Some of the collections remain hidden until we can apply specialized methods of making them usable. Motion picture film collections are one of these types of collections. Motion picture films are fragile and the physical films are not usable through standard projectors. To make their content viewable, the fragile media must be digitally copied with specialized equipment and by those with particular expertise with the film medium. The Chicago Academy of Sciences’ audiovisual collection contains over 1,300 original motion picture films documenting nature in the Midwest and across North America between 1925 to 1988. Although our staff has catalogued the collection and the films have been preservationally rehoused to ensure they are in stable condition, the films remain unusable until they are digitized.

In August, we were awarded grant funding from the Council of Library and Information Resources to help digitize 279 of the films in our collection! Our project, “Preserving History, Conserving Nature: The Value of Digitizing the Chicago Academy of Sciences’ Audiovisual Collection”, will result in the digitization of films depicting ecological habitats, plants, and animals in Illinois and other sensitive habitats. These films were created by Academy staff during field work between 1934 and 1975, including several prominent ornithologists such as Earl Wright, Alfred Bailey, and William Beecher. This first-hand source material is valuable as a visual record of habitats and species, many of which have been heavily impacted by human activity.

The Academy is pleased to work with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA) for the digitization of the films. At the end of the project, the films will be shared online. Stay tuned!

Dawn Roberts
Senior Director of Collections

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Verbena canadensis specimen; the physical label and online identification had to be changed due to revised taxonomy (Chicago Academy of Sciences)

At first I was confused about why the name of a species would need to change. Was there something wrong with the original name? What would cause a scientific name to need to change? And what are the reasons behind a scientific name change?

Turns out that there are numerous reasons behind why scientific names change. Most name changes occur because of one of two reasons: either an earlier classification of the species is discovered or advances in our knowledge leads to reclassifications. The first reason is based on the rule of priority of publication, meaning that if a species has been named more than once, the first correctly published name is the one that must be used and any other later names effectively become synonyms instead (Mori). Therefore, long standing names of species can change if an earlier publication describing the same species is recognized and the older name must be adopted instead.

Secondly, and more common recently, advances in the field of study, such as botany, can lead to reclassifications. Taxonomy as a whole is based on hypotheses of how species are evolutionarily related and most of these hypotheses are formulated by comparing the phenotypes of species to try to determine visually if they may be closely related (Ritter). However, recently, DNA sequencing has given us an objective method to determine relatedness between species. 

Now that genotype-based classification is possible, there have been some surprising discoveries. For example, in our botany collection we have several preserved specimens of the plant species Aliciella pinnatifida. This species is a member of the Polemoniaceae (phlox) family and has been reclassified from the genus of Gilia into the genus of Aliciella. The species was first collected by Thomas Nuttall along the Lewis River in the 1830s and he suggested the name of Gilia pinnatifida for the plant. When Nuttall first proposed the name of Gilia pinnatifida, the Gilia genus had become a catchall genus and was highly inclusive and variable. In 1905, the genus of Aliciella was created in an attempt to separate out those that seemed distinct from most of the others. However, it was abandoned soon after until genetic analyses in 1998 by J. Mark Porter showed that the genus should be revived (Southwest Colorado Wildflowers). Since then, several other species have been reclassified from the Gilia genus to other genera such as Ipomopsis, Allophyllum, Giliastrum, and Navarretia. There were several specimens in our collection whose identification had to be revised because of these new classifications.

Aliciella pinnatifida specimen with an updated label and updated identification in Arctos after being reclassified from the Gilia genus to the Aliciella genus (Chicago Academy of Sciences)

Ipomopsis multiflora specimen with an updated label and updated identification in Arctos after being reclassified from the Gilia genus to the Ipomopsis genus (Chicago Academy of Sciences)

Staying on top of a continuously evolving nomenclature can prove difficult for Collections staff. Physical labels can become out of date very quickly and are hard to continuously replace with updated ones. However, this challenge further proves the importance of digitizing collections. Even though physically changing labels can be a difficult and time consuming task, editing information on our online database proves much more manageable. Additionally, because a common reason for changing a species’ name is that the same species was described more than once by botanists, digitization of collections around the world becomes even more important so that taxonomists have access to as much information as possible to continue to establish connections between related plant species. Even though taxonomy can be confusing, complicated, and hard to stay on top of at times, updated collections continue to be a helpful tool to taxonomists as they provide digital as well as physical access to specimens that taxonomists might not have access to otherwise.

Marinda Vacanti
Collections Intern

Sources

Kouduka, Mariko et al. “A Solution for Universal Classification of Species Based on Genomic DNA”. International Journal of Plant Genomics, 15 Feb. 2007, doi: 10.1155/2007/27894.

