Three volume set

The field work is done for now. Miraculously, we found five of the six points by finding the tree I had "blazed" with an X using my pocketknife. (This is kind of like finding a quilting needle in a half-bale of hay). The sixth point we were able to get by finding distinctive trees...as in "there were several post oaks, there was one bois d'arc with three trunks, there were no ashes in this sample..." and being able to eliminate spots, but then finding the distinctive multi-trunked trees (and also noting that there were several large trees of a particular species), we were able to figure out where the point was by a process of elimination.

There's something to be said for still being able to use low-tech methods when high-tech ones fail. I "blazed" the trees because the GPS unit conked out and we couldn't get coordinates of the points that way.

I'm still waiting on the other students' ankle to recover but that will be two more days in the field, at most, I think.

I also thought I had an Exciting New Project. On the way out after finding the points, I noticed a population of a wetland plant with magenta-pink flowers...and the first thing I thought was "Purple loosestrife!" Purple loosestrife (well, the one that goes by the scientific name Lythrum salicaria) is a big, bad invasive plant - I remember a few years ago, when I was in Nebraska for some meetings, a lot of the Platt River wetlands were totally choked with it. And there were some areas up near Chicago where the wetland was a monoculture (or so it appeared) of the plant.

So, on the one hand: purple loosestrife appearing would be very, very bad. (It's known from my state but only a few locations up north). But on the other: instant journal article.

So I grabbed one of the plants and headed back to campus, all set to notify the authorities and start writing. And then I thought: wait, it's been a few years since you saw this plant close up. And there are other closely related species that are native. And it would be super, super embarrassing to try to write a paper and have misidentified the main plant.

So I started hunting. In our herbarium, we only had one of the species, so I couldn't compare to know for sure (though the species I had looked kind of like the examples of the harmless native they had). And looking online was useless - there are photographs, but some of them lose something in the enlargement, and also, it's always hard to make out leaves well on those photographs, as they're usually taken in the field and the background is the same color as the leaves.

So I put in an e-mail asking for field ID from someone who would know. But then I thought: Britton and Brown probably have the plants.

Britton and Brown's "New Illustrated Flora (of the Northeastern U.S.)" is a resource I used many, many times back in my grad school days. It has line-drawings of plants, which are often easier for definitive identification than photos. And it has good descriptions of the characteristics.

There are actually two versions of Britton and Brown floating around out in the world: there's the original version from the nineteen-teens (Dover has reprinted this version: I have a copy but found it less than useful) This version, at least the reprints, the line drawings are not that great and are hard to use - it's like the lines are too thick or something. And many of the names have changed (and some of the common names in the 1913 version, are, how shall we say, very politically incorrect). Also, I think these are less complete than the later version, at least, an online copy of them lack several species that I know are in the later version.

Henry Allan Gleason revised the books in the late 50s - this is what I think of as the "good" version (though it may be that the Dover reprints, the quality of the drawings was compromised: there's an online reprint of the older volumes (this is volume 2, here).

The Gleason revision has gone through a couple of printings but I think it's currently out of print (though still under copyright). My mother owned a set of the Gleason revisions; I think she actually won them as some kind of award when she was an undergraduate.

I searched around online when I moved down here (and no longer had access to the copies my mom owned; she did observe that "someday you will probably inherit them" though I hope that doesn't happen for many years...)

I did find a set through a used book dealer; they were $90 or thereabouts but I bought them. I haven't used them as much, but once in a while they certainly come in handy. (A quick check of Amazon shows them going for $300 now, so perhaps I got a deal). My copy is a 1968 reprint. (One year older than I am...)

So I checked the two species the plant could be - the line drawings made it crystal clear; it's the non-invasive native species, not the invader.

So again: score one for the low-tech way of doing things. The photographs I found online were not clear at all.

And again, like a lot of used books I own, they have some kind of interesting history, which the inscription/material inside the cover only hint at.

Volume 1 says, "To Betz: on attaining her majority. Ron" and the date: 4/12/72. There's also a clipping on coltsfoot from the New York Times dated 3/9/75.

Volume 2 says, "To Betz, on our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Ron."

(I am not sure how that works with the "attaining her majority;" I assumed "majority" to be "21." But maybe not. Perhaps "Betz" either earned tenure or made Professor somewhere, and that was what "Ron" meant by majority. Or maybe he meant a later age than 21.)

Volume 3 says, simply, "To Betz. With love, Ron."

(How touching I find that. Here was a man who knew what his beloved's interests were, and sought out something specific to them. I like to imagine them walking through the forest together, looking for plants. They are probably both gone now, if they had been married 35 years sometime in the early 1970s. Maybe they are walking through forests together still, just on another plane from this one...)

I also find that I have the invoice from buying the books tucked in this volume; I got them through Summer House Books in Pennsylvania. (And I was remembering the price correctly).

There are also a few penciled marginal notations throughout the books; mainly when or where a certain plant was seen. (The handwriting is different from "Ron's," I suspect it must be "Betz'")

I will admit, I made my own addition to the books: I made up (on my computer, and printed on acid-free paper) bookplates with a stylized flower, the quotation "A book is like a good friend. My friends I would forever keep." and my name on it, and carefully pasted them in (away from the dedication; I didn't want to cover up the words of Ron to Betz). I did that just on the off chance I would ever loan the books out, though I find the bigger problem I have with losing loaned books is that I forget to whom I had loaned them. (I did loan these out, briefly, to a colleague, but she kept them in the lab where we work so I knew where they were).

Someday, I suppose, if I get my mother's copy of the set, I'll sell these. (Or, if I have someone who seems really devoted to botany and could use a set, I might even make a very generous gift of them...or maybe donate them to the university library on the condition that they absolutely go into the collections and be used.)