A Passion for

SURVIVORS FROM THE DINOSAUR AGE, CYCADS CONTINUE TO CAPTIVATE COLLECTORS AND RESEARCHERS By Usha Lee McFarling

Cycads are squat, woody, and branchless. They have no flowers, just spiky leaves that shred clothes and tear skin. They grow slowly, poison livestock and sometimes people. Despite these liabilities, the strange and primordial inspire a fierce, and sometimes inexplicable, ardor in their fans. Once besotted, many collectors can’t stop themselves from amassing the rare, often expensive plants, many of which are severely endangered and illegal to transport across international borders. “I’ve seen wealthy people show them off in walled gardens the way people used to show off Van Goghs and Chagalls,” says Tim Gregory, a enthusiast and University of California Botanical Garden advisory board member who has spent the past three decades studying and propagating the plants. “It’s very weird.”

The obsession can disrupt lives: some collectors Author Oliver Sacks wrote about the ’s neuro- become cycad nurserymen. Others travel cross- toxic properties and nursed three cycads in his New country to scoop up a single plant. The late opera York City apartment. The plants, he said, called singer Ganna Walska, founder of Montecito’s to him “from a former world.” Others appreciate Lotusland botanical garden, sold off nearly a mil- the plants as tough survivalists, bold and sculptural. lion dollars’ worth of jewels to buy cycads. Many Many value their rarity and expense. Living status collectors jokingly refer to their addiction as “the symbols, cycads are among the most charismatic green needle.” plants in the world. What’s the draw? For some, the primordial One early admirer was Henry E. Huntington, plants trigger a deep and ancient connection. who was always on the lookout for ways to dazzle

Opposite page: Brian Dorsey, research botanist, kneels before a merolae that came to The Huntington from the collection of Loran Whitelock (1930–2014), author of The Cycads, the standard guide to the plants. Photograph by Kate Lain. This page: The massive seed cone of a Dioon merolae. Photograph by Kate Lain.

huntington.org 19 visitors and promote Southern California’s Edenic properties as he established the estate that today is The Huntington. In 1909, he spent nearly $5,000 (more than $100,000 in today’s dollars) on a lot of “rare and choice” cycads to plant near his mansion— now the Huntington Art Gallery. Many of these original plants survive today. “They’re like parrots,” track loaders, and teasing excess dirt from the roots notes Jim Folsom, the Marge and Sherm Telleen/ by hand. Plants were given bar-code inventory labels Marion and Earle Jorgensen Director of the and accession tags and implanted with microchips Botanical Gardens at The Huntington. “They to help keep track of their identities and provenance. seem to live forever.” They were then transferred down Whitelock’s Los Angeles was also home to one of the world’s steep, narrow drive to trucks for transport. At The most noted cycad experts. Until his death at age 84 Huntington, a separate crew was waiting for them, in 2014, Loran Whitelock collected thousands of holes already dug. Incredibly, all but 10 plants cycads on his modest hillside property in the north- survived. “Most of the plants didn’t really skip a east corner of L.A. Whitelock, a health inspector, beat,” Roberson says. “They’re doing pretty well. fell in love with the plants in Mexico in the 1960s They’re happy.” and spent the next half-century studying, collecting, Roberson has more recently been working on propagating, and writing about them. Two cycad the new “cycad walk” designed by Folsom to show- —Encephalartos whitelockii and Cerato- case the plants. It runs behind the Art Gallery— zamia whitelockiana—are named after him. within sight of Huntington’s original cycads—on Whitelock’s 374-page tome The Cycads is considered what was a little-used, hillside lawn. Here, the the definitive guide to the plants. cycads are planted on terraced slopes in tribute to Whitelock’s lush garden was one of the finest Whitelock’s hillside garden. “Loran’s garden was private collections of cycads in the world. A wid- very exciting,” Folsom says. “Plant lovers who ower with no children, Whitelock bequeathed walked through it would drop their jaws. It would nearly 1,500 cycads to The Huntington, along with be fun if visitors could have that same feeling.” an endowment to care for them. Whitelock was a throwback to a time when The task of moving the plants, some of them descriptive science was not conducted by profes- weighing more than 2,000 pounds, fell to Gary sionals but by educated laypeople, often doctors, Roberson, lead project gardener for the cycad who had time and money to travel widely to collect, and palm collection at The Huntington. It was Folsom says. Whitelock’s book, the so-called cycad a gargantuan task. bible, is laden with full-color photos and detailed Roberson’s crew spent four months in the descriptions. “It’s a huge contribution,” Folsom spring of 2015 digging up plants amid buried gas says. “There are several books on cycads, but lines, easing them out of the ground with compact nothing like his.”

