A nearly-erased legacy

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, scientists, entomologists, botanists, female scientists

The Hessian fly or Barley midge, Mayetolia destructor (former genus name Cecidomyia) is the most destructive pest of wheat plants. Barely exceeding 3mm in length, a female such as the one shown can lay 300 or more eggs in her adult life span of 2 days. The larvae eat into stems and prevent the plant from reproducing.

During a huge outbreak of the pests in 1836, entomologist Margaretta Morris studied these flies intensively. She noted that most Hessian fly females laid eggs on the stems, while others laid eggs in the culms (where the leaves met the stems).

Considering that there might be two species of near-identical appearance, she collected culms with egg masses and raised them under a bell jar in her study room. She documented the lifestyle, noting how it differed from the lifestyle of the "traditional" Hessian fly (already well known for a generation or more). She described the new species as Cecidomyia culmiculo and sent the description and numerous specimens, including all stages of the life cycle, to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. There they were ignored, and over time the specimens were destroyed by "cabinet pests", the bane of every insect collector who doesn't keep specimens in cedar boxes or in sealed trays with moth balls. To this day, the species goes unrecognized, being grouped with C. destructor as a variation; after all, economic entomologists reason, the same pesticides kill both species/varieties, so there is little incentive for a still-male-dominated discipline to validate a woman's scientific work.

To compound the slight, Miss Morris had found that the 17-year cicadas of what is now called Brood X (10), which erupted in the Philadelphia area in 1834, contained two populations of differing sizes, which she suspected might be two species. This photo compares a periodical cicada on the left with a larger annual cicada, which is green with brown eyes, rather than black with red eyes. The periodical cicadas were initially thought to range in size from 18-38mm, whereas the annual cicada is 40-45mm. She concluded that the "dwarf cicada" was 18-26mm, while the other was 30-38mm.

She corresponded about the phenomenon with a number of scientists, but she was focused more on another matter, that cicada nymphs were ruining fruit crops, particularly of apples and pears. She hosted visitation by numerous scientists to her garden, where her groundskeeper would dig up roots from an apple or pear tree, so they could see the nymphs lined up by the dozens, sucking sap from the roots. She invented a method of root pruning plus fertilization and mulching, to cut off the food supply of the nymphs and strengthen the tree, a method that is still the most effective. Her neglect proved nearly fatal to her legacy as a scientist. Entomologist James C. Fisher named the dwarf cicada Cicada cassini after his friend John Cassin in 1852; it is now known as Magicicada cassini.

It required much detective work and a few lucky breaks for Catherine McNeur to winkle out these facts and others about Margaretta Morris and her sister Elizabeth Morris, a botanist. She has documented the lives of these remarkable sisters in Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science. It is a big book, eminently readable.

Both women had loved natural science since they were little, and they became prominent scientists in an era of pervasive misogyny. They did indeed transform science in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, firstly by diligent and extremely thorough study and work—which family wealth enabled—and by equally diligent correspondence with numerous scientists and collectors. Their studious care for correspondence networks had a political undercurrent: they knew they needed allies, allies, allies, in their fields of study and related fields. They befriended scientists, sharing and trading specimens and ideas. They hosted many, and some became lifelong friends and supporters. They held demonstrations of their ideas, such as the "cicada digging" parties mentioned above. Later in life their correspondence was equally in support of younger, up-coming scientists, particularly young women.

Ms McNeur notes frequently how a number of male scientists, who might be quite friendly early on as they built their careers, became more distant and abrupt in their correspondence as they became prominent, taking the women for granted as "helpful collectors" but little else. Some men were openly hostile, and the book details a couple of battles-royal engaged in (via letter) by Margaretta, in which the men were at least abashed if not distinctly disproven. One scientist, to his credit, if belatedly, came to respect her and promote her after about a decade.