Mori, Scott. “The Shifting Science of Botanical Nomenclature – I”. New York Botanical Garden, 3 June 2013, www.nybg.org/blogs/plant-talk/2013/06/science/the-shifting-science-of-botanical-nomenclature-i/#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20reason%20for,been%20collected%20and%20formally%20described

Ritter, Matt. “Why Plant Names Change”. Pacific Horticulture, 2023, pacifichorticulture.org/articles/why-plant-names-change-2/

“The Story of Gilia and Aliciella”. Southwest Colorado Wildflowers, www.swcoloradowildflowers.com/Pink%20Enlarged%20Photo%20Pages/aliciella.htm

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I often come across a myriad of curiosities when processing the museum’s botanical backlog collection. While much of the fun is in observing the dried, pressed plants themselves, the original labels attached to these specimens can also inspire a thirst for knowledge. A well documented label will contain information such as the identification of a plant, the location it was collected in, the date it was collected on, and whom it was collected by. While transcribing labels from the late 1800s, I found my interest piquing when I came across “Wood’s Holl”. 

Original label from an herbarium specimen, Carex folliculata (Long Sedge), collected by Herman S. Pepoon from “Wood’s Holl”, Massachusetts in August 1897.

Upon entering this name in search engines, the results would return to me as “Woods Hole” instead, which made me think the original label was misspelled, something that does happen occasionally. But, I remembered that it is important to cross check against multiple resources when working with historical locality information to understand the bigger picture; place names often undergo many changes over time, especially the further back in time you go. After some more digging, it turns out the label was not misspelled, but the place name had been changed. My original quest eventually developed into a research adventure that unveiled more the further I looked. Let us take a deeper dive through the area’s history and the changes that came with it.

Woods Hole is a census-designated place in the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts in Barnstable County. Geographically, it is located in the furthest southwest corner of Cape Cod and acts as a strait between Cape Cod and the Elizabeth Islands. Due to its opportune landscape, many industries came to take advantage. The fishing and whaling industry had its share in the early-to-mid-1800s when it was seen as an incredibly profitable business. The harbors of Woods Hole served as whaling stations and ship yards due to its sought after deep-water port and strong currents that kept the local water clean. 

Around 1860, there was a shift in leading industries, causing Woods Hole to then become home of the Pacific Guano Company fertilizer plant. For the later half of the 1800s, Pacific Guano Company utilized the ports of Woods Hole for importing and exporting substances such as sulfur, nitrate of soda, potash, guano, and phosphorus from the Pacific to Europe and the east coast of the United States. They worked in tandem with the nearby fish markets to gather menhaden and other fish scraps to mix in with guano to produce fertilizer that was much more efficient than manure. It is fair to imagine at this point that nearby residents might not have appreciated the smells coming from their neighborhood fertilizer plant. Fortunately for the citizens of Woods Hole (except for those that may have had shares in the company), the guano fertilizer industry saw a decline in profitability, ultimately leading to the plant’s bankruptcy in 1889. The next phase for Woods Hole, however, had a much more promising future.

Sketch depicting the Pacific Guano Company plant which manufactured guano-based fertilizer in Woods Hole, Massachusetts from 1863 to 1889. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

In 1871, Spencer Baird, second Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the first commissioner of the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries (the United States Fish Commission), arrived in Woods Hole and pioneered its transformation into a hub for scientific organizations. Woods Hole became home to research institutions such as the Marine Biological Laboratory in 1888 and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1930. Today, the Woodwell Climate Research Center, NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, the Woods Hole Science Aquarium, the USGS coastal and marine geology center, and more have found their grounding in this area.

An illustration showing a street map of Woods Hole from 1887 compared to an aerial view photo of Woods Hole from more recent years. (NOAA Fisheries & Marinas.com)

Now, back to the label. So why was Woods Hole spelled as “Wood’s Holl” on the original label? Unfortunately, the meaning behind the original spelling of Woods Hole is unclear, but many historians of the area believe it came from the Norse people who visited the area; “holl” is the Norse word for hill, which there are an abundance of in the region’s terrain. The possessive form of “Woods” in the original name is also not clearly attributed to a definitive person or place. Much like its economy, Woods Hole experienced a handful of changes to its name. Holl was changed to “Hole” to reflect the area’s passage between islands as many other inlets in the region are similarly named (ex. Robinson’s Hole, Quick’s Hole). Throughout the late 1800s, the name underwent further minor changes such as restoration back to its original, then back to Woods Hole again with the removal of the apostrophe in “Wood’s”. 

As fascinating as the history of Woods Hole is, there is one other special component of our specimens that brings this story all the way back to the Nature Museum. Almost all of our Woods Hole specimens were collected by a well-known member of the Chicago Academy of Sciences and Illinois Natural History Survey, Herman Silas Pepoon. Pepoon was a local native of Illinois born in 1860 and expressed his interests and passions through many scientific roles, such as doctor, physician and later botanical teacher at Lakeview High School (just down the street to the Nature Museum’s collection facility!), and naturalist. Pepoon was particularly interested in the flora of the midwest and the preservation of botanical specimens in the U.S. After leaving the field of medicine in 1892, Pepoon briefly left Illinois and spent a summer at the Wood’s Hole School of Natural Sciences in Massachusetts. According to his peers, he completed his studies at “the highest rank of anyone enrolled” (Greenwood 1955). Oftentimes, the collectors written on the original labels of our specimens do not have a direct relationship to the Academy, so to stumble upon this relationship between Pepoon, the Academy, and Woods Hole was a eureka moment for me. 

