From Art Nouveau to Wildflowers

Margaret Armstrong often used plant motifs, in this case the Coast Range Mariposa Lily (1); source.

By 1913, American graphic artist Margaret Armstrong had all but abandoned her successful career in cover design. It's true that Art Nouveau, whose flowing undulating lines she found so inspiring, was falling out of fashion, and that cheaper printed paper dust jackets were replacing decorative covers. But these trends were largely coincidental. Armstrong gave up her career for a very different reason. She was writing a book about her passion—the wildflowers of the American West.

Armstrong family c. 1910s; Margaret lower right (source).

Margaret Neilson Armstrong was born in New York in 1867 to a wealthy and artistic family. Her father, a diplomat, studied oil painting while in Italy, and also worked in stained glass, as did her sister Helen. Margaret started her career as a graphic designer in the 1880s, and by 1890 was specializing in book covers and bindings. She produced covers in her popular distinctive style for at least 270 books, including works by well-known authors such as Washington Irving, Henry Thoreau, Henry Van Dyke and John Greenleaf Whittier, as well as the popular botany books of Francis Theodora Parsons (aka Mrs. William Starr Dana).

Armstrong marked her covers with the monogram “MA” (upper right corner). Winding banner reads: "New leaf, new life, the days of frost are o’er" (source).

By 1908, Armstrong’s output began to decrease noticeably as she devoted more and more time to her passion for plants. This wasn't terribly surprising to those who knew her, for she had been an enthusiastic naturalist since childhood (2). Things got exciting in 1911, when Armstrong (then in her mid-forties) and three gal friends toured the American West, seeking adventure as well as plants. They rode horses down into the Grand Canyon, and crossed the Victoria Glacier above Lake Louise to climb to the Mitre Col (see her 1912 article). While they weren’t the first women to accomplish these things (3), they were operating far outside the norm, and enjoyed themselves immensely for it.

“We found the rope very much in our way, but we saw the necessity of it when we came to a crevasse: a wonderful, shining, blue-green crack, its walls fringed with icicles, cleft in the bosom of the glacier. It was a long, dizzy step across …”

Armstrong continued to travel the western United States—studying, sketching and collecting wildflowers. None of the existing field guides adequately covered the area west of the Rocky Mountains (4), and she was eager to produce one herself. But as she noted, “the field is vast, including within its limits all sorts of climate and soil, producing thousands of flowers, infinite in variety and wonderful in beauty, their environment often as different as that of Heine's Pine and Palm” (quotes here and below are from Armstrong's Field Book). Out of this multitude, she chose some 550 of the more common species for her book—from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

Field Book of Western Wild Flowers was published in 1915 (available online here). At first glance it might appear academic. It's organized by family, and includes a technical family key, genus as well as species descriptions, and a glossary of technical terms. Both common and scientific (Latin) names are used, the latter following accepted nomenclature of the time (5). Species descriptions address all relevant characters.

Yet Armstrong intended the guide to be “mainly for the general public.” Toward that end, it was “fully illustrated” with 500 line drawings and 48 color paintings, all done by Armstrong from live specimens. And she didn’t restrict herself to dry technical descriptions. She added vignettes about the beauty, oddness, enchantment, and even danger that one might encounter in meeting these wildflowers.

Let's look at some of her chosen subjects (images from BHL Western Wild Flowers Flickr album unless noted):

White Evening Primrose, Pachylophus marginatus, is today’s Oenothera cespitosa. “There is a patch of these wonderful flowers in the Grand Canyon on Bright Angel trail, halfway between the rim and the plateau, where in a shaded spot beside a great rock the pure blossoms seem to shed a moonlight radiance.”

Yellow Avalanche Lily, Erythronium grandiflorum, was also called Dogtooth Violet in Armstrong’s day. “A patch of these flowers bordering the edge of a glacier, as if planted in a garden-bed, is a sight never to be forgotten. Pushing their bright leaves right through the snow they gayly swing their golden censers in the face of winter and seem the very incarnation of spring.”

Erythronium grandiflorum pushing "right through the snow" (source).

Armstrong's Bi-colored or Parti-colored Lupine, Lupinus stiversii, is now called Harlequin Lupine. “One of the prettiest and most conspicuous kinds [of lupines], for its coloring is unusual … fragrant flowers, over half an inch long, with rose-colored wings and a yellow standard, changing to orange in fading. The combination of pink, orange, and yellow is very striking.”