20 huntington.org The Whitelock collection is especially valuable, Scientists build phylogenies by grouping subsets Folsom says, because it is a founding population— of species based on which DNA variants they share. many cycads growing in the U.S. today are progeny Work on cycads has been frustrating because there of Whitelock’s plants —and because it is the specific is so little variability between species. “They’re collection of plants upon which Whitelock’s book turning out to be real pains,” Gregory says. was written. “That’s beautiful,” Folsom says. A cycad phylogeny was finally published in 2013, “These plants are the living book.” showing how the 10 genera of existing cycads are related. But many questions remain about the dif- ferent genera, and about one in particular: Dioon. While cycads inspire collectors, they also beguile The Dioon cycads are interesting because seven of scientists because of their oddity. They look like the roughly 15 species—which are distributed in Opposite page, top: Cycads lining a brick walk in Loran palms but produce cones and are more closely Mexico from Sonora to Chiapas—are clustered in Whitelock’s garden in 2014, related to conifers. They can grow in harsh deserts a small area around the Tehuacán Valley, and sci- shortly before The Huntington acquired his cycad collection. or rainforests, in bogs or on rocks, in full sun or entists are not sure when they diversified. Nor do Photograph by Kate Lain. full shade. They can live for a thousand years. they know why or how much genetic diversity exists Opposite page, right: Loran Whitelock and his wife, Eva, in With no flowers to attract pollinators, these in their populations. One species, oddly, is found front of their home. Photograph gymnosperms (or “naked seed” plants) dazzle only in Honduras. by Jim Folsom. Opposite page, center: In the spring of 2015, a instead with their cones, which can range from Botanist Brian Dorsey came to The Huntington compact track loader eased one bright yellow to fire-engine red and weigh up to from the University of Michigan as a postdoctoral of Whitelock’s cycads out of the ground in his garden. 90 pounds. They are the only type of gymnosperms research fellow to answer some of these questions. Photograph by Gary Roberson. that can generate their own heat, warming male But first, he needed to understand how the different Opposite page, bottom: Crew members Ramon Abelard (left) cones by 20 degrees to repel insects living there Dioon species are related and if current species and Carlos Ceballos remove toward more temperate female cones to spread designations are even correct. excess dirt from one of Whitelock’s cycads before it is pollen. And they have the largest sperm cells of Dorsey’s previous work on Euphorbia re- transported to The Huntington. any plant. quired a consortium of 50 scientists and costly Photograph by Gary Roberson. This page: clockwise (from upper Cycads are also impressive survivors, having collecting trips to Madagascar. At The Huntington, left), the pollen cone of a Dioon existed for nearly 300 million years, outlasting ice getting samples is easier. “When I need more edule, the pollen cone of an Encephalartos woodii, the pollen ages, volcanic eruptions, meteor strikes, and mass DNA, I just walk outside,” Dorsey says. “It’s like cone of a Dioon tomasellii, and extinctions. (Sadly, human habitat destruction and reading the collection.” the seed cone of a Dioon merolae. Photograph of the Dioon tomasellii poaching may wipe out what eons of epic devasta- But getting the genetic information out of the cone by Brian Dorsey; photographs tions could not.) plants has been tougher. Unlike the genomes for of the other cones by Kate Lain. Despite intense interest, there are yawning gaps in the scientific understanding of cycads. For ex- ample, cycads long were considered “living fossils”; they are common in depictions of dinosaurs. But a 2011 analysis revealed that while their ancestors coexisted with dinosaurs, the 300 cycad species alive today are much younger. These living species evolved 12 million years ago in what appears to have been one explosive burst. Many outstanding questions about cycads center on their evolutionary history: how plants alive today are related to each other, why so many went extinct, and what is pushing today’s species to diversify. But determining how cycads are related—their phylogeny—has proven to be extremely difficult. A number of researchers, says Tim Gregory, have chased this goal for a decade but failed “repeatedly and miserably” despite using the best technology available. Gregory knows such technology well; until his retirement, he was a scientist at biotech- nology giant Genentech.