Elizabeth, the elder by two years, lived from 1795-1865. She was less assertive than Margaretta, but in the end, a trace of her legacy remains in the public record. Here I provide an illustration with its caption. I trust that Trinity College Dublin still retains the specimen named for her. The online biological database WoRMS (World Register of Marine Species) calls the status of the species "uncertain" and its Original Description "not documented". Perhaps someone in Dublin can clear this up! 

The Cladophora seaweeds are very common, bright green, and some are pests. This one from an estuary near Delaware Bay is more of an entangle-your-feet-as-you-wade alga.

The last chapter of the book, "Forgetting", is sad indeed. Step by step, perpetrated by generations of thoughtless and ambitious scientists, the Morris sisters' work was almost entirely erased from the public record. Much of the material used by the book's author was found, sometimes by happenstance, in private collections of letters and other documents. 

While misogyny is not dead in America, or in the West generally, it is much less pervasive than before. But it is not stamped out. In fact, the odd phenomenon of the 2020's titled "Wokeness" is increasingly misogynist, favoring false females over the real article!

In my experience, scientists who are insecure in their standing are more prone to oppose and marginalize others, particularly women (if they themselves are men); such persons deserve their obscurity. Those of prominence who are still insecure are shameful.

Mischievous Creatures is excellently researched and written, full of information and stories of these two remarkable women. I looked for the phrase "mischievous creatures" as I read, but didn't find it (maybe I read some parts too fast), so I don't know if the author intended to refer to the Morris sisters thus, or something else. This book is a must-read for all who are interested in the history of science, particularly in early America.

Hamilton's doctor and his plants

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, biographies, doctors, history, horticulture, botany, botanists, early united states history

On the left, Manhattan (except the north end) in 1811. On the right, the same view in 2018. The 1811 image is from the book American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic, by Victoria Johnson.

Who was David Hosack? He was the most famous doctor I'd never heard of. If I heard the name in an American History class, I didn't retain it. Two items in the 1811 view indicate his importance. The first, a spot that matches the location of Rockefeller Center, which is marked in the 1918 image, is a tiny rectangle labeled "Botanic Garden". The second, across the Hudson River and farther north, is a spot labeled "Monument of Gen. Hamilton". The monument marks the spot where, on July 11, 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr shot former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel over Hamilton's opposition to Burr in his bid to be Governor of New York State. The attending physician was David Hosack. Though he failed to preserve Hamilton's life, he had saved many lives that other doctors considered lost causes.

David Hosack (a Scottish name pronounced "Hozzick"), born in 1769, had studied both medicine and botany, and spent time in his late twenties in Scotland, where he first encountered botanical gardens in Edinburgh. he developed a passion for learning medical uses for plants. He already knew how to cure, or at least alleviate, symptoms of malaria and other fevers using "Peruvian bark", which contained quinine; the few effective medicines besides mercury were all plant parts or plant extracts.

After returning to New York and establishing a medical practice, Dr. Hosack bought 20 acres of land on the Middle Road in the middle of Manhattan Island where he established Elgin Garden in 1801. In just the ten years he had the garden, he gathered plants of all kinds, trained numerous medical students to recognize and use the medically useful ones, and corresponded with numerous botanists and botanical-medical men all over Europe and the American colonies. He corresponded with Jefferson, who had some interest in botany. He became the most famous doctor of the time, and his garden inspired others to set up gardens and arboreta that became the network of horticultural establishments found all over the U.S.

Ms Johnson's book outlines all this, with a wealth of fascinating details about life in and around New York two centuries ago, when Manhattan was mostly farmland. Only later, but in Hosack's lifetime, was Middle Road renamed Fifth Avenue. In 1810, after a few years of lobbying effort, Hosack sold Elgin Garden to the State of New York, though the state took its own sweet time to pay him. He could not continue the massive financial burden of maintaining the garden and its workers. It wasn't but a few years before the state divested itself, turning the garden over to Columbia University, which later sold the land to the consortium that began to build Rockefeller Center, which almost exactly covers the footprint of Elgin Garden, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

Whenever you see paintings by members of the "Hudson River School", some of which depict scenes in and around Manhattan and the other areas that now comprise New York City, take a moment to reflect upon the lovely scenes that once filled the area before it all became paved over and built to the sky with monuments to corporate power. And remember to be thankful that only a few percent of this nation has been paved and built upon, that large areas were set aside to retain their natural splendor. Also remember to be thankful for scholars such as David Hosack, whose passion for learning from nature inspired many of the medicines we take for granted, bestowed by the plants that grow all around us.

