Landmarks in Pacific North America Marine Phycology
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Landmarks in Pacific North America Marine Phycology GEORGE F. PAPENFUSS Labore arlo de Flcolo fa o partamento de 8iolog(8 Facultad de Cfenclas UN M KNOWLEDGE of the marine algae of the Pacific coast of orth America hegins with the 1791-95 expedition of Captain George Vancouver. (See Anderson, 1960, for an excellent account of this expedition. ) On the rec ommendation of the botanist Sir Joseph Banks (who as a young man had been a member of the scientific staff on Cook's first voyage, 1768--71), Archibald Menzies, a surgeon, was appointed botanist of the Vancouver expedition. Menzies had earlier served on a fur-trading vessel plying the northeastem Pacific and had collected plants from the Bering Strait to Nootka Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in the years 1787 and 1788 (Jepson, 1929b; Scagel, 1957, p. 4), but I hav e come across no records of algae collected by him at that time. As a young midshipman Vancouver had been to the northeastern Pacific with Cook's third voyage in 1778. Now, in 1791, his expedition consisted of two ships, the sloop Discovery and the armed tender Chatham. The ships cam e to the north Pacific by way of the Cape of Good Hope, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). They sailed from Hawaii on March 16, 1792, sighted the Mendocino coast of Califomia ( or Nova Albion [New Britain], the name given to northem California and Oregon by Drake and the name by which thi s region was still known among English navigators in Vancouver's time) on April 18, and proceeded north to explore the coast. Retuming south in autumn, the ships called at San Francisco and Monterey in November. After a stay of nearly two months at the Spanish capital city of Monterey, they wintered in the Ha waiian Islands. On their return in the spring, the ships parted company, with the Chat ham going direct to Nootka Sound, and the Discovery making land on This historical review is an expanded version of a pap er presented in a series of lectures in botany honoring Gilbert Morgan Smith ( 1885-1959 ) at Stanford University in Feb ruary 1960 . I a m indebted to m y colleague, the late Professor Johannes Proskuuer, for hi s suggestioH thut this might b e an ap prop ria te topie fo r my lecture. George F. Papenfuss is professor of botany, emeritus, at the University of California, Berkeley. Sources cited in this essay are given on pp . 41-46. - ------- - 22 GEORGE F. PAPENFUSS the Humboldt coast of California. After a stay of three days, including a shore excursion at Trinidad Bay on May 3, 1793, the Discovery proceeded northward for summer surveying. Reunited, the ships moved south in the autumn, and the Chatham, with Menzies on hoard, stopped for one day (October 20) in Bodega Bay, where a shore trip was made. The expedi tion then call ed again at San Francisco and Monterey, but the reception this time was unfriendly, and Vancouver did not allow Menzies ashore at either place. Moving southward, the ships reached Santa Barbara and San Diego toward the end of November. There the reception was cordial, and shore excursions were made at both points. From San Diego, the ships sur veyed the southern coast as far as Rosario, in Baja California, and then made for Hawaii, which was reached in early January 1794. In mid-March 1794 the ships sailed again, for Cook Inlet in Alaska. In the fall they headed south once more, stopping first at Nootka Sound and then, in early November, at Monterey, With the reception once again hos pitable, they stayed on to the end of November, taking on stores for the long voyage home, before setting sail at last to make for Cape Hom-and England. The specimens of marine algae collected by Menzies were entrusted to the foremost marine phycologist of thc time, Dawson Turner, a banker in Yarmouth and the father-in-law of the distinguished botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker. Turner described and illustrated them, together with spe cies from ma ny other parts of the world, in his classic four-volume work, Euci, published in the years 1808-19. Like most algologists of his day, Turner followed Linnaeus's system of classification, according to which the macroscopic marine algae were divided into three genera: Conieroa, containing th e filamentous species; Ulva, containing the membranous spe cies ; and Fucus, containing all the fleshy or bulky species. Turner dealt only with ta xa referable to Eucus, and described just seven species from the Menzies material from North America: F. menzlesd, F. herbuceus, F. osmuiulaceus, F. cordatus, F. larix, F. linearis, and F. costatus. So few species suggests either that Menzies collected only a few algae or that he gave only a small part