huntington.org 21 capture thousands of genes from many species all at once. It took Dorsey about a year of careful lab and computer work to identify the genetic markers he needed to try Sass’s technique. Though Dorsey is a botanist, much of his work on bioinformatics consists of sitting at his double-monitored com- puter, writing code to analyze giant files of genetic data. “I got into this profession to work in the woods,” says Dorsey, an outdoorsy Oregon native. “I rarely get there anymore.” Dorsey has been helped in the lab by students

Top row (left to right): Huntington humans and many plants, the full genome of a from Pasadena City College. His current intern is intern Armando Serrano, a cycad has not been sequenced. “For other plants, Armando Serrano, who was born in Mexico but student at Pasadena City College, works to extract DNA from a you can go online and download entire genomes,” grew up in Japan, Queens, and Las Vegas before cycad leaf (photograph by Lisa Dorsey says. “For cycads and dioons in particular, settling in Los Angeles. Blackburn); genetic data that Brian Dorsey analyzes for clues there are not a lot of resources.” Interested in computer science, Serrano had about the evolutionary history of So Dorsey had to start from scratch. As genetic taken a sprinkling of community college classes the cycad genus Dioon; a view of the Rio Santo Domingo canyon sequencing was new territory for The Huntington, and supported himself as a waiter. But he hadn’t in Oaxaca, Mexico, the only place he first needed to equip the Mullin Research Lab been inspired academically until he took a botany in the world where the cycad Dioon rzedowskii grows (photograph in the Frances Lasker Brody Botanical Center. course at PCC. Though Serrano took the course by Brian Dorsey); Mexican Then he had to find useful genetic regions, or merely to fulfill a requirement, he ended up in- botanist Silvia Salas—who directs SERBO, a nonprofit research and markers, that contain variations in order to un- trigued about plants and the use of computers to conservation organization in ravel Dioon relationships. This required sequenc- study bioinformatics. Oaxaca—and Tim Gregory, advisory board member of the ing thousands of stretches of DNA from six Di- Serrano now works at The Huntington regu- University of California Botanical oon species at The Huntington. larly, extracting DNA from cycad leaves. It’s a Garden, who has spent the past three decades studying and To do this, Dorsey collaborated with Chelsea difficult task because cell walls in the leaves are propagating cycads (photograph Specht, a professor and botanist at the University especially tough to break—Serrano uses a machine by Brian Dorsey). Bottom row (left to right): A field trip to the of California, Berkeley, who—together with post- full of ceramic beads to pulverize them—and be- Sierra de Quila Flora and Fauna doctoral scholar Chodon Sass—has pioneered cause the plant is full of enzymes and compounds Protection Area in Jalisco, Mexico, to study Dioon in the wild; a cutting-edge genetic tools to understand how that damage DNA once they are released. Serrano’s Dioon tomasellii growing in an gingers, bromeliads, and onions have evolved. fallen hard for both botanical research and the oak forest in the Sierra de Quila Flora and Fauna Protection Area The two scientists, captivated by cycads as cycads he works with. “I love them,” he says. “I’m (photographs by Brian Dorsey). well, were happy to help Dorsey. Sass had worked completely absorbed.” on generating DNA sequences to use as “barcodes” In his work, Serrano uses a wealth of scientific for species identification. (Unscrupulous cycad tools: pipettes, centrifuges, an enzyme extracted traders often snip off leaves to make them difficult from bacteria in thermal geysers, and a machine to identify by visual cues.) She had also become that rapidly amplifies the DNA he’s extracted. He’s an expert at next generation gene sequencing helping with Dorsey’s projects and also testing a techniques and those using microarray chips to technique to see if the sex of cycads can be determined