Lupinus stiversii (source).

Pride of California, Lathyrus splendens, “has such glorious flowers, so superb in color and form, that it is by far the handsomest of its kind and not to be mistaken for any other.” (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Snow Plant, Sarcodes sanguinea, is “a strange plant, widely celebrated for its peculiar beauty … The plants are shaded with red all over, from flesh color, to rose, carmine, and blood-red, and are translucent in texture, so that when a shaft of sunlight strikes them they glow with wonderful brilliance, almost as if lighted from within. …They are pointed out to tourists by Yosemite stage drivers, but the government forbids their being picked, for fear of extermination.”

Indian Pipe, Monotropa uniflora, is “all translucent white, beautiful but unnatural, glimmering in the dark heart of the forest like a pallid ghost, mournfully changing to gray and black as it fades” (source).

Monotropa uniflora (source).

Armstrong was quite impressed by this cholla, Opuntia fulgida—now called jumping or chain fruit cholla, Cylindropuntia fulgida. “A horrible shrub, or dwarf tree … The distant effect of this plant is a pale, fuzzy mass, attractive in color, giving no hint of its treacherous character more like a wild beast than a plant! The joints suggest a very ferocious chestnut-burr and break off at a touch, thrusting their spines deeply into the flesh of the unwary passer-by, so that the Indian story, that this plant flings its darts at wayfarers from a distance, might almost as well be true, and the barbs making the extraction difficult and painful.” (source).

Cylindropuntia fulgida (source).

I learned of Margaret Armstrong and her wildflower book only recently, by way of Flickr where the color plates have been uploaded by Biodiversity Heritage Library. They’re available for download, are copyright-free, and have been tagged (partly by yours truly) so that they will come up in searches (scientific name, common name, artist name and more). If you’re looking for a fascinating citizen science opportunity, checkout BHL on Flickr for more information.

Notes

(1) The Coast Range Mariposa Lily, Calochortus vestae, was C. luteus var. oculatus in Armstrong’s day. She considered mariposa lilies to be the most characteristic flowers of the West. “They grow freely all through the West, as far north as British America, and down into Mexico, but they never get east of Nebraska, so these gay and graceful flowers may be considered the peculiar property of the West.” C. vestae was “one of the most beautiful of all the Mariposas.”

(2) Armstrong had no formal training in botany.

(3) Armstrong and her companions are sometimes referred to as the first white women to reach the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But from her account of the trip, it’s clear that others had gone before. She included a story told by their guide of a female tourist who refused to ride back up to the rim, and had to be hauled out on a litter.

(4) In her Preface, Armstrong states that hers “is the only fully illustrated book of western flowers, except Miss Parsons's charming book, which is for California only” (Wild Flowers of California by Mary Elizabeth Parsons, 1900). She doesn’t mention Rocky Mountain Flowers by Frederic and Edith Clements, published in 1914—possibly too late to be noted in her book. In any case, Armstrong didn't include species found only in the Rockies.

(5) Armstrong recruited a small army of botanical experts for help with identification and nomenclature. In her acknowledgements, she noted that “Professor J. J. Thornber, of the University of Arizona, is responsible for the botanical accuracy of the text and his knowledge and patient skill have made the book possible.” She thanked eight experts on the flora of the western United States for “most valuable assistance in the determination of a very large number of specimens …” and eight others for advice and assistance (including luminaries such as Alice Eastwood, WL Jepson, Marcus Jones and NL Britton).

Sources

Armstrong, Margaret. 1912. “Canyon and Glacier” in The Overland Monthly ser. 2 v. 59. Available here courtesy HathiTrust.

Armstrong, Margaret. 1915. Field book of western wild flowers. London,C. [sic] P. Putnam's Sons. Available here courtesy Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Tagging Edith Clements’s Art

“If it succeeds in opening the eyes of the passer-by to an appreciation of the flowers by the way, or in further stimulating an already awakened interest, it will have served its purpose.” Edith S. Clements, March 30, 1915

I wish I could tell Dr. Clements what I’ve been doing. Given her desire to share the joy of wildflowers, I think she would be pleased. She’s been dead for 47 years now, but if she lingers in spirit, I bet she’s not the least bit upset that I’ve been tagging her paintings.

