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The superlatives assigned to Sir David Attenborough seem never to stop.  Producer of the most watched nature documentaries in the world.  The most traveled person in the world.  The oldest person to visit the North Pole.  The most trustworthy person in Britain.

My own close brush with his presence was on a visit to the Cambridge Conservation Initiative in 2016.  Their newly remodeled home was named the Attenborough Building in his honor, and it featured a soaring four-story living wall in its atrium.  Attenborough, then just turned 90, appeared at the opening ceremony.  But he entered not on a red carpet, but like we would expect David Attenborough to do—he rappelled down the wall from the top, landing with nonchalant grace, as though it were the only reasonable option.

David Attenborough was born on May 8, 1926, in a London suburb and he grew up in the English midlands town of Leicester.  He was always interested in nature, collecting bird eggs and fossils from a young age.  He studied natural sciences at Cambridge before serving in the Royal Navy.  But he never worked as a scientist, instead enticed into the world of writing and broadcasting.

He was particularly attracted by the new world of television.  In 1950, he began training with the BBC and soon became a television producer.  Being on the air seemed unlikely, because his teeth were considered too big!  He overcame that obstacle quickly, however, his charm, demeanor and gift for commentary trumping any dental deficits.  He hosted a quiz show (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?) and another that brought animals into the studio.

Attenborough thought the studio format was limiting and stressful to the animals, and convinced the executives to let him produce a series filmed in the wild, Zoo Quest.  And the rest, as they say, is history.  The success of that show led to his assignment to lead a natural history group at the BBC and later, in 1965, to direct programming for the BBC (of note, Attenborough had the foresight to add a strange new comedy to their line-up; it was called Monty Python’s Flying Circus!).

He left the BBC in the early 1970s to produce independent nature documentaries.  He hit it big in 1976, when his 96-episode masterpiece, Life on Earth, hit the airwaves.  That series, watched by an estimated 500 million people, made Attenborough a household name around the world.  Whether crawling into a termite nest or dropping into a cave, nothing was out of bounds for David Attenborough.

He is one of the world’s great storytellers, but he insists that nature is the real story.  He has said, “…we mustn’t get the narrator in between the animal and the viewer too often.”  Less is more when it comes to natural history.  “If you can use four words intstead of five that’s good, and cut out every adjective you want to put in.  People can see if it’s beautiful.  You mustn’t be scared of silence.”

All of nature is his subject, but he always retained his intense love of birds.  “I have been besotted with them since I was a schoolboy,” he said of his favorite bird, the Bird of Paradise, “when I read the travels of the great 19th Century British naturalists, the first Europeans to see these things. These birds are so romantic and they all have legends surrounding them. They all do the most extraordinary things, each with its individual dance and display.” His 10-episode series, The Life of Birds, in the late 1990s, was another masterpiece.

His list of awards is about as long as his list of nature documentaries.  He was made a knight in 1985 and has more than 30 honorary degrees.  In a 2014 poll, he topped the list of England’s most trustworthy public individuals.

His life observing and filming nature has also made him an avowed conservationist.  A recent documentary series is about the relation between nature, humans and the built environment.  He said of the London region, “Looking down on this great metropolis, the ingenuity with which we continue to reshape our planet is very striking.  It’s also sobering. It reminds me of just how easy it is for us to lose our connection with the natural world. Yet it is on this connection that the future of both humanity and the natural world will depend.”  He has become most worried about climate change and especially the role of the U.S.:  “One doesn’t want to interfere with other nation’s affairs, but the trouble is nations of that size are globally important and what they do has a huge impact on us.”

He is now 92 years old, and he shows no sign of slowing down.  He got a new pair of knees a few years ago, that he say gave him “another 20 years of life.”  Thank goodness, because we can all use another 20 years of David Attenborough, rappelling down whatever wall he chooses.

References:

Biography.com.  David Attenborough.  Available at:  https://www.biography.com/people/david-attenborough.  Accessed May 4, 2018.