Photograph of a young Herman S. Pepoon and a digital scan of Hibiscus moscheutos (Swamp Rosemallow), a specimen that he collected from Woods Hole, Massachusetts in August 1897. (Chicago Academy of Sciences / Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum)

Here at the collections facility for the Nature Museum, we currently house 28 specimens collected directly from Woods Hole (27 from Pepoon) and 5 specimens collected by Pepoon in the general region of Falmouth, Massachusetts. Of Pepoon’s specimens, one was exchanged from 1893 while the rest were collected in 1897, possibly during a return trip to Massachusetts. These specimens, many of which are native to the region, include Monotropa uniflora also known as Ghost Plant, Pieris Mariana (Piedmont Staggerbush), Rhododendron viscosum (Swamp Azalea), Prunus maritima (Beach Plum), Viburnum molle (Softleaf Arrowwood), and many more. 

Herbarium specimens collected by Herman S. Pepoon from Woods Hole, Massachusetts in the late 1800s.

This investigative experience that has led me through countless tabs on the Internet, several boxes in our archival collections, and many books in our library, has restored my joy and satisfaction in historical research. Although some of the mystery behind the name remains, there was still much information to be gained through my reading. Woods Hole is just one of many places that our botany collection mirrors back to, keeping in mind that the collection has over thousands of plants, all with their own unique stories to fall into. 

Victor Becerril
Collections Technician

Sources

Dawicki, Shelley. “Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Birthplace of NOAA Fisheries.” NOAA Fisheries, 9 Feb. 2021, www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/woods-hole-massachusetts-birthplace-noaa-fisheries. 

Gaines, Jennifer Stone. “Pacific Guano Company.” Spritsail: A Journal of the History of Falmouth and Vicinity, vol. 21, no. 2, 2007. Woods Hole Historical Collection, Woods Hole, MA.

Greenwood, Grace J. “Apple River Canyon State Park” Warren’s Woman Club, 1955.

“Herman Silas Pepoon.” Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, 21 June 2021, naturemuseum.org/2021/06/herman-silas-pepoon/. 

“History of Woods Hole.” Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 23 Jan. 2019, www.whoi.edu/what-we-do/educate/student-life/student-life-cape-cod/history/. 

Ritterbusch, Cory, and William C. Handel. “Biography.” H.S. Pepoon, Pioneer Conservationist of Northwest Illinois: Essays on Ecology 1904-1933, PrairieWorks, Galena, IL, 2011, p. 13. 

Wikipedia contributors. “Woods Hole, Massachusetts.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Mar. 2023. Web. 11 May. 2023.

“Woods Hole: The Early Years.” NOAA Fisheries, 27 Jan. 2022, www.fisheries.noaa.gov/new-england-mid-atlantic/about-us/woods-hole-early-years. 

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There are many reasons why digitizing – the process of creating a digital representation of the physical item – the botany collection is important. One reason is that it makes it easier to know what is in the collection when the information is put into an easily searchable database. Before this effort began, many specimens were still in their original pressing papers in boxes of which the contents were unclear. Once each specimen is fully processed and integrated into the larger collection, storage information is entered into its corresponding record in Arctos so that it can be easily found in the future. Through the online collections management system, Arctos, that the Academy uses, researchers and the public also have access to information in the collection that was previously inaccessible.

The herbarium collection contains specimens that date back as far as 1832. Digitizing this collection provides crucial information about the variety of plant species and where they were historically found. The Wetland Reserve Easement (WRE) and the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) are programs through the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that both aim to restore and conserve environmentally sensitive land that was previously used for agriculture (USDA, n.d.). Integrating specimen data from collections like the Academy’s into restoration assessments can improve efforts such as those through the WRE and CRP by providing information about the composition of historic habitats, ensuring reintroduction and restoration projects are more complete and successful. 

Local botanist Gerould Wilhelm used herbarium collections, including the Academy’s, in the updated edition of his book, “Flora of the Chicago Region”, to identify native plant species, their habitats, and where they were found. Wilhelm had prior knowledge of the Chicago Academy of Sciences’ collection and came in once a week for two years to gather the necessary information for his book. By digitizing the Chicago Academy of Sciences’ collection, the information within is made more readily available to researchers world-wide who may not already know of the museum’s collection and cannot come to Chicago to peruse the collection in person.

Another way that data on the historical presence of plants can be used is in documentation of plant migration. Plants and animals migrate in very different ways. While animals are able to crawl, slither, swim, or fly to new areas, plants are rooted in the soil and unable to move from their spot. Instead, plants migrate from one generation to the next through seed dispersal. Since plant migration takes generations, it is important to know where plant species have historically been found. Scientists have observed that plants are slowly moving to higher altitudes and closer to the poles due to the effects of climate change (Cross 2023, Trefil 1998).

The effect of climate change on plant phenology (the seasonal cycles of plant life) is another way that digitized botany collections have been used. As climate change moves spring conditions earlier and fall conditions later, the flowering and fruiting cycles of local plant species are changing. While ongoing observations can collect data in the present for phenological studies, scientific collections are crucial to compiling data on the historical patterns of these cycles. The historic data in scientific collections are made more easily available to researchers through digitization (Willis et al., 2017, Davis et al., 2015, Robbirt er al., 2011).