I should explain … I do not scribble graffiti across them. Rather I mark them subtly with names in Latin and English, visible only in response a cursor. I’m a citizen scientist, part of a crowd sourced to tag (label) Flickr photos uploaded by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. It’s a symbiotic relationship. I supply tags, and BHL indulges my interest in scientific explorers of the American West, in this case, Edith Schwartz Clements.

Edith was one half of Clements and Clements, the other being her husband, Frederic. They met as students at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Both graduated in 1898—Frederic with a doctorate in botany, Edith with a bachelor’s degree in German. She then went on to obtain a doctorate in botany while minoring in Germanic philology and geology.

Edith and Frederic married in 1899, starting a long life of botanical collaboration in the American West. They would become known as pioneering plant ecologists, ardent proponents of ecological succession, and plant communities associated with specific habitats—controversial concepts then as well as now.

The Clementses in the field; note ghostly third person mid photo (American Heritage Center).

Their botanical interests extended beyond research. Edith, especially, wanted to raise awareness of and appreciation for native plants. Toward this end, they published plant identification guides aimed at both professional field botanists and plant lovers in general (1). The first was Rocky Mountain Flowers; an illustrated guide for plant-lovers and plant-users (1914, 2nd ed. 1920). The format is familiar to today’s botanists: a key to plant families; then within each family a description followed by a key to genera; and within each genus a description followed by a key to species. But there’s more. Hoping to make the book more useful and appealing, the Clementses included illustrations. The result is remarkable. With each color plate, the dull botanical text gives way to exuberant life.

A multitude of gentians.

Members of the snapdragon, bladderwort and broomrape families.

The color plates are both functional and artistic, with plant parts accurately portrayed, and multiple species beautifully arranged.

Orchids and irises.

Line drawings were used where color would be a waste of effort and cost, e.g., for the goosefoot family with its small inconspicuous flowers.

The goosefoot family (Chenopodiaceae, now part of Amaranthaceae).

In the bottom right corner of each plate (click on images to view) is the name of the artist—Edith S. Clements. Her role as illustrator is not mentioned elsewhere in the book. Were the Clementses concerned that Frederick would be considered the author, and Edith relegated to illustrator?

Edith obviously was a skilled artist (2), but I’ve yet to find anything about her training. Perhaps drawing and painting came naturally. In her memoir, Adventures in Ecology: half a million miles, from mud to macadam, she occasionally mentions botanical illustration, but gives no details as to how she started.

“Nor did it take long [after marriage] to discover that my skill with pencil and brush could be turned to good account in laboratory studies of plant life …”

Photo provided by Jon Obert (pers. comm.).

A year after the first edition of Rocky Mountain Flowers appeared, the 25 color plates—175 “of the most beautiful and striking flowers of the mountains and plains of the West”—were published as Flowers of Mountain and Plain (1915), with Edith as author. This book was “intended primarily for travelers and flower lovers who wish a short cut to recognizing flowers seen on excursions or from car windows. It may also serve as a souvenir of pleasant summer days or vacation trips.”

The format was simple: colored plates and corresponding lists of plant names. Five years later, an enlarged second edition was released, with species descriptions added.

“Primrose, Primula Parryi (Plate 16, fig. 3) The red-purple blossoms of this Primrose grow in large, loose clusters on stems 6 in.-2 ft. tall. The plants are strong-scented and are found hidden away in alpine rock-clefts or along subalpine torrents at 9000-14000 ft. They bloom in early and midsummer and have a fragrance very like musk. The flowers are large and resemble those of the cultivated primroses.”

Members of the primrose, wintergreen and heath families; Parry’s primrose upper left.

I discovered Flowers of Mountain and Plain while browsing the Flickr photostream of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. BHL is a consortium of the world’s leading natural history libraries, which have been digitizing their public domain holdings documenting the world’s biological diversity. The collection includes many old books and journals often difficult to access in the non-digital world. This is a fantastic resource given my interest in scientific exploration of the American West.

BHL holdings can be searched, which is extremely useful. But this generally applies only to text. The wealth of illustrations—works of art in many cases—are not always easy to discover within a particular volume. To facilitate access, and to raise awareness of what BHL offers, illustrations are being uploaded to Flickr. The BHL photostream now includes more than 120,000 images, emphasizing “historic illustrations created through traditional printing techniques.” All are available for free download and re-use.