Davies, Gareth Huw.  Meet Sir David.  PBS.  Available at:  http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/sirdavid/index.html.  Accessed May 4, 2018.

Shute, Joe.  2016.  David Attenborough at 90: ‘I think about my mortality every day.’  The Telegraph, 29 October 2016.  Available at:  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/david-attenborough-at-90-i-think-about-my-mortality-every-day/.  Accessed May 4, 2018

Mother’s Day, as we all better remember, falls on the second Sunday of May.  So, it seems fitting that on some day in May, this calendar ought to take a moment to celebrate mom.

We all think our mother deserves the award for “World’s Best Mom,” but what about all those other mothers in nature?  Never fear, because this topic has been well explored, from the Animal Planet to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and dozens of blogs in between.  Here is my compendium of just some of the great moms of the animal kingdom.

Among mammals, first on most lists is the elephant, Asian or African.  Elephant moms carry their unborn babies for an astonishing 22-23 months, the longest of any animal.  When born, the babies are a whopping 200 pounds.  Then the mother takes care of them for up to sixteen years.  I guess, just like human parents, elephants get tired of dealing with their kids when they hit the teen years.

In the marine world, and for pure dedication, I nominate the octopus.  Opposite the spectrum from elephants, octopus moms lay from 50,000 to 200,000 eggs.  Each one may not be particularly important, but the female octopus understands that protecting the bunch is critical to survival.  She carefully arranges the eggs in a shape characteristic of each species, then protects the eggs from a sea-full of hungry predators.  Without time to hunt for food, the female weakens and may even eat a tentacle or two to keep nourished.  And when the young octopi say goodbye, the exhausted female is so weak she usually dies or falls prey to those enemies she had kept away from the kids.

The bird category has many candidates for best mom, but most bloggers list the Red-knobbed Hornbill, a resident of Indonesia.  To keep their young away from predators, including the gigantic monitor lizard, these hornbills hide the mother and eggs.  They nest in tree cavities, and the female seals herself into the cavity while the male builds a wall of their own feces, with only a small slot through which the male feeds the female.  Mom hornbills stays locked up for two months of incubation before emerging—and, presumably, heading straight to the spa.

Most insects are pretty cavalier about their parenting responsibilities, but not the humble earwig.  Female earwigs incubate their eggs, clean fungus from them and guard them from predators.  As the young emerge, the female helps remove egg fragments and grooms the young.  They stay together through the second molting, a period of some months.  And if the kids get particularly hungry waiting for the pizza delivery, they just might eat mom.

Alligators top the list of reptilian moms.  Female alligators build large nests of rotting vegetation, which keep the eggs warm during their development.  Interestingly, if the nest temperature is cooler, the young tend to hatch as females; if warmer, as males.  Regardless, mother alligators care carefully for their offspring, gently holding them in those bone-crushing jaws as she goes about the daily chores.  They stay together as a family for up to a year.

The lists go on, with a decided bias towards mammals.  Cheetahs, polar bears, koalas, seals and orangutans appear regularly.  But let’s be honest—without moms, where would any of our species be?  Cheers for all of them!

(P.S. – My mom was the best!).

References:

Animal Planet.  Top 10 Animal Moms.  Available at:  http://www.animalplanet.com/wild-animals/10-animal-moms/.  Accessed May 3, 2018.

Harness, Jill.  2011.  The 8 Best Mothers In The Animal Kingdom.  Neatorama, May 7, 2011.  Available at:  http://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/07/the-8-best-mothers-in-the-animal-kingdom/.  Accessed May 3, 2018.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not.  2015.  The Most Amazing Moms in the Animal Kingdom.  Available at:  https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/animal-moms/.  Accessed May 3, 2018.

