Though plants provide the food, shelter, and oxygen that sustain all other living beings, we are only beginning to understand how even the most familiar plant ecosystems are responding to environmental disturbances such as pollution, human land-use and global climate change. Fortunately to understand our future, we can also look to signs from the past.

Historic plant collections can provide an essential perspective for studying long-term changes in these environments because they chronicle distinct species–and whole communities of organisms–that have lived in particular places and at different points in time. Right now, the New York Botanical Garden is partnering with 14 other research institutions to develop a groundbreaking new dataset for all specimens of vascular plants collected from the Northeast US*.

By connecting this network of researchers to the data captured by 1.3 million preserved specimens, participants in this citizen science expedition will help to illuminate subtle variations in species richness and forest composition over time. With your help, understanding how changes in the environment have affected the forests of yesterday will help us to predict how current human behavior will shape the forests of tomorrow!

*This project is funded by an award from the National Science Foundation (EF-1503583)

Charles Zimmerman, Herbarium Collections & Outreach Administrator, The New York Botanical Garden

We are excited to embark on a new insect-themed expedition, Aquatic Insects of the Southeastern United States. This expedition will delve into the ‘wet’ portion of the Clemson University Arthropod Collection, where vast holdings of aquatic insects are preserved and curated. Aquatic insects are a very diverse group, covering some members of nearly all the insect orders (from larval flies to adult beetles), and all the members of several large orders, like mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, and dragon- and damselflies.

Aquatic insects are important because most have rather narrow environmental tolerances, and are very sensitive to changes in water temperature and quality – they are important sentinels, or canaries in the aquatic coal mine, helping scientists and environmental professionals measure aquatic ecosystem health and water quality. By improving our understanding of their historical distributions around the southeastern United States, we will be that much better able to assess and interpret modern and future changes in their distributions and abundances.

We are excited about launching two new “themes” this week in advance of WeDigBio.  Yesterday, we launched our first fossil themed expedition, and we want to let you know about some cool badges you can get for helping us with efforts to transcribe fossil trilobite labels.  You gain the first badge, Junior Preparator (shown large below) for just taking part and doing 1 transcription.  The Senior Preparator badge is earned for completing 10 transcriptions and the Curator badge for completing 100.  Get all three!

Join paleontologists of all ages in looking at images of fossil specimens and contribute to our understanding of Earth’s past life.
Notes from Nature is pleased to announce that we’re unveiling our fossil label transcription service in honor of National Fossil Day and WeDigBio. Log in or sign up now to begin looking at fossil specimens from around the world in various museum collections.

Our first transcription expedition consists of a significant collection of Cambrian trilobites casted by Charles Deiss, of Indiana University. Dr. Deiss visited many world-class institutions to make these plaster molds as perfect replicas of the fossils contained in the original museums for his research. Plaster molds were used by Dr. Deiss and other scientists in the early part of the 20^th century because 3D scanning and printing didn’t exist yet! Fortunately, sharing research data is considerably easier with new technology AND helpers like YOU! Thanks for enabling others to find out more about this world-class collection of fossils and molds by transcribing labels from this unique collection!

Every year, October 12^th marks a special day in which we celebrate the history of life on earth with the best record we have available…fossils!

On this day we are very pleased to announce that we will be launching a new interface for fossil transcription just in time for WeDigBio. We are collaborating with Indiana University and the first expedition will consists of a significant collection of Cambrian trilobites.

Please keep an eye out over the coming days for this new set of specimen images and consider helping out with this unique collection.

— The Notes From Nature Team

A big event is around the corner for herbaria worldwide. WeDigBio, a worldwide digitizing event, is happening October 20-23, that’s just 8 days away!  Many herbaria are planning events for students and citizen scientists to gather online or onsite for talks, workshops, and more. This is all in an effort to encourage the digitizing of collections. SERNEC is planning to have 9 collections represented. You can see if there is one happening near you on the WeDigBio event list.

This is not just limited though to large herbaria but also smaller universities collections. This event will give people an opportunity to learn what is going on in the natural history collection world and they can help mobilize critical biodiversity data for public use. Please consider joining us onsite or online next week.

Jordan Willet — Graduate Student at Appalachian State University

Recently an undergraduate student was transcribing herbarium labels using Notes From Nature as part of “The Physician’s Garden,” a course at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that combines botany, chemistry, gardening, history, and citizen science.

Herbarium staff were helping the student learn how to read herbarium labels – how to enter collector name, where to enter the date the plant was collected, how to tease apart location and habitat – when a specimen with an insulting place name came up on the screen. Ahhhh… yes… a Curatorial Cringe Moment. From time to time, we come across labels that contain insulting or otherwise unfortunate place names. I had failed to even think about a specimen such as this popping up on Notes From Nature. For those interested, you can look up Mt. Jefferson in western North Carolina, U.S.A. to see the name that is used to be called. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Jefferson_(North_Carolina)] This happens to be a well collected area with lots of interesting plants, so we have many specimens from this area.

Fortunately, the student was gracious about it, “Hey, history is history,” was his comment and it prompted a discussion about how the mountain got its name, what the mountain is called now, and how to deal with cringeworthy herbarium labels on Notes From Nature in the future.

One source on Wikipedia claims that the mountain got its name from the many African Americans who lived on the mountain to escape slavery. More likely the name actually comes from the dark coloration of amphibolite and metagraywacke rocks of the mountain. Dr. Asa Gray called it by such name in his notes from his trip to the mountains of North Carolina in 1841 because of the coloration of the rocks. When the peak became a State Natural Area in 1956, the name was changed to Mount Jefferson in honor of Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States.

Nearby Mulatto Mountain, with its somewhat lighter rock hues, is further from the beaten path and has not been renamed. If we were to re-name Mulatto Mountain, my personal choice would be Mount Hemings, a nod to the complexity of race, love, property, freedom and history in the life-long relationship between Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and Sally Hemings (c. 1773-1835).

Lest one think that a reference like this is associated only with places in The Land of Dixie, a quick perusal of herbarium specimens on sernecportal.org yields Creeks/Mountains/Heads/Points/Islands etc. from Idaho, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Washington and California with the same unfortunate use.

So, what is a Curator to do with offensive or insulting place names? First of all, take a deep breath and like my undergraduate, concede that “history is history.” Second, pick up and read From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim and Inflame by Mark Monmonier, published in 2006 by University of Chicago Press. “Offensive toponyms fall into two categories. One type…denigrates racial and ethnic groups. The other variety…offends folks bothered by rude or otherwise impolite references to body parts, sex, excrement, and other no-no’s.”

So, armed with Tolerance for History and Appreciation of Anatomy, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Herbarium has resolved to Keep Calm & Continue Databasing old specimens from now-Mount Jefferson (North Carolina), “Dildo Cove” (Newfoundland, Canada), “Shitten Creek” (Oregon), “Jap Valley” (California) or, going for the double bonus of derogatory and anatomical, “Squaw Tit” (Arizona).

We welcome your thoughts on this issue and also end by reminding everyone that our social mores and values change, usually for the better, and what was seen as acceptable in in the 1800’s is not so in 2016.

Carol Ann McCormick, Curator, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Herbarium