However, photos alone won’t solve the access problem. Users still need a way to find what they want among many thousands of images. To help, BHL has created themed collections, and has turned to crowdsourcing, enlisting citizen scientists to tag (label) images with names and more.

“Ever wanted to take a break and scan through some of the cool images of flora and fauna in the BHL collection? With the BHL Flickr account, you can! … By volunteering to help us tag images, you'll be helping to transform biodiversity research.” (more at BHL on Flickr and this tutorial).

Tagging BHL plant illustrations generally is straight-forward. For the species featured, find the scientific name, perhaps on the plate itself or in the associated text, and add it as a tag; add one for common name if known; add one or more tags for geographic information; and so forth (3). Edith Clements’s illustrations provide an extra challenge because each plate includes multiple species. But BHL has an easy way around this. First, mark a single plant with a box, then add tags to the box. All tagging steps are clearly explained in the tutorial.

When the cursor moves over a box, tags are revealed—in this case for the Silvery Lupine.

If Edith Clements were with us today, I’m sure she would be thrilled that BHL has put her paintings online, and is recruiting citizen scientists to tag them (4). What a wonderful convergence of missions past and present! Clements was determined to share with the general public the beautiful and fascinating diversity of native plants, and BHL and its volunteer taggers are doing just that. As a grant reviewer noted: “They wish to realize (using contemporary technologies and media) what these 18th to early 20th century naturalists originally intended – a searchable, visual inventory of all things in the natural world, here in the form of botanic illustrations.”

Rocky Mountain bee plant, Cleome (Peritoma) serrulata.

Notes

(1) In addition to books mentioned here, the Clementses authored Flowers of Coast and Sierra (Edith, 1928) and Flower Families and Ancestors (Edith and Fredric, 1928).

(2) National Geographic published two articles featuring Edith Clement’s wildflower paintings and descriptions, a testament to her skill: “Wild Flowers of the West” (May 1927) and “Flower Pageant of the Midwest” (August 1939).

(3) BHL encourages taggers to use machine tags where applicable: “… a machine tag is a tag with special formatting to allow it to be read by computers.” With machine tags, BHL Flickr photos can be harvested and used by other biodiversity databases, for example the Encyclopedia of Life. More information available here and in the BHL tagging tutorial.

(4) BHL needs biodiversity taggers! No experience required—taggers range from fledgling citizen scientists to professionals. The collections include all kinds of organisms, so you can work on your favorite critters. For more information, see this BHL post about tagging.

Sources

Thanks to Jon Obert for detailed biographical information about Edith Clements (summarized in blog post listed below). Thanks also to Grace Costantino, Biodiversity Heritage Library Outreach and Communication Manager, for answers and explanations regarding BHL’s Flickr project.

Clements, Edith S. 1920 (2nd ed., enl.). Flowers of mountain and plain. New York: H.W. Wilson Co.
BHL: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/62285#/summary
BHL Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/sets/72157632108046380/

Clements, Edith S. c1960. Adventures in ecology: half a million miles: from mud to macadam. New York: Pageant Press. Free online, HathiTrust Digital Library, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001493487

Clements, Frederic E., and Clements, Edith S. 1920 (c1914). Rocky Mountain flowers: an illustrated guide for plant-lovers and plant-users. New York: H. W. Wilson.
BHL: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/62488#/summary
BHL Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/albums/72157627850875157

Oberg, Jon H. 2013 (May). Nebraska Hall of Fame, Part II: Edith Schwartz Clements. Three Capitals, http://viewfromthreecapitals.blogspot.com/2013/05/nebraska-hall-of-fame-part-ii-edith.html

Rehbein, A. 2017. How do you solve a problem like illustrations? NDSR at BHL. https://ndsrbhl.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-illustrations/

Tree of the Month: the Poison Nut Tree

Poison Nut Tree, Strychnos nux-vomica; artist unknown (BHL on Flickr).

It was Dr. William Roxburgh, botanist with the East India Company, who introduced me to the Poison Nut Tree. Actually, it was the beautiful illustration by his anonymous artist-assistant, now on Flickr. And to be honest, the chilling scientific name grabbed me first: Strychnos nux-vomica. That's strychnos as in strychnine (the poison’s name was derived from the plant’s), and nux-vomica for the deadly, nausea-inducing seeds (nuts, nux).

