentals for Outer Cape Cod conditions, and as chairperson o f the local conservation commission. All o f these endeavors draw in varying degrees on the experience I had at N Y B G as a research taxonomist, field leader, administrator, and writer, as well as on m y life-long avocation as a gardener. F r o m time to time, I stop by the headquarters building of the C a p e C o d National Seashore to check on a plant or two in their little herbarium. Just the experience of opening the door of a case and pulling a folder and spreading out the sheets of mounted plants rekindles rich memories of m y o n e t i m e p r o f e s s i o n a l home: the sights, sounds, and smells o f the herbarium; the camaraderie of hard working, strongly dedicated, often colorful colleagues and support staff; and the u n c o m m o n privilege of having collaborated with like-minded foreign professionals in the neotropics. For those experiences at N Y B G I shall always be grateful.