Sturrock, Leanne.  2017.  Nature’s Best Mothers – Elephants to Organgutans, Take a Look at Natures Supermums.  The Great Projects, Mar 26, 2017.  Available at:  https://www.thegreatprojects.com/blog/nature-s-best-mothers.  Accessed May 3, 2018

Lassen Volcanic National Park came into existence on May 6, 1907, when President Teddy Roosevelt signed proclamations creating two national monuments—Lassen Peak and Cinder Cone.  Nine years later, those two national monuments formed the core of the new Lassen Volcanic National Park, passed by congress and signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

Lassen is often called a hidden gem among the national parks.  Although one of the earliest national parks—the 15^th created—it has always been a runner-up in popularity to the great western parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone.  Yet it shares many characteristics with those two world famous preserves.

Like Yosemite, Lassen sits in the rugged mountains of northern California, at the south end of the Cascade Mountains.  Its high elevation means that snow blankets the park for much of the year—remnants of winter snows linger through July, and many roads are closed by October.

Like Yellowstone, Lassen is renowned for its thermal features.  Lassen Peak, the namesake mountain of the park, is the southernmost active volcano of the Cascades.  It last erupted in 1915, one of only two volcanoes to erupt in the 20^th Century (the other, of course, was Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980).  The eruption blasted 30,000 feet into the air, creating a cloud of ash and smoke that traveled 200 miles.  Smaller episodes of activity occurred for the next two years.

Tourism also erupted, as people traveled to see the results of the volcanic blast.  They were rewarded with a phenomenal volcanic landscape.  Lassen Peak itself retains a large scar down one flank, known as the “Devastated Area.”  A series of cinder cones occur in the park as well, looking amazingly like the volcano a child might make for a science project.  The park features several areas of intense thermal activity, where vents, fumeroles and mud pots create a geological fantasy land—a smaller and more compact version of Yellowstone.  The region was made a national park because of these unique and scenic thermal and geologic features.

Despite its qualities and location, Lassen Volcanic National Park is not highly visited.  Annual visitation in 2017 was just at 500,000, a little over 10% of the visitation at Yellowstone or Yosemite.  The number of visitors has remained at the same level for the past 40 years.  It is considered a family-friendly park, and many of the visitors are from the surrounding area, unlike the throngs that come from around the world to visit Yosemite and Yellowstone.

But beware of the dense hydrogen-sulfide stench around “Fart Gulch!”

References:

Krahe, Diane L. and Theodore Catton.  2010.  Little Gem of the Cascades:  An Administrative History of Lassen Volcanic National Park.  US National Park Service.  Available at: http://npshistory.com/publications/lavo/adhi.pdf.  Accessed May 2, 2018.

National Park Service.  Archeology Program, Cinder Cone and Lassen Peak National Monuments.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/archeology/sites/antiquities/profileLassenVolcanic.htm.  Accessed May 2, 2018.

USGS.  2000.  Volcano Hazards of the Lassen Volcanic National Park Area, California.  USGS Fact Sheet 022-00.  Available at:  https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2000/fs022-00/.  Accessed May 2, 2018.

The systematic use of bird banding to enhance the conservation of birds was the invention of Frederick C. Lincoln, born on May 5, 1892 (died 1960).  From his earliest days, Lincoln loved birds and built an exceptional career from that love.

As a teenager growing up in Denver, he worked summers for the Colorado Museum of Natural History.  His supervisor was Alexander Wetmore (who became the Sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution), who taught Lincoln various aspects of bird-craft, including the preparation of bird skins for scientific use.  Lincoln liked the work so much that he never attended college, but went straight to work as an ornithologist after high school.  By age 21, he had advanced to be Curator of Ornithology at the museum.  He worked extensively with Wetmore, including undertaking several field expeditions throughout the southeastern U.S.

During World War I, Lincoln served in the Signal Corps as a carrier pigeon expert.  Pigeons were essential for battle-field communication during the war, as telephones and other devices were unreliable.  More than 100,000 carrier pigeons were used during World War I—by both sides—providing a 95% reliable communication channel.