Roxburgh arrived in India in 1776, having been hired by the Company as a surgeon (physician). He also was a botanist, and it appears he did as much botanizing as doctoring. His dream job landed in his lap three years later, when the Company’s Madras botanist retired. Roxburgh gave up medicine, and moved to the coast of Coromandel, on the Bay of Bengal. It was a botanist’s paradise, with a diverse, fascinating, and—perhaps best of all—unknown flora.

The Company’s interest in the Coromandel coast was understandable. Areas rich in natural resources lay in close proximity, and the mouths of several rivers served as ports. Surprisingly, given how long Europeans had been in India, the flora was poorly known. It was hoped that species of value would be discovered—“such articles as may prove beneficial to the inhabitants as well as the natives of Great Britain, and which ultimately may tend to the extension of the national commerce and riches.”

Building on the work of his predecessor, Roxburg explored, collected plants of interest, and wrote descriptions that included features useful for identification.

“Leaves opposite, short petioled, round-oval, shining, smooth on both sides, entire, three-five-nerved, differing in size, from one and a half to four inches long, and from one to three broad. Stipules none. Flowers small, greenish white, collected on small terminal umbells …”

“Berry round, smooth, size of a pretty large apple, covered with a smooth somewhat hard shell, of a rich beautiful orange colour when ripe, filled with a soft jelly-like pulp. Seeds from two to five, immersed in the pulp of the berry.”

Roxburgh also noted native uses of plants.

“The wood of this tree is hard and durable, and is used for many purposes by the natives. It is exceedingly bitter, particularly that of the root, which is used to cure intermitting fevers, and the bites of venomous snakes (1) … The seeds are employed in the distillation of country spirits, to render them more intoxicating.”

This use of Strychnos seeds in alcoholic beverages is intriguing. True to its name, the Poison Nut Tree’s strychnine-laced seeds (nuts) are toxic. Even a single seed reveals its evil nature within minutes: racing heart, rapid breathing, convulsions, and muscular spasms with grotesque arching of the back and neck. (Contrary to the specific epithet, nux-vomica, nausea is rare.) Death almost always follows—through cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, multiple organ failure, or brain damage. The drama of death by strychnine has made it popular with murder-mystery writers, including Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Strychnos seeds are rock-hard; unless crushed before consumption, they pass through intact (source).

Roxburg needed illustrations to go with his plant descriptions, so he hired native artists. In a sense, these artists were skilled botanical illustrators; plants, leaves, and flowers were common motifs in the exquisite patterns popular in Indian artwork. But left to their own devices, they produced illustrations in their own style—bold contrasting colors, plant parts appealingly arranged, and almost nothing to provide a sense of depth. Details important to botanists were often omitted when not critical to overall composition.

Floral decoration on tomb of Empress Noor Jahan, Taj Mahal (Wellcom Trust).

More realistic plant portraits were required, with shading and depth, and with all parts necessary for identification shown in detail. So the Indian artists were given training in proper botanical illustration. The result was what Richard Mabey (2015) called “cultural fusion … an exotic fusion of European precision and Mughal stylisation that revelled in the pure patterning of plants.” Critical botanical details were included, but in an appealing composition. This hybrid style is distinctive enough to have a name: Company Art.

Sappan, Caesalpinia sappan; artist unknown (BHL on Flickr).

Strychnos nux-vomica: Company Art (left) and a more traditional illustration, from Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen, 1883 (source).

Roxburgh was a passionate botanist and hard worker. From 1791 through 1794, he shipped parcel after parcel of descriptions and illustrations to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London—500 species in all. From these, the distinguished botanist and President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks (2), selected 300 for publication.

Plants of the Coast of Coromandel was published over a period of 25 years, 1795–1819. It was a grand three-volume set, with detailed descriptions and hand-painted copper engravings—a full-page illustration for each of the 300 plant species. In the Preface, botanist Patrick Russell praised Roxburg’s dedication: “Such commendable zeal in the service has not passed unnoticed by the Court of Directors [of the East India Company], which has lately honoured him with a handsome present of botanical books, as well as with other marks of approbation.”