How we have better veggies

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, biographies, scientists, botanists, adventurers, agriculture

Had your kale lately? How about some quinoa in your soup? Do you like navel oranges, mangoes, or avocados? Have you been to Washington, DC (or several other cities in the region) in the springtime to see the cherry trees in bloom? Thank David Fairchild. His life and adventures are shown in The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats by Daniel Stone.

As a young scientist in the 1890's, David Fairchild caught the interest of a wealthy, globe-trotting dilettante and raconteur, Barbour Lathrop. The rich man claimed to have circled the world many times (the number varied with the telling, usually around 20-40), but his life was otherwise aimless.

Fairchild had met Alfred Russell Wallace, who entranced him with tales of his travels in Malaysia and Indonesia, particularly Java, and the strange and wonderful plants and animals he'd encountered in the tropics. For a Kansas boy, it seemed a faraway planet. A few years later he spoke of it to Lathrop—when he could get a word in edgewise—and Lathrop remembered it; later on he visited Fairchild with an offer to sponsor a plant-collecting trip to Java. Fairchild was at the time in the employ of the infant Department of Agriculture; he eventually quit his job in favor of globetrotting plant collecting, but retained ties to the Department so as to have somewhere to send his discoveries.

Eventually, Lathrop and Fairchild traveled together for several years, giving more purpose to Lathrop's life, and affording Fairchild the opportunity to gather new species and new varieties of plants, in hopes that American farmers and orchardists could enrich the variety of foods on offer.

I didn't know that all the citrus fruits we enjoy, in such amazing variety, were all bred from just four progenitor species: citron, pomelo, mandarin, and papeda (a bitter fruit, but one parent of the Key lime). Nor that there are hundreds of varieties of avocado—yet only a few that can be shipped—or mango—ditto. I'd heard of Meyer lemons, and even had a dwarf Meyer lemon tree in a container for many years, but in this book I read about Frank Meyer, hired by Fairchild to scour China for plant varieties, including new citrus hybrids.

Every good story has a nemesis. The best man at Fairchild's wedding, his boyhood friend Charles Marlatt, serves the rôle here. He was an entomologist, fighting crop pests, particularly those that came from elsewhere. When Fairchild arranged to have Japanese Yoshido flowering cherry trees brought to Washington, D.C.in 1910, Marlatt found them infested with at least 8 pathogenic insects and a fungus or two. The entire shipload (2,000 young, mature trees!) was burned on orders of President Taft. The Japanese were very apologetic, and prepared a new shipment of trees, grown in "virgin soil" and carefully tended, that were brought in 1912, 3,000 this time, and planted around the Tidal Basin, along the Mall, and extras sent to nearby cities. The real "damage" incurred from Marlatt, in Fairchild's eyes, came with legislation such as various Quarantine Acts. They restricted plant exploration by requiring so much paperwork and inspection that most of the plant explorers that were following in Fairchild's footsteps went on to other pursuits.

However, there is a certain amount of right on both sides of the introduce-versus-ban dichotomy. After all, Fairchild introduced Kudzu, grew it in his own yard, then found he had to go to a lot of trouble to exterminate it! Too bad he didn't get it all. It is a scourge in the southern half of the U.S. But more good than bad has come of plant exploration and introduction. We need both Fairchild (and Meyer et al) and Marlatt.

Kudos to Daniel Stone for reminding us of David Fairchild and others, who may have been famous in their generation, but are nearly forgotten. Remember him the next time you enjoy a mango.