Finally, we just do not know the extent to which digitizing our collection will benefit research. There are so many ways that historic collections can be used for future research that has yet to be conceived of. By digitally preserving our collection, we not only ensure that it is accessible to future researchers worldwide but that, even as time slowly degrades the physical specimens, the images and digitized data of the specimen will be available for generations.

Digitizing a collection and providing data and images online makes this information widely available. Historically, if a researcher were interested in obtaining information about specimens in a museum collection or studying a specimen, they would have to travel to those museums, incurring costs and dedicating considerable time. By providing online access to the collection, the museum facilitates broad access for individuals around the world. Digitizing collections also helps protect the physical specimen from damage. By making a digital image of the specimen available, more people are able to see the specimen without the specimen itself being touched. This helps the museum achieve its mandates for long-term preservation of the collection.

Tyler Ricco
Botany Collection Intern

Resources

Charles G. Willis, Edith Law, Alex C. Williams, Brian F. Franzone, Rebecca Bernardos, Lian Bruno, Claire Hopkins, Christian Schorn, Ella Weber, Daniel S. Park, & Charles C. Davis. (2017). CrowdCurio: an online crowdsourcing platform to facilitate climate change studies using herbarium specimens. The New Phytologist, 215(1), 479–488. https://www.jstor.org/stable/90010664

Cross, D. T. (2023, February 9). Scientists are seeking to understand how plants migrate in the face of climate change. Sustainability Times. Retrieved April 14, 2023, from https://www.sustainability-times.com/environmental-protection/scientists-are-seeking-to-understand-how-plants-migrate-in-the-face-of-climate-change/ 

Davis, C. C., Willis, C. G., Connolly, B., Kelly, C., & Ellison, A. M. (2015). Herbarium records are reliable sources of phenological change driven by climate and provide novel insights into species’ phenological cueing mechanisms. American journal of botany, 102(10), 1599–1609. https://doi.org/10.3732/ajb.1500237

Robbirt, K.M., Davy, A.J., Hutchings, M.J. and Roberts, D.L. (2011), Validation of biological collections as a source of phenological data for use in climate change studies: a case study with the orchid Ophrys sphegodes. Journal of Ecology, 99: 235-241. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2745.2010.01727.x

Trefil, J. (1998, September). When plants migrate. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved April 14, 2023, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-plants-migrate-156905950/ 

USDA. (n.d.). About the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Farm Service Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Retrieved April 14, 2023, from https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/conservation-programs/conservation-reserve-program/ 

The post The Importance of Digitizing the Botany Collection appeared first on Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

There’s a unique thrill in preserving historical specimens. It makes history real and gives me an affinity for the individuals who were really there at the time the specimens were collected. Sometimes, when we’re lucky, botanical specimens come with exciting little clues that reveal the sweeping history of 19th century America. 

There are many ways to preserve biological specimens, depending on their type and intended use. For example, animals might be prepared as taxidermy mounts or submerged in jars of various liquid chemicals. When it comes to botanical specimens, the plants are simply pressed and dried, much the same way you would press a flower in an old book. A botanist collecting in the field will use a specialized plant press to clamp layers of specimens together between sheets of paper and cardboard. After the plants are collected and dried, they find their way to an herbarium collection where staff and volunteers complete the preparation by gluing the specimens and their labels to archival herbarium sheets (this is my favorite part of the job). Mounting plants this way is important for a few reasons. It makes the specimens easy to organize and helps keep them safe from physical damage, but it also highlights important features that scientists are likely to study in the future. When pressing and mounting plants, it is preferable to position them where flowers, fruits, roots, and the tops and bottoms of leaves are all visible at the same time. This gives botanists the maximum amount of information to work with. Even after mounting is complete, the preservation process is never quite finished. We continuously protect our collections by storing them in a controlled environment (temperature, light, relative humidity, etc.) while regularly monitoring the space for hungry insect pests.

We are currently working toward fully digitizing the herbarium backlog, which includes many specimens that have remained unmounted since they were collected in the 1800s. Unwrapping these plants from the original papers they were pressed in is like opening a time capsule, especially when those papers happen to be newspapers. It’s easy to get lost in the headlines. On many occasions, I’ve been completely distracted, blissfully reading dispatches from the Spanish-American War, Presidential debates, revolutions in milk pasteurization, and everything in between. Occasionally something in the package catches my eye that confuses me and requires a little bit of research. Recently it was a label that caught my attention. Collectors make individual labels that store all the important information about their specimens, such as the date they were collected, place of collection, scientific name, unique collector number, and sometimes the name of the institution or expedition for which they were collected. 

When confronted with the information on this label, I wondered, why would the Army be collecting plants in Colorado? The answer requires a lot of historical context and I was all too happy to use my librarian skills to figure it out. Here it goes.

The period between the Civil War and the end of the 19th century was a time of fast economic and territorial expansion in the United States. The “Gilded Age” saw populations and industries grow rapidly, along with developments in science and engineering, culminating in a desire to explore and exploit more fully the lands west of the Mississippi River. Multiple government sponsored explorations of the western territories were happening simultaneously around the 1870s, all with their own overlapping objectives. Chief among these objectives was the identification of natural resources that could be used by future settlers, such as timber, water, farmable land, and mineable minerals. It must be noted that this type of exploration typically foreshadowed the removal of Indigenous people from their ancestral homes across North America. Preparing for land disputes with the Native Americans, the government began to install a military presence in the West ahead of the arrival of settlers.  