Russell also recognized the contributions of pioneering botanist John Gerard Koenig, “to whom Indian Botany stands so highly indebted.” But nowhere were the botanical illustrators acknowledged, nor even named. The only reference was this: “[Roxburgh] had retained a painter constantly employed in drawing plants …”

The size and lavishness of Plants of the Coast of Coromandel guaranteed it would be accessible only to the privileged—wealthy enthusiasts, and individuals associated with botanical gardens and other institutions. But fortunately, times have changed. Dr. Roxburg has joined the open access movement! Now, anyone with internet access can indulge themselves in Coromandel plants and elegant Company Art.

Flame of the Forest, Butea superba; artist unknown (BHL on Flickr).

In 2007, Plants of the Coast of Coromandel from the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Rare Books Collection was digitized, and added to the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). Six years later, the illustrations were uploaded to Flickr. It was on Flickr that I met Dr. Roxburgh and the Poison Nut Tree, through my role as a tagger.

In building online collections, machines and software do the lion’s share of the work, but there are tasks that only humans can do. A machine can scan a page of text, which is then interpreted by optical character recognition software. Plant names can be flagged in the process. But illustrations are incomprehensible, and so the plants remain hidden and undiscoverable until tags are added, by a human. Only then will they show up in searches.

Most days I spend a little time, usually less than 30 minutes, adding tags for names and geographic information to illustrations by Roxburgh's anonymous artists, slowly progressing through the plants of the Coromandel coast. Gorgeous engravings of exotic plants more than make up for any tedium. The challenge of updating 18th-century nomenclature also keeps me from getting bored.

I started tagging because of its worthiness. I use online collections regularly—specimens, literature, images—so I know the value of tags. But soon there were other reasons to continue. I enjoy reading accounts of botanical exploration in the 18th and 19th centuries, and I love the exotic plants and delightful artwork.

Rosy Milkweed Vine, Oxystelma esculentum; artist unknown (BHL on Flickr).

The Biodiversity Heritage Library needs more taggers!! No experience required—taggers range from fledgling citizen scientists to professionals. The Flickr collections include many kinds of organisms, not just plants, so you can work on your favorites. Want to learn more? Check out this example, a persuasive post about the value of tagging, and the BHL Tagging Tutorial.

Footnotes

(1) Strychnos nux-vomica is recognized in alternative medicine circles as a treatment for many conditions, but most claims aren't supported by experimental evidence. However, one study found that whole-seed extract of S. nux-vomica—in low doses—effectively neutralizes venom from the viper Daboia russelii (in mice; Chatterjee et al. 2004).

(2) The first version of this post mistakenly assigned responsibility to Joseph Hooker.

Sources

Mabey, R. 2015. The Cabaret of Plants. WW Norton & Co.

Roxburgh, W. 1795-1819. Plants of the coast of Coromandel: selected from drawings and descriptions presented to the hon. court of directors of the East India Company. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/467#/summary Accessed 7 Aug 2017.

Wikipedia. Strychnos nux-vomica, and Strychnine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strychnos_nux-vomica; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strychnine Accessed 7 Aug 2017.

This is my contribution to the August gathering of tree-followers kindly hosted by The Squirrelbasket.

I, Naturalist .... You, Naturalist?

They say natural history is dying.  Support is in steep decline.  There are fewer academic programs, staff are cut, museums and herbaria are shuttered.  What a huge mistake!  This is knowledge that's critical “for fields as varied as human health, food security, conservation, land management and recreation” as well as pleasure.  But fortunately there’s a counter-trend and it’s huge too.  Just look online – natural history is experiencing a come-back!  Given the times, it’s not surprising that the savior is digital.

Citizen science isn’t digital per se.  It's any “scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists”.  It could be the amateur botanist who regularly adds plant specimens to the regional herbarium.  But the reasons why citizen science is so popular are digital: online resources make it a lot easier than it used to be; and it's social.

Social media also are not digital per se.  Long drives to visit friends, telephone calls, postal letters, email messages, blog posts, texts … being such social creatures we love them all.  But these days social media are defined more narrowly: “computer-mediated tools that allow people to create, share or exchange information, ideas, and pictures/videos in virtual communities and networks” ... for example, iNaturalist.

Several years ago I was looking online for information about plants in Santa Barbara County, California.  I found the More Mesa Plant Guide – one of many guides available at iNaturalist.org.  This one is especially cool:

Twelve of the 117 plant species in the More Mesa Plant Guide (click on image to view).