Upon his return from military service, Lincoln joined the staff of the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey (now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) with a very particular assignment:  Organize and implement a national bird-banding program for migratory waterfowl.  In 1918, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act gave the survey the responsibility for estimating the health of waterfowl populations and setting hunting regulations across the country.  The survey needed reliable information.

Lincoln was the man for the job.  As colleagues described him, “Fred Lincoln was a rather quiet, studious person…” and “Lincoln approached his task with … characteristic professionalism, thoroughness, vision and dedication….”  He combined the pieces of the emerging technique of bird-banding into a continental system with organized numbering schemes, data collection protocols and analytic methods.

The accumulating data about bird movements led Lincoln to propose the concept of migratory flyways, routes that birds generally took when moving between nesting and wintering grounds.  The flyway system is now the basis for how waterfowl are managed across North America—and the world.  As a colleague described, because of Lincoln’s work “the migration patterns of North American birds are probably known in more detail than is true for any other continent.”

Lincoln also realized that reliable estimates of the total abundance of each waterfowl species was needed annually so responsible hunting regulations could be established.  He developed a way to use bird-banding data from the previous year along with estimates of the next year’s hunting harvest to estimate abundance.  That straight-forward technique, first described in a survey bulletin in 1930, is now a standard technique in fisheries and wildlife management, known as the “Lincoln Index.”

He authored hundreds of papers during his career, along with several foundational books in ornithology.  His contributions were noted in 1956 when the man who had never stepped in a college classroom was presented an honorary doctorate by the University of Colorado.  The next year, he received the Department of Interior’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Award.

References:

Gabrielson, Ira N.  1962.  Obituary.  Auk 79(3):495-499.  Available at:  https://sora.unm.edu/node/21142.  Accessed May 4, 2017.

Lincoln, Fredrick C.  1930.  Calculating waterfowl abundance on the basis of banding returns.  U.S. Department of Agriculture, Circular No. 118, May, 1930.  4 pages.  Available at:  https://ia801702.us.archive.org/31/items/calculatingwater118linc/calculatingwater118linc.pdf. Accessed May 4, 2017.

Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.  Frederick Charles Lincoln.  Available at:  https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/resshow/perry/bios/lincolnfrederick.htm. Accessed May 4, 2017.

Tautin, John.  2005.  Frederick C. Lincoln and the formation of the North American bird banding program.  USDA Forest Service, General Technical Report PSW-GRT-191:813-814.  Available at:  https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr191/psw_gtr191_0813-0814_tatuin.pdf.  Accessed May 4, 2017.

The public is fascinated by sharks today—Shark Week, Sharknado, and the rest.  The person who did the most to bring sharks to such popularity is the woman known to the world as “The Shark Lady,” Dr. Eugenie Clark.

Eugenie Clark was born on May 4, 1922, in New York City, daughter of a Japanese mother and American father (died in 2015).  Her father died when she was an infant, and her mother married a Japanese man; consequently, Clark was brought up in the sea-loving Japanese culture, which she later said nurtured her interest in oceans and fish.  She made frequent trips to the New York Aquarium as a child, imagining what it would be like to be inside the aquarium swimming with the sharks.

She followed her passion for the living sea, earning an undergraduate degree at Hunter College in zoology and masters and doctoral degrees at New York University in ichthyology.  It was an uncomfortable world for women at the time, with restrictions on travel on research vessels and to distant field sites.  But it didn’t stop Clark, who said later, “I never let being a woman—even as a young girl—stop me from trying to do something I really wanted to do, especially if it concerned fishes or the underwater world.”

And she went places and did things that others, including men, didn’t.  She learned to dive in the 1940s, first using helmets and air hoses, later using scuba equipment.  She studied fishes in Micronesia, learning to free dive from the local fishermen.  She took more than 70 dives in deep-sea submersibles.

She went to study the fishes of the Red Sea in 1950, an area that had been ignored by scientists.  She called it a “virgin sea.”  She discovered several fish species while there, and the Red Sea became one of her passions.  Her continuing efforts to protect unique reef areas in the Red Sea led to their preservation as Egypt’s first national park in 1983.  She published a memoir of her 1950s work in the Red Sea, entitled Lady With a Spear, that became an international best seller.

