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The pine rocklands of southern Florida are an imperiled habitat as the higher, drier areas of land have been steadily developed over the last century. Little of the original extent of this unique ecosystem remains today, with much of it in remnant fragments affected by surrounding development. With this study, we sought to investigate temporal changes in diversity of pine rockland Fabaceae induced by anthropogenic factors. We provide a status update for Fabaceae taxa, a diverse and important group of plants in pine rocklands. Herbarium collections (1339 records) spanning 175 y (from 1830 to 2015) were used to analyze the species frequency and richness of plants collected. The results indicated temporal fluctuations in collection diversity with frequency of native species highest prior to the year 1920, and nonnative legume richness increasing with the decades. The accompanying species list resulting from the inventory included 119 Fabaceae species, in 52 genera, with an additional 18 species not previously listed for pine rocklands. Many other studies have documented the change in pine rockland cover and its extreme extent of habitat loss and fragmentation as the result of human development and population growth. The results of this study document the indirect effects of human habitation on remnant natural areas, as evidenced by collections from Miami-Dade County, with exotic invasives increasingly represented over time. The results also document the historical distributions of collections of Fabaceae species, helpful to conservation and restoration efforts in the globally imperiled pine rocklands of southern Florida. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dendrobium phalaenopsis Fitzg. is an orchid species with great popularity among collectors and growers of this group of plants. It has inflorescences of numerous attractive flowers in terms of shape, size, color and longevity. Despite the fact that numerous studies have been carried out in this species framed in the field of plant biotechnology, there is no a mass propagation protocol by in vitro culture. Based on the above mentioned, the objective of this work was to establish a protocol for the propagation of D. phalaenopsis from botanical seed. Through the described methodology, it is possible to obtain plants and 8.0 multiplication coefficient. A rooting phase is not required prior to the ex vitro acclimatization of the in vitro propagated plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Warning: Readers of this article are warned that it may contain terms, descriptions and opinions that are culturally sensitive and/or offensive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. John Dallachy (1804–71) was employed by Baron Ferdinand von Mueller to collect plants as a pioneer resident of Cardwell, Rockingham Bay, Queensland, 1864–71. Mueller's longest-serving paid botanical collector, Dallachy was also the most prolific collector of types among Mueller's large network of collectors. In part, Dallachy's success can be attributed to his collecting methods and intensive travels around the species-rich Rockingham Bay area. In part, also, Dallachy was indebted to fellow European pioneers for support (which was acknowledged in the eponymy of new taxa), and to local Indigenous and South Sea Islander people. Dallachy managed these relationships in a context of frontier war as local Indigenous people resisted being displaced by European colonists. Nevertheless, Dallachy's opportunity to work as a full-time professional botanical collector, and the rapidity with which his new specimens were identified and published was, to a large extent, due to Mueller. The partnership with Mueller led to Dallachy contributing ~3500 specimens from Rockingham Bay to the Melbourne Herbarium of which ~400 taxa were considered new to Western science. Warning Readers of this article are warned that it may contain terms, descriptions and opinions that are culturally sensitive and/or offensive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. This paper examines the botanical collecting activities of John Dallachy (1804–71) at Rockingham Bay, Queensland, 1864 to 1871. His productiveness was due to his ability to manage relationships with other settlers at Rockingham Bay in the context of a frontier war with Indigenous people, and his successful partnership with Baron Ferdinand von Mueller (1825–1896), pre-eminent Australian botanical taxonomist of the second half of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The citation 'Rockingham Bay, J. Dallachy' is prominent in late nineteenth-century taxonomic publications associated with the flora of tropical Queensland. John Dallachy (1804–71) was employed as a botanical collector by the Melbourne Botanic Garden under the directorship of Baron Ferdinand von Mueller. Between 1864 and 1871, Dallachy resided in the Rockingham Bay area where he collected ~3500 botanical specimens of which ~400 were described as new taxa of flowering plants, ferns, fungi and bryophytes, making him Mueller's most prolific collector of type specimens, apart from Mueller himself. In this, the first of two articles about Dallachy, we outline the origin, and development of this successful botanical collaboration, identifying the experiences and qualities that prompted Dallachy to become a botanical collector, the friendship that formed between Mueller and Dallachy in the face of Dallachy's reversal of fortunes at the Melbourne Botanic Garden, and the circumstances that led to Dallachy and Mueller's shared project to investigate the botanical riches of the floristically diverse Wet Tropics Bioregion. This paper examines the career of John Dallachy (1804–71), with an emphasis on his early training as a gardener in Britain, his subsequent association with the Melbourne Botanic Gardens and complex relationship with Ferdinand Mueller, and later pioneering move to Rockingham Bay, Queensland as a prolific botanical collector. Image: John Dallachy's entry of 1826 in 'The handwriting of under-gardeners and labourers'. Reproduced with permission from the Royal Horticultural Society Lindley Collections, London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Southern California desert, a group of primarily young women seek to enlist the assistance of wild plants as simultaneously material, social, and spiritual beings in negotiating what they perceive to be the signature challenge of the present moment: how to fortify the boundaries of the self against harm while staying open to the prospect of positive interpersonal connection. An analysis of concrete practices through which these spiritual herbalists relate to plants, their selves, and each other will contribute to efforts made by anthropologists to rethink the constitution of the interior landscape of self from the perspective of lived experience, while also demonstrating how the constitution of the human self is in practice actively scaffolded by an exterior landscape of nonhuman others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1790s, newspapers in Britain, Ireland