As I write this, iNaturalist includes 1,643,600 observations – reports of plants and animals of all kinds from specific locations around the world.  Observations can be organized into projects – “a way to pool your observations with other people on iNat.  Whether you're interested in starting a citizen science project or just keeping tabs on the birds in a nearby park with your local birding club, Projects are the way to go.”

They convinced me (not hard) and I put together Plants of the Southern Laramie Mountains, Wyoming:

“The southern Laramie Mountains are a treasure for naturalists.  I go there regularly, and photograph the plants I see.  I started this project to store my observations and those of others -- please contribute!  My hope is that it will be useful to anyone interested in the area's flora.”

With enough observations and photos, I will be able to compile a guide to the plants of the area.  This is the dream.

Nodding onion (Allium cernuum).

Miner's candle (Cryptantha virgata).

Heartleaf arnica (Arnica cordifolia) may be a damn yellow composite, but the leaves make it easy to recognize.  It's common in the Laramie Mountains.

Setting up the project was easy; populating it is another matter (no fault of iNaturalist).  These are the problems so far:

1.  Wind.  I need photos for a plant guide, but plants don’t stand still in wind, and it’s often windy in the Laramie Mountains.  Maybe I should have done a rock project.

2.  Time.  I haven't hiked as much, with my camera, as I thought I would.

3.  Other participants.  This is the biggest obstacle by far.

Only a few people have added observations.  Maybe I'll launch some kind of advertising campaign when the project is farther along.  I also need help with identification.

Citizen science relies on crowds for both data collection and accuracy.  If I add an observation of water birch, iNaturalist ranks my identification “Casual” until someone agrees, at which point it becomes “Research”.  If they disagree, calling it bog birch, it becomes simply a birch, as we both say it’s a birch.  Another botanist may jump in and say “yes indeed, it’s a river birch” at which point it becomes a Research grade observation of a river birch.  [The iNat algorithm for choosing among multiple identifications “is a little convoluted” – read more here.]

 I found river birch (Betula occidentalis) in Curt Gowdy State Park, in early spring.

I may be an expert; I may take specimens and photos to the herbarium for verification.  But until an iNaturalist user agrees with me, my identification remains Casual.  Thus unless one lives where there are lots of botany geeks (like the Santa Barbara area), a project advances slowly.  Verifications are hard to come by.  Observations trickle in.

Rocky Mountain spikemoss (Selaginella densa).

There’s a good reason for iNaturalist's quality control step.  Identification to species is one of the biggest sources of error in citizen science (see Gardiner and colleagues 2012 for examples).  “Small or cryptic organisms” are especially problematic, but there are plenty of bigger ones that are just as tricky.  Birders have LBJs (little brown jobs), while we botanists deal with DYCs – the damn (or disgusting) yellow composites of the sunflower family.  And they’re hardly the only challenging plants.  Yesterday I spent 30 minutes studying herbarium specimens of our local wild geraniums so I could put a name on my iNaturalist observation.

Geranium caespitosum.

Geranium id is easier than it used to be.  Multiple species were recently lumped together into Geranium caespitosum because they were so hard to tell apart.  The two geraniums above and below were growing within two meters of each other in sagebrush grassland.

This is Geranium caespitosum too.

Citizen science provides two major benefits in my opinion.  The obvious one is massive amounts of data, though we need to improve quality control.  But what excites me most is how engaging it is.  Many people are now active naturalists because of online resources, and because of the social aspect.  We collect, identify, and share – more than we ever could have dreamed of doing in the past.  And in at least some cases, participation in citizen science has strengthened commitment to conservation, leading to further environmental action (Thelen and Thiet 2008).

Even the experts do it!  Source.

There are apps for it, of course.

Naturalists used to be a small group of adventurous eccentrics.  Now lots of us can be nature geeks ... another example of democratization thanks to the internet.

Are we reincarnations of the amazing naturalists of the 19th century American West?  AHC.

Have you done citizen science?  What do you think?

Sources (in addition to links in post)

Gardiner, M. and colleagues.  2012.  Lessons from lady beetles: accuracy of monitoring data from US and UK citizen- science programs.  Front Ecol Environ 10: 471–476.

Thelen, BA and Thiet, RK.  2008.  Cultivating connection: Incorporating meaningful citizen science into Cape Cod National Seashore’s estuarine research and monitoring programs.  Park Science 25(1).