daVIS botanIcaL socIety LASTHENIA LASTHENIA, the Newsletter of the Davis Botanical Society, is published in collaboration with the staff of the ELECTRONIC MAIL A REALITY! UC Davis Botanical Conservatory and Center for Plant Diversity. And DBS members were apparently more than ready! On Thursday, Editor: Kate Mawdsley March 3, at 5 p.m. we sent an email notice that DBS members now Issue Contributors: C. Thomsen, E. have the option of receiving an email announcing the availability Sandoval, K. Mawdsley, E. Dean, M. of the quarterly events flyers and semi-annualLasthenia issues and Starbuck, R. Norris viewing them online as pdfs. By 9 a.m. Friday morning 40 members Design: Susan Gloystein Cotterel had replied with their preferences. For those members and others Layout: Ellen Dean who replied subsequently, this is the first electronic distribution. And it’s not too late: If that email is buried in your inbox, you DBS OFFICERS, 2010-2011 can email [email protected] and tell us if you wish to President: Robbin Thorp receive the notice and eliminate mailing of the paper copies of the President-elect: Marcel Rejmanek flyers orLasthenia , or both. Your choice will be implemented with Membership Vice President: the next mailing. As stated in the email, we will continue to send the Jill Spear & Kate Mawdsley annual calendar and renewal materials in paper form, including that Secretary: Susan Nichol all-important return envelope. Treasurer: Robert Rhode Tom Starbuck made the extensive programming changes to our Past President: Kevin Rice membership database that finally achieved this long-term goal. From Members at Large: Tim Metcalf, Kirk the members whose recycling piles are a little smaller, the mailing Ehmsen Student Member at Large: party volunteers who will have fewer paper cuts, and the trees that Annabelle Kleist will keep sucking up carbon dioxide—thank you, Tom. Ex officio: Dan Potter, Ernesto K. Mawdsley Sandoval, Ellen Dean, Jean Shepard D: BTNY BTNY D: I Mail Davis UC Davis, CA 95616 95616 CA Davis, University of California California of University One Shields Avenue Avenue Shields One Plant Sciences Mail Stop #7 Stop Mail Sciences Plant Center for Plant Diversity Diversity Plant for Center 8 No. 35 Winter 2011 LASTHENIA NEWSLETTER OF THE DAVIS BOTANICAL SOCIETY IN THE Footsteps OF june mccaskILL and ROMAN GANKIN: FALSE INDIGO, RARE IN YOLO COUNTY Over 10 years ago, I began a search for Ridge, Bear Valley, BLM’s Bear Creek California false indigo (Amorpha califor- Ranch, and Wilbur Hot Springs. Widely nica var. californica) in western Colusa known for its botanical richness, wild- County. This quest was triggered by the flower fields, and varied natural com- sighting of a California dogface butterfly munities, it seemed likely that false (Zerene eurydice), by butterfly special- indigo might exist somewhere within ist Greg Kareofelas near the junction the watershed boundaries. of Highways 20 and 16. False indigo I began my search by looking for is the larval host plant for the dogface, specimens in the UC Davis Center for our state insect. The dogface location is Plant Diversity herbarium. I found no within the Bear Creek watershed, where records from the Bear Creek watershed, I had initiated a native plant revegeta- but I did find one specimen from Yolo tion program for degraded lands; as part California false indigo in Yolo County. County, collected in 1962 by June Mc- of the selection criteria, I was looking Photo: E. Dean Caskill and Roman Gankin, seven miles for local plants that attracted pollinators Greg thought that false indigo south of the watershed boundary. (This or served as larval host plants to area should be present within the 65,000 location was of interest, but being out butterflies. acre watershed which includes Walker of the watershed where I was working, I put it on the back burner.) NSF GRANT RECOGNIZES Importance OF Taxonomy: The genus Amorpha is de- WEBSTER EUPHORB COLLECTION rived from the Greek amorphos, meaning deformed, in reference to the unusual corolla which consists of a single petal. The Center for Plant Diversity has received Amorpha belongs to the Papilionoideae, $148,000 in funding from the National Sci- a subfamily of the Fabaceae (coinci- ence Foundation to curate specimens and dentally, the word papilio is Latin for materials relating to the work of the late Dr. butterfly). The Papilionoideae subfam- Grady L. Webster, Director of the Center’s ily contains many familiar California herbarium from 1987 until his retirement in 1993. Dr. Webster was a specialist on the continued on page 4 spurge family (Euphorbiaceae) and is widely considered to be the most influential expert on the group during the 20th century. Due to IN THIS ISSUE his work, the Center’s herbarium has a world- False Indigo .................................... 1 class spurge collection, exceeding 40,000 specimens. Webster Grant ................................. 