of his ·collection to Turner. Three additional species from the Menzies collection-F. asplenioides, F. {lOCCOSflS , and F. 1100t kanus (see Silva, 1953 )-were described by Professor Eugen J. C. Esper of Erlangen, on the basis of specimens sent to him by Turner (who did not, however, expect him to publish them) . Three of the species Turner had described later became the types of new genera: Fucus cordatus be came the lectotype of the red algal genus Iridaea , established by Baron Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent in 1825; Eucus costatus became the type of the laminarialean genus Cosiaria, erected by Robert K. Greville in 1830; and John Erhard Areschoug (whom we shall take up later) in 1876 made Eucus menziesii thc type of the new genus Egregia, a common mem LANDMARKS IN MARINE PHYCOLOGY bel' of the Larninariales along the Pacific coast from northern British Co lumbia to northern Baja California. Two of the officers on the Vancouver expedition are indirectly com memorated by genera of red algae occurring on the Pacific coast: Whid heijella Setchell & Gardner derives from Whidbey Island in the San Juan Archipelago, which is named for Joseph Whidbey, and Pugetia Kylin de rives from' Puget Sound, which is named for Peter Puget, Vancouver is indirectly honored by Urospora vancouveriana (Tilden) Scagel, Corallina oancouoeriensis Yendo, and Pleonosporium vancouverianum (}. Agardh) J. Agardh, all derived from Vancouver Island. And Dawson Turner, for his part, is commemorated by the red algal genus Turn erella Schmitz (which is based on Iridaea mertensiana Postels & Ruprecht, a species from the northern Pacific, including British Columbia and northern Washing ton) and by Cigartina turneri Setchell & Gardner. In September 1791,shortly before Menzies collected on the Pacific coast, Dr. Thaddaeus Haenke, a native of Bohemia who was botanist on a Span ish expedition under the command of Captain Alejandro I alaspina (Gal braith, 1924; Cutter, 1960; Kiihnel, 1960; Barneby, 1963), had also col lected a few algae at Monterey. These specimens were not described, how ever, until Carl A. Agardh (and later his son Jacob) published them in 1822, 1824, and (in K. B. Presl) 182.5. Moreover , the source of Haenke's algae was not altogether clear. Since his specimens had been labeled as obtained in mati australi, botanists for many years assumed they had been collected somewhere in the South Pacific, which had been visited by the Malaspina expedition. It was not appreciated that much of the Pacific Ocean-and perhaps all of it, but including at least the northeastern reaches as far north as Nootka Sound and the western Pacific to at least Guam-for a long time was referred to as mare australe, the name (as Mar del Sur) given to the Pacific Ocean by its discoverer Vasco Nunez de Balboa in 1513.0 The identity of at least four of the species obtained by Haenke-Cystoseira australis C. Agardh (in Presl, 1825), C. eaudata C. Agardh (in Presl, 1825), Fueus compressus C. Agardh (1824), and Grateloupia hystrix C. Agardh (1822 )-is still uncertain; and a fifth, Cys toseira tuberculata C. Agardh (1824), was suspected by Ruprecht (1852, p. 70) of being the same as C. osmundaeea (Turner) C. Agardh. The voucher material of these taxa presumably is preserved in the National Museum of Prague. (Concerning four other West Coast taxa based on Haenke material from mare australe, see Kylin, 1941, pp. 10, 12, 16, and 28.) Carl Adolph Agardh was professor of botany at the University of Lund from 1812 until 1835, when he became Bishop of the Karlstad Diocese o When Balboa saw the Pacific Ocean, after crossing the Isthmus of Panama, he was looking southward. :24 GEOHGE F , PAPENFUSS (Areschoug, 1870; Krok, 1925).Hismain botanicalinterest was the marine algae. He is best known for his two works, the Species alsiarum (1820-28) and the Systema algarun» (1824) , in which he described taxa from many parts of the world . Even more famous was his son, Jacob Georg Agardh, who was appointed professor of botany at Lund in 1839 (Eriksson, 1916; Krok, 1925). Jacob continued in his father's footsteps in specializing in the marine algae. One of the most distinguished phycologists of all time, he earned international renown, and for half a century was the man to whom collectors worldwide sent material for determination and often for herbar ium deposit. On his death in 1901, at the age of 88, he had a publishing record extending back over 68 years. In consequence of the work and fame of the Agardhs, the most important algal herbarium in the world was assembled at Lund. Because of its richness in type specimens and other published specimens, the Agardh Herbarium is perhaps of greater impor tance to the algal taxonomist than the Linnean Herbarium is to the pha nerogamic taxonomist.