“The Wheeler Survey,” otherwise known as the “U.S. Geographical Explorations and Surveys West of the 100th Meridian,” was a nine year expedition named for its leader, Lieutenant George M. Wheeler, whose goal was to produce detailed maps of the entire western half of the United States and identify locations for military infrastructure such as outposts and communication lines. Although the expedition primarily served strategic purposes, the party included a number of scientists including astronomers, meteorologists, and naturalists who would make large collections in zoology, paleontology, and botany along the way. These collections served both academic and economic purposes. They would be preserved for study in museum collections, but the botanical specimens in particular were important for documenting the agricultural potential of the territories, which was essential for the planning of future settlements. 

Wheeler Survey views of the American West (Timothy O’Sullivan, 1871-1874), from Library of Congress. 

Using historical documentation from online archives and our own museum library, I can more or less retrace the steps of the very specimens I am mounting today. Annual reports and progress maps published by the government record the itineraries, collections, and personnel of the expedition. We know from our specimen labels, like the one shown above, that the plants were collected by a botanist named John Wolfe, whose name also appears in the official reports from the field season of 1873. The expedition was broken up into multiple smaller parties that would explore different territories simultaneously. Our collector Professor Wolfe was a member of the Colorado party under Lieutenant W. L. Marshall, whose activities are documented in the progress map below. The blue grid marks on the map show the overall goal of the expedition, covering the entire western half of the country, while the areas shaded in gray show the parts that had been surveyed by 1873. We know from the progress map and other documents that the party started the season in Denver and explored a large portion of south-central Colorado.  

So, how did these specimens end up with us in Chicago? Being a federal expedition, all collections from the field each year were deposited first in the National Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Luckily, many duplicate specimens were collected so they could be distributed to other institutions for study, including the Chicago Academy of Sciences. Interestingly, according to the reports, a fraction of the 1871 collections were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire. It’s unclear if the collections were in the Academy’s possession at the time, or if they were en route to DC and just passed through Chicago with bad timing. 

Of the specimens that survived their transcontinental odyssey, a few haven’t exactly stood the test of time. At some point in the last century and a half, pests found their way into John Wolfe’s unmounted specimens and had a feast. While most of the specimens are still in very fine condition, some of them unfortunately have severe insect damage. Tiny reddish-brown insects called drugstore beetles still lay between the pressing papers alongside the plants they vandalized, probably dead for a very long time. Whenever we find pest-damaged specimens, we process them in a freezer to kill off any insects or larvae that might still be alive. As I continue mounting, I use tweezers to collect the bodies of these tiny beetles and drop them into a glass vial. Gross, I know, but saving them for future reference will actually help us in our ongoing pest management efforts. 

Drugstore beetles Stegobium paniceum, a common museum pest.

I enjoy mounting botanical specimens because it’s a necessarily slow and methodical task that also lets me use my arts and crafts skills. It’s pleasantly meditative and gives me a lot of time to contemplate exactly what I’m doing and what it means to me. Contact with historical objects gives me a real sense of continuity between the past and present. It pulls history off the page and reminds me that these events really happened and made a lasting difference, for better or worse. It’s not lost on me that the histories of collecting and colonization often go hand-in-hand, and the Wheeler Survey was certainly no exception. While its collections directly contributed to our knowledge of biodiversity and increased public interest in natural history, members of the very same expedition were guilty of unethical and unscientific practices, such as removing human remains from Native American burial sites, which also ended up in various museum collections. Reckoning with this complicated legacy is a defining feature of the museum profession in the 21st century. As for me, I find myself empathizing with the collectors represented in our herbarium. By handling the specimens and data from individual collectors, we get to know them a little bit. We begin to recognize the specific quirks of their handwriting and we start to understand where they’ve been and who they knew. I’ve picked up a new passion for American history, simply because every handwritten label makes me wonder what life looked like back then, what people were thinking about, what was in the newspaper that day, etc. The Wheeler Survey fascinated me instantly because it’s one of the few cases in my experience when all the answers to my questions were readily available in recorded history. 

Two herbarium specimens collected during the Wheeler Survey, recently mounted and digitized.

So, what was the impact of this whole endeavor? This expedition and its contemporaries, together known as the “Four Great Surveys of the West,” were part of a movement that permanently changed the natural and cultural landscape of the continent. They also represented the end of an era of military controlled scientific explorations. Rivalry and redundancy among the different federal expeditions eventually led to their termination and consolidation into the organization we know as the U.S. Geological Survey in 1879, which remains a major source of scientific data on ecosystems, climate change, and resource management. We happen to have in our herbarium a fraction of a superlatively large collection, according to Lt. Marshall of the Wheeler Survey:

“Dr. J.T. Rothrock and assistant John Wolfe were offered every facility and aid in my power in making collections in natural history, and the results, especially in botany, have probably never been equaled by any exploring or surveying expedition to the West. Nearly 12,000 specimens of plants from over 1,100 different species and large collections in other branches of natural history were gathered by these gentlemen and are now being worked up.”