1 Dr. Webster’s death in 2005 interrupted a Conservatory Update ...................... 2 number of his research projects and deprived Dr. Grady Webster in Baja Grover Hot Springs ......................... 5 the taxonomic community of a generous California. Photo: Courtesy of the taxonomist who identified thousands of neo- Botanical Society of America Herbaria in the Headlines ............... 6 tropical specimens, mostly Euphorbiaceae, Algodones Dunes ............................ 7 for botanists worldwide on a recurring basis. continued on page 2 1 CONSERVatory update webster grant (CONT. FROM page 1) REACHING NEW HEIGHTS WITH EPIPHYTES! Well, we had a challenge for the Con- At the time of his death, Dr. Webster servatory staff late last spring. Thank- was working on numerous projects fully it wasn’t a budget-related one in the spurges, including work on the (although budget problems continue). genus Dalechampia and a large, never- It was a plant growing challenge! The published manuscript containing a task was to think vertical, and by that synopsis of the neotropical species of I’m talking about epiphytes, those Phyllanthus. plants that grow on top of other plants He left approximately 6,500 but aren’t parasites. The academic staff specimens (including unpublished for Bio Sci 2B, the second course in the new species of Phyllanthus) that introductory biology series at UC Davis, require sorting, labeling, and distri- asked us to build epiphyte walls, and, bution. This grant provides funds to yes, we built several! organize and curate his specimens For their first lab, introductory and incorporate his 1980s-era speci- biology students must perform a rapid men label records into our current assessment of biodiversity on an “is- database. This work would not be land.” For this exercise, we created The teaching greenhouse’s new epiphyte possible without Dr. Barbara Webster’s three double-sided epiphyte walls in the walls. Photo: E. Sandoval generous donation of Grady’s field teaching greenhouse on the third floor notebooks. of the Sciences Laboratory Building. any other group of plants. All six walls The spurge family in its broad Two sides have old world tropical plants contain orchids, especially the SE Asian sense is one of the largest families of (mostly SE Asian and some African), walls which have a fair diversity from flowering plants, and identifying its two sides have New World tropicals, the orchid genus Bulbophyllum. species is difficult. A major product and the final two sides have carnivo- Designing the wall structures was a of this grant will be a web page with rous, pocket-forming, and “ant” plants challenge. Typical walls are very verti- information on the spurge family, (those that form domiciles for ants). cal, but ours are tilted back slightly including identification keys, images, The reason for duplication of sides on both sides to form a very tall and specimen records, and Dr. Webster’s is that two groups of students do the narrow “A-frame” with large casters for publications. We will provide speci- exercise in parallel and compare results! some mobility. To support the plants men images of the species of three Each side is six feet wide and eight feet as well as the frame itself we wanted to of the largest spurge genera: Croton tall; multiply that by six and you get avoid using a wall material that would (1,250 species), Euphorbia (2,200 spe- nearly 300 square feet of space to grow corrode with constant-moisture condi- cies), and Phyllanthus (1,270 species), several hundred small plants. You may tions. Thanks to some research done by as well as the genus Dalechampia (100 have heard about living walls and green Marlene Simone (staff horticulturalist), species). roofs, but since we’re plant people, we we settled on using a material called Several well-known experts on the call ours epiphyte walls! Fibergrate (fiberglass-embedded resin). spurge family will assist in this proj- Most existing living walls use low- The Fibergrate we chose, with two by ect: Dr. Ken Wurdack (Smithsonian light-tolerant plants in a geometric pat- two inch pockets and an overall thick- Institution), Dr. Paul Berry (Univer- tern and pockets of soil. Our task was ness of two inches, provides both the sity of Michigan), and Dr. Scott Arm- more challenging in that we had to cre- A-frame structure and attachment sites bruster (University of Alaska). These ate a high level of plant diversity, with- for plants. experts will help us choose specimens out using pockets of soil, and maintain We had never done something like to scan and help us identify Dr. Web- a narrow profile in the greenhouse. We this before, and it took a lot of time to ster’s uncurated spurge specimens. did this by placing lower-light-tolerant work with these challenging materials Electronic specimen label data plants below higher-light-tolerant (imagine fiberglass dust from cutting…, curated during this project will be plants.