22 huntington.org from DNA—useful knowledge for conservation the altitudes at which the plants could grow. because some cycads take 20 years to produce the Plants may have moved up and down hillsides as cones that show whether they are male or female. the climate changed, perhaps interbreeding and While exciting, the work on cycads has also then separating into new species. been frustrating. When Dorsey finally received the To test that theory, Dorsey is now planning to data from the markers he’d carefully created and analyze samples of thousands of Dioon plants. sequenced at Berkeley, he hoped they would show The samples will be collected by Dorsey (under the clear variations, but he was bitterly disappointed. proper conservation permits), Gregory, and Mexican The data he got back was nonsense, with no botanist Silvia Salas, who directs SERBO, a non- patterns emerging. profit research and conservation organization in The botanists put their heads together, trying Oaxaca. In her work, Salas strives to educate local to understand what went wrong. It’s possible the farmers, who often remove cycads in order to grow experiment was swamped by the immense cycad corn or allow collectors to take them. She’s plan- genome, which is 25 times larger than the human ning a project to document the use of starch from genome and, apparently, full of duplicate copies Dioon seeds to make tortillas in an indigenous of genes and regions filled with seemingly mean- community in northern Oaxaca. “We talk, talk, ingless repeats. “The cycad genome is huge and and talk with them,” Salas says. “If local people that’s really been a problem,” Dorsey says. understand how special these plants are, they will Luckily, Dorsey’s temporary position had protect them.” turned into a full-time one, so he did not have Folsom is hoping The Huntington can help with to give up. He investigated other techniques and conservation work by propagating the plants for chose a highly efficient and precise way to pick reintroduction in the wild and through a “captive through vast amounts of genetic information. The breeding program” that might sate the demand of final sequencing was performed at the University of cycad collectors and lower prices so the plants are Idaho. It appears to have worked, and now Dorsey not plucked from their native soil. “I like the fact is analyzing how Dioon species are related and that plants are seen as so wonderful because they’re writing up the work for publication. rare, but that rarity destroys them in nature,” Folsom Jim Folsom—the Marge and “This was definitely a difficult problem to says. “I’d actually like to destroy the market.” Sherm Telleen/Marion and Earle Jorgensen Director of the tackle,” says Specht, who calls Dorsey’s scientific Botanical Gardens—standing work based on The Huntington’s plant collections Usha Lee McFarling is a Pulitzer Prize–winning among several species of Dioon cycads in Loran Whitelock’s “a perfect marriage.” “Brian is at the right place at freelance writer based in South Pasadena, Calif. garden, 2014. Photograph by the right time. And he’s running with it.” Kate Lain. When the Dioon relationships are completely worked out, Dorsey will next turn to larger questions of biogeography and how the curious distribution of Dioon today may hold the key to understanding when and why the plants speciated, how much genetic diversity they contain, and how best to conserve them. Dorsey has taken two field trips to Mexico to study Dioon in the wild—one to Jalisco and Nayarit with the help of the Jardín Botánico de Vallarta and another to southern Mexico. In Oaxaca, the plants grow in the transition zone between the tropical deciduous forests and the pine and oak forests above them. As Gregory had, Dorsey noticed strange pat- terns: two species might be separated by a single mountain ridge. A river may have one species grow- ing down one branch and another species growing down a second branch. Why? One hypothesis: climate change, particularly global cooling during ice ages, drove the plants’ evolution by altering

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