-Lt. W. L. Marshall

It’s a privilege to play a small part in the story of these specimens, as we continue “working them up” a hundred and fifty years later. 

Alex Lorenz
Collections Technician

Sources

Government Printing Office, & Rothrock, J. T., Catalogue of plants collected in the years 1871, 1872 and 1873 : with descriptions of new species / (1874). Washington D.C.; Engineer Department US Army. Retrieved 2023, from https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100624540. 

Government Printing Office, & Wheeler, G. M., Annual report upon the United States geographical surveys west of the one hundredth meridian in the states and territories of California, Oregon, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming 1–114 (1874). Washington D.C.; Engineer Department US Army. Retrieved from https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006174102.  

Rabbitt, M. C. (2019). The United States Geological Survey: 1879-1989. U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1050. Retrieved March 2, 2023, from https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1050/   

Schubert, F. N. (1980). Vanguard of expansion: Army Engineers in the Trans-mississippi west, 1819-1879. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Digital Library. Historical Division, Office of Administrative Services, Office of the Chief of Engineers. Retrieved 2023, from https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16021coll4/id/265/rec/30.   

O’Sullivan, T. H., Wheeler Survey views of the American West, 1871-1874 (1874). Washington D.C.; War Dept., Corps of Engineers, U.S.A.. Retrieved 2023, from https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2005690349/.  

Progress Map Of Lines And Areas Of Explorations And Surveys. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. (n.d.). Retrieved March 2, 2023, from https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~298~30005:Progress-Map-Of-Lines-And-Areas-Of-?title=Search%2BResults%3A%2BList_No%2Bequal%2Bto%2B%272738.003%27&thumbnailViewUrlKey=link.view.search.url&fullTextSearchChecked=&annotSearchChecked=&dateRangeSearchChecked=&showShareIIIFLink=true&helpUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fdocumentation.lunaimaging.com%2Fdisplay%2FV75D%2FLUNA%2BViewer%23LUNAViewer-LUNAViewer&showTip=false&showTipAdvancedSearch=false&advancedSearchUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fdocumentation.lunaimaging.com%2Fdisplay%2FV75D%2FSearching%23Searching-Searching

Viola, H. J. (1987). Exploring the West. Smithsonian Books. 

Wheeler Survey: Overview. Headquarters U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. (2021, March). Retrieved March 2, 2023, from https://www.usace.army.mil/About/History/Historical-Vignettes/Parks-and-Monuments/142-Wheeler-Overview/  

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In 2021, I found an education internship opportunity with the Nature Museum working for their Teenagers Exploring and Explaining Nature and Science (TEENS) program. Participating in this program as one of the mentors and educators felt very reflective of who I am as a person, someone who enjoys working hands-on with the environment and demonstrating the wonders of nature right outside your door. Being able to spend time with young students who are likewise interested in the environment was a special bonus. The mission of the Nature Museum became very clear to me then, and I realized how much it coincided with my own.

For the past year, I have been working as a Collections Technician at the Nature Museum’s collections storage facility in Ravenswood to make advances to their botanical collection. Little did I expect that I would be exercising skills that I have had since I was a child. From high school, I believed that your career would reflect the skills that you learned through school and the interests you developed in classes. When searching for jobs that catered to my career, I never thought to look for ones that would engage what I was already naturally good at, only ones that would complement the education that I received. Some might blame it on my Virgo astrological placements, but I have always had the natural tendency to organize things and follow strict guidelines, to make lists and create spreadsheets, to establish routines, to analyze data, and find a neat category for everything. It wasn’t until working with the botanical collection that I realized I was utilizing these inborn traits to get my work done more efficiently. 

The typical steps for processing backlog botany material include mounting specimens onto herbarium sheets, cataloging specimens into a database, printing standardized labels, scanning specimens, and lastly, integrating them into storage cabinets for preservation and future use. Much of these tasks may appear mundane and repetitive as they consist of cycling through the same steps multiple times for numerous specimens, most of which are done on a computer. I have not found many other people who are fond of typing the same information over and over again, but to me, it’s a treat. The “treat” aspect being  the personal gratification I get when I can see the difference my efforts make. Although seeing how much of one task I can complete in a day is part of the fun, I prefer to first find the most efficient path to completing a task, whether that involves keyboard shortcuts, writing preparatory outlines, or organizing taxonomy alphabetically. The process of streamlining these steps and discovering the most convenient approach, all while maintaining accuracy, is my way of having “fun”. Being able to apply these innate skills through my work almost makes my day feel as if I am not actually working; everything is being done how I would normally do it at home. 

Although working with the Nature Museum has brought a lot of personal connection between myself, my habits, and the work that I do, there are other broader impacts. Sharing the fruit of my work with others is by far the most rewarding aspect. Part of the botanical backlog project is to make the collection more accessible to the public online. Oftentimes, archival websites like these are not the most user-friendly, have finicky search engines, and are constantly changing. In emphasizing consistency and clean data, I ultimately try to make sure our botany collection becomes easier to search through. Additionally, the more specimens we are able to process, the more information that can be discovered along the way. I can continue to enjoy being meticulous at work knowing that even the smallest details will have a larger impact.