and the United States carried brief reports about the activities of Maurice Spillard, described as a "celebrated English pedestrian traveller". Spillard, who may have been Irish, served in the British forces during the American Revolutionary War in the late 1770s. His exploits as a "pedestrian" were reported to have included botanical and geographical exploration, particularly in eastern and central North America including the Mississippi and Missouri basins, in which he was improbably linked with Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Spillard's botanical collections (including seeds and living plants), if they existed, were reported to have been seized by French privateers, resulting in a decree by the French Minister for the Navy requesting the safe return of this property. Spillard had contacts in London, including with the publisher Cadell & Davies, who paid an advance to Spillard. Said to have died in Dublin in 1800, Spillard reappeared in Paris in 1802, when his claims were refuted by Milfort Tastenagy (Jean-Antoine Le Clerc), and the "pedestrian traveller" was shown up as a fraud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hasso von Wedel, usually "H. Wedel" on specimen labels, settled on the northwestern Caribbean coast of Panama in the province of Bocas del Toro in 1898 and sustained himself mainly through the production of picture postcards and as a photographer for the United Fruit Company. He learned to prepare bird specimens in 1926 and collected widely in Bocas del Toro for various museums, mainly Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology, at least up until 1939. Wedel made the first collections of birds from the easternmost Caribbean coast of Panama in the Comarca de San Blas at intervals from 1929 until 1934. He learned the fundamentals of botanical collecting in 1938 and made extensive collections of plants for the Missouri Botanical Garden from then until 1941, his specimens forming the basis for dozens of presumed new species, at least ten of which were named for him. His biological explorations appear to have ceased about the time the United States entered the Second World War, although he lived in Changuinola, Bocas del Toro, until his death at Almirante in 1957. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gunung Tahan is the highest mountain peak in Peninsular Malaysia (2187 m a.s.l.) and is a part of Taman Negara Pahang that houses many rare and endemic species of flora and fauna. This account is conducted to evaluate, compile, and update the orchids collections from Gunung Tahan after almost 126 years, since the first botanical exploration was conducted by H.N. Ridley and other foreign botanist. The compilation presented in this study resulted in 294 species obtained from the selected herbarium, published record, and current expedition. A total of 57 species were recorded for recent work, out of which 18 species were new discoveries for Merapoh Trail and thus reported as new records for Gunung Tahan. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species version 2017.3 listed two species; Claderia viridiflora Hook.f. and Spiranthes sinensis (Pers.) Ames as least concern species and Paphiopedilum bullenianum (Rchb.f.) Pfitzer as endangered species. The list of the compiled species from herbarium and published records for Gunung Tahan is also included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines changing spatial patterns of botanical collections over a 400 year time frame, focussing on the collections at the Natural History Museum (BM) in comparison with global patterns. The Plant Collector Resource Database, which contains 68,000 collector records was used to generate 250,667 unique collector × country × date records. We observe an exponential increase in the number of collectors over time. The activities of collectors were investigated in 50-year time-slices from 1650–2000. We specifically considered the geographic scope of collections (i.e., countries in which collections were made), the depth of collections (i.e., the number of collectors per country) and the uniqueness of collections (i.e., the proportion not duplicated in other herbaria). Uniqueness was highest for the earliest time-slice. Collector activity is shown to be strongly influenced by extrinsic factors such as the development of trade and empire, which allowed for collections to expand in scope and depth, and conflicts, which reduced collecting activity. A striking finding concerns the uniqueness of collections through time. The considerable unique element of the collections in herbaria highlighted by this study provides a strong motivation for digitization efforts to ensure that collections are accessible to address key questions in systematics, biogeography, and ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medicinal plant collection from the Himalayas is a key conservation issue that involves extraction of plants from the wild by collectors. While the word collectors is generalized, not all collectors are the same. In this paper, three types of collectors namely, professional, opportunist, and user have been identified. They have been compared with respect to how they perceive medicinal plants and what their approach is. Of the three categories, only the users consume the plants at source, while the other two are involved in trade. This is clearly reflected in the difference in their value chain. It has also been realized that while professionals and opportunists are buyer-driven, the user is producer-driven. Subtle differences between the three with respect to twelve parameters have been presented in the paper. Thus, a conservation and management policy that not only focuses on plants but also, diversity of people, is the need of the hour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Stephen West Williams Herbarium, an important early collection of plants from western Massachusetts, is in the Henry N. Flynt Library of Historic Deerfield. Most of the plants in the herbarium were collected between 1816 and 1818 in Deerfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts. The herbarium had apparently never been systematically examined by contemporary botanists prior to our work. The 390-page herbarium contains 556 specimens representing 453 species, 74% of which are native and 26% introduced. Eight of the native species in the herbarium are now considered rare in Massachusetts. Reflecting Williams' interest, about half the specimens in the collection had a medicinal use. Intensive floristic surveys in Deerfield between 1944 and 2015 failed to find 64 (14%) of the species collected by Williams, including about 4% of the native and 42% of the introduced species. The specimens establish a pre-1820 date for the presence of at least 90 introduced species that are currently considered naturalized in Massachusetts. The collection also provides documentation for 34% of the vascular plants in Edward Hitchcock's 1829 'Catalog of Plants Growing without Cultivation in the Vicinity of Amherst College,' the first flora for the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]