But through it all, sharks remained Clark’s primary interest.   She thought sharks were misunderstood, saying “After some study, I began to realize that these ‘gangsters of the deep’ had gotten a bad rap.” She proved sharks were smart by teaching them to push on different shaped and colored buttons to receive food.  She dispelled the idea that sharks had to swim continuously to move water across their gills, discovering the “sleeping sharks” in marine caves along the Yucatan Peninsula.  Over time, she became known as The Shark Lady.

In 1954, she attracted the attention of the Vanderbilt family, who invited her to give a seminar at their Florida estate.  The whole town turned out, as she remembered, “They were fascinated—the fishermen, families, children—they all just loved hearing about fishes in the Red Sea and the exotic places I had been to.”  The Vanderbilt’s had a hidden agenda.  After the talk, they suggested she stay and start a marine laboratory with their financing.  “How often do you get an offer like that?” Clark recalled.  The next year, the new laboratory opened, and it has been going ever since.  Now known as the Mote Marine Laboratory, in Sarasota, her one-person start-up has become a world-famous scientific and public education institution.

Like so many leading conservationists, her ability to combine the best of science with the best of public education is a hallmark of Clark’s career. Along with scores of scientific papers, she wrote many articles for National Geographic, especially about sharks.  From 1968-1992, she was a professor at the University of Maryland, with an adoring following of undergraduate students.  A colleague wrote that “her ability to connect to the general public and talk about the importance of exploration and protection of oceans and conservation of species.”

Eugenie Clark kept at it to the end.  On her 92^nd birthday, she went for a dive in her beloved Red Sea.  Despite her age, said her diving companion, “The minute she was underwater, she was as graceful as a ballerina.”

Perhaps it would be more fitting to say she was as graceful as a shark.

References:

Rutger, Hayley.  2015.  Remembering Mote’s “Shark Lady”:   The Life and Legacy of Dr. Eugenie Clark.  Mote Marine Lab, March 5, 2015.  Available at:  https://mote.org/news/article/remembering-the-shark-lady-the-life-and-legacy-of-dr.-eugenie-clark.  Accessed May 1, 2018.

National Ocean Service.  Dr. Eugenie Clark (1922-2015).  Available at:  https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/news/may15/eugenie-clark.html.  Accessed May 1, 2018.

Stone, Andrea.  2015.  ‘Shark Lad’ Eugenie Clark, Famed Marine Biologist, Has Died.  National Geographic, February 25, 2015.  Available at:  https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150225-eugenie-clark-shark-lady-marine-biologist-obituary-science/.  Accessed May 1, 2018.

If you have ever taken a water or bottom sample in a freshwater lake, you owe your success to Vagn Walfrid Ekman, the namesake for the Ekman Water Bottle and Ekman Dredge.

Ekman was born on May 3, 1874, the son of a Swedish oceanographer.  Ekman went to the University of Uppsala to study physics, but ocean science must have been in his DNA—he quickly switched to oceanography.  Oceanography became his life’s work, most of which was performed while he was a professor at the University of Lund in Sweden.

While still a student, he learned about a peculiar behavior of floating icebergs.  Rather than moving in the direction of the prevailing wind, icebergs moved off at an angle.  Presented with this unsolved dilemma, Ekman performed a theoretical analysis that proved an iceberg’s path was the combination of wind, friction of moving water layers and the Coriolis force of the earth’s rotation.  It explained why icebergs moved off in one direction in the northern hemisphere and the opposite in the southern hemisphere.

His understanding of the detailed movements of ocean waters led him to several other discoveries.  He determined the cause of so-called “dead water” in Scandinavian fjords was the resistance of cold water layers from melting glaciers on the surface of the ocean.  He expanded his work with icebergs into a more general treatment of the movement of water at various depths in the ocean, noting and explaining the deflection of currents again as a balance of wind, friction and Coriolis forces.  The phenomenon, which he explained in a 1905 paper, is called the Ekman Spiral in his honor.  He went on to develop full theoretical analyses of wind-blown ocean currents.