Victor Becerril
Collections Technician

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While georeferencing, the red-bellied snake caught my eye. A Cook County native, this small snake is unmistakably beautiful. The red-bellied snake, also known as the redbelly snake or Storeria occipitomaculata, is named for the red (sometimes orange or pink) strip that goes down its belly. This stripe gives the snake’s underside a vibrant look compared to its brown, black or gray back. Its stripe and small stature (about four to ten inches in length) give the red-bellied snake a charming look that even the most snake-wary people can find approachable (iNaturalist, n.d.).

One thing I found interesting about the red-bellied snake is its diet. Due to its small size, the red-bellied snake cannot eat very big prey. This snake mostly survives on a diet of earthworms and slugs with the occasional snail or insect larvae thrown into the mix. Since the red-bellied snake is non-venomous and so small, it does not pose a threat to humans and pets (Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, 2021). In fact, the red-bellied snake is preyed upon by many animals, including raccoons, largemouth bass, and hawks. When threatened, the snake will flatten itself, show its black mouth, emit a foul odor, and even play dead (Snake Facts, n.d.).

I chose to write about the red-bellied snake due to its native range. In the Academy’s collection, red-bellied snake specimens were collected from throughout Cook County in Thatcher Woods, Wheeling, and Chicago. I believe that it is important for people to learn about the animals native to where they live. This snake can also be found throughout the eastern half of the United States, as far North as Southern Canada and as far South as the Gulf of Mexico (Hammerson, 2007).

Caption:  A map of where the Chicago Academy of Sciences’ red-bellied snake specimens were found. This map was created through the process of georeferencing and can be further explored here.

The red-bellied snake enjoys habitats with plenty of ground cover like woodlands, marshes, and prairies (Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, 2021). This species is often found with snakes of the same species or other small snakes in a group called a den, bed, nest, or pit (Conjecture Corporation, n.d.). The red-bellied snake population is categorized as being of least concern according to the IUCN Red List (Hammerson, 2007).

As a reptile, the red-bellied snake is cold blooded and thus unable to regulate its own body temperature. Due to this fact, its daily activity changes with each season. The red-bellied snake hibernates in the winter, is diurnal (active during the day) in the spring and fall, and nocturnal (active at night) in the hot summer months (Snake Facts, n.d.). 

Tyler Ricco
Georeferencing Intern, Fall 2022

References

Bloom, T. D. S., Flower, A., & DeChaine, E. G. (2017, December 6). Why georeferencing matters: Introducing a practical protocol to prepare species occurrence records for spatial analysis. Wiley Online Library. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.7397 

Conjecture Corporation. (n.d.). What is a group of snakes called? All Things Nature. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://www.allthingsnature.org/what-is-a-group-of-snakes-called.htm 

Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida. (2021, September 8). Red-bellied snake. Florida Museum. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-snake-id/snake/red-bellied-snake/ 

Gagnon, J. (2018, November 18). Northern redbelly snake (subspecies Storeria occipitomaculata occipitomaculata). iNaturalist. Retrieved November 29, 2022, from https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/18486447

GIS Resources. (2013, September 6). What is georeferencing? GIS Resources. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://gisresources.com/georeferencing-2/ 

Hammerson, G. A. (2007). Storeria occipitomaculata. IUCN red list of threatened species. Retrieved November 29, 2022, from https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/63930/12729296

iNaturalist. (n.d.). Red-bellied snake (Storeria occipitomaculata). iNaturalist. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/28557-Storeria-occipitomaculata 

IUCN. (2022). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2022-1. Retrieved December 8, 2022 from https://www.iucnredlist.org

Snake Facts. (n.d.). Red-bellied snake. Snake Facts. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://snake-facts.weebly.com/red-bellied-snake.html#:~:text=Their%20defensive%20behaviors%20when%20startled,as%20the%20congeneric%20eastern%20hognose

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Some of the most visually striking organisms bear a resemblance to their extinct prehistoric relatives. They transport our imaginations to a time when the land beneath our feet looked very different and starred a completely different cast of plants and animals. While dinosaurs and other giants come to mind, small and unassuming plants, like this club moss, can also tell exciting stories about the alien world of Earth’s deep past. 

Club mosses have a deceptive name. Despite their fuzzy green appearance, they are not mosses at all.  Where does this confusion come from, you might ask? In the system of scientific classification, every species has an official scientific name, which is usually based in Latin or Greek (eg. Dendrolycopodium dendroideum, seen here). To make it easier for us pronunciation-wise, most species also have a common name, an unofficial nickname we can use for convenience. Misleading nicknames are everywhere in botany. Many species have multiple common names that vary by culture, dialect, or geographic region. Scientific names help cut through vernacular confusion by providing a standardized language that can be used by all different speakers.   

So, if they’re not true mosses, then what are they? Club mosses belong to a Class of plants called Lycophytes, which are more closely related to ferns and other vascular plants. Like ferns, club mosses are seedless plants, which means they reproduce by releasing a large number of extremely tiny spores. In some species, the spores are released from club-shaped structures that give the plants their nickname (visible on the specimen above). These long-lived evergreen plants are native to moist woodland habitats throughout North America. You might encounter them on a hike if you look low and pay attention to their short, upright stems emerging from the leaf litter. 

Some club mosses go by the common name “ground pine” because they resemble miniature conifer trees with their scaly or needle-like leaves. It’s an interesting coincidence because the ancient relatives of club mosses were enormous tree-like plants that dominated swampy forests millions of years before modern trees ever evolved. The forests of the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago would have looked very alien to us. Let’s set the scene. Enormous ferns and horsetails fill the wet primeval forest. The air hums with the sound of a gigantic dragonfly with a wingspan as long as your arm. The tallest trees around are over one-hundred feet tall, with a curious bark texture that looks like a reptile’s scales. This “scale tree” is the titanic prehistoric cousin of our little club moss. The fossils of these extinct Lycophytes and their fellow swamp dwellers are found abundantly at a world-famous paleontological site near Chicago called Mazon Creek. 

Mazon Creek is known for its exceptionally well-preserved fossils. Multiple climatic and geological factors in this ancient environment combined to create conditions ideal for preservation. Typically when organisms die, they decay rapidly from exposure to air, bacteria, and fungi, leaving no permanent trace. At this site, however, the habitat was buried suddenly and completely, encasing everything in sediment and preserving plants and more in the fossil record. The Academy’s paleontology collection includes a large selection of Mazon Creek fossils, including fragments of the giant Lycophytes. Our botany collection contains multiple specimens of modern Lycophytes, the club mosses. Natural history collections give scientists the ability to closely study the anatomy of living and extinct species to discover details about their evolution and relationships. This way, all life on Earth can be organized into a big hierarchical family tree called a taxonomy. Life’s taxonomy is not finished, nor is it written in stone. It’s a puzzle with missing pieces. As scientists discover more through anatomical and genetic studies, they often revise the taxonomy by renaming species and reorganizing their relationships in the family tree. 

The two fossil specimens above show examples of the bark texture that gave scale trees their nickname. The individual scales are actually scars called leaf cushions – they mark the points where leaves once grew from the trunk. An immature scale tree might have looked a little like an oversized club moss: a straight unbranched column with leaves growing out from the stem. Eventually, the trunk would shed its leaves and the top of the tree would branch off and divide into many leafy twigs, looking more like a typical, modern tree.

These specimens are the fossilized twigs of an extinct Lycophyte. These are small and look quite similar to some living club mosses. However, these are likely just the tips of a much larger tree. 

Both living and extinct Lycophytes have important economic uses for humans. Club Mosses have been used for a variety of medicinal and therapeutic purposes for centuries. The remains of extinct Lycophytes, like giant scale trees, are burned for energy in the form of coal. Coal is a result of ancient plant matter being buried under immense pressure by sedimentary rock. Most major coal deposits are the remains of Carboniferous age swamps, which gives them the nickname “coal forests.” Mazon Creek is not just a fossil site, it is also the site of former coal mines. In fact, many of the fossils collected there were originally excavated and discarded as miners dug through the fossil-rich rocks to access the layers of coal below. 

Lycophytes, the club mosses, and their extinct cousins, might be easily overlooked when you consider all the other interesting specimens in the museum. However, you’ll find that even the most obscure and diminutive details in nature have epic stories to tell if you give them a chance.

Alex Lorenz
Collections Technician

Sources

Candeias, M. (2021, February 27). The rise and fall of the scale trees. In Defense of Plants. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://www.indefenseofplants.com/blog/2018/11/13/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-scale-trees

Clubmosses. Western Carolina Botanical Club. (2020, October 11). Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://wcbotanicalclub.org/clubmosses/

Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Lycophyte. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/plant/lycophyte

Fossil Lycophytes. Sam Noble Museum. (2018, January 30). Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://samnoblemuseum.ou.edu/common-fossils-of-oklahoma/plant-fossils/fossils-by-plant-group/fossil-lycophytes/

Jennings, J. R. (1990). Guide to Pennsylvanian Fossil Plants of Illinois (Ser. 13). Illinois State Geological Survey. 

Lobstein, M. (2020, October 21). Clubmosses: An ancient and interesting group of “Fern allies”. Prince William Wildflower Society. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://vnps.org/princewilliamwildflowersociety/botanizing-with-marion/clubmosses-an-ancient-and-interesting-group-of-fern-allies/#:~:text=Club%20moss%20spores%20and%20teas,and%20inducing%20labor%20in%20pregnancy

Wittry, J. (2020). A comprehensive guide to the fossil flora of Mazon Creek. Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois (ESCONI). 

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Morpho butterflies and Atlas moths are two very cool insects that you can find in Animal Crossing AND see in real life at the Nature Museum! Entomologist Allen works with Atlas moths and common morpho butterflies in the Judy Istock Butterfly Haven. Today, we’re taking a closer look at these very cool insects and answering some common questions. Like, do Atlas moths eat? Do Atlas moths have mouths? And why are morpho butterflies blue? Get ready to head to the island museum in this episode of Curious By Nature!

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