But his work as an experimental scientist is what has made him a common name among freshwater biologists.  He was more than just a theoretician—he excelled at field work as well.  His theories relied on having accurate measurements of aquatic phenomena at various depths.  To collect the data, he invented devices that could be lowered to the appropriate depth and then activated from the surface.  The Ekman Dredge works by lowering an open set of jaws to the bottom of a lake on a rope and then sending a heavy weight down the rope that trips a trigger, closing the jaws.  He also invented the Ekman Bottle, which works similarly—a bottle is lowered to the desired depth, is opened by a dropped weight, fills with water, and then is closed by a second dropped weight.  He also invented a device to measure water currents.  All these tools continue in use today, elegant in their simplicity and efficient in their reliability.

I used Ekman Dredges often in my early research, but my most successful use was with a kindergarten class.  I was telling the children about how much life lives in the bottom of a lake, but that we can’t see it because it is below the surface.  I showed them how an Ekman Dredge worked by simulating the lake bottom with sand in a plastic swimming pool.  When a student sent the weight down the line and thus scooped up a big bite of sand, we put it through a sieve.  And out popped wrapped candy bars that I had buried in the sand.

Thank you, Vagn Ekman!

References:

Ichiye, Takashi.  2018.  V. Walfrid Ekman.  Encyclopedia Britannica.com.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/V-Walfrid-Ekman.  Accessed May 1, 2018.

Knight, J. D.   Meet the Ocean Explorers:  Vagn Ekman.  Available at:  http://www.seasky.org/ocean-exploration/ocean-explorers-vagn-ekman.html.  Accessed May 1, 2018.

Welander, Pierre.  Ekman, Vagn Walfrid.  Encyclopedia.com.  Available at:  https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/ekman-vagn-walfrid.  Accessed May 1, 2018.

On May 2, 1936, Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf was performed by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time.  While not composed as an ecological treatise, the musical piece earns itself an honorary appearance in the history of conservation as one of the most beloved children’s compositions of all time—and it does involve several species of wildlife!

Prokofiev was a well-known composer when he took on the task of writing Peter and the Wolf.  He was asked by Nataliya Sats, the director of the Moscow Children’s Theater, to write music to accompany a narrative about a strong-willed boy who defied his grandfather.  The purpose was to introduce the instruments of the orchestra to young listeners.  Prokofiev was well-suited to the task, as he had composed several other children’s pieces.  However, he rejected the text provided to him, instead writing his own story.

The hero is Peter, a Pioneer—the Soviet equivalent of a Boy Scout—who, against his grandfather’s warning, ventures into the woods with his companions: a duck, a bird and a cat.  They meet a wolf who eats the duck and then—but you all know the story.  The story is, in fact, adapted from the Russian folk tales of the young and resourceful Ivan Tsarevich, who tangles with all manner of creatures from wolves to firebirds to magical lions and frogs.

Peter and the Wolf moves on from traditional folk tales to more modern lessons appropriate for students of the soviet movement.  First is the lesson that the old established regimes—in the person of a grumpy grandfather—must make way for the ways of adventurous, questioning and independent Bolsheviks like Pioneer Peter.  Second, however, is the lesson that mastery over nature is part of the soviet ideal.  The wolf loses in this narrative, trapped by the cunning Peter and hauled off to the zoo in a military-style parade.

I prefer a more nuanced interpretation.  Consider the various relationships that we can observe between humans and nature.  Peter wants to experience nature instead of being trapped inside the domesticated confines of a fenced farmstead.  But he takes with him his humanized animal friends, complete with names—Sasha, Sonia and Ivan.  The food web is displayed as the wolf eats Sonia.  Fear of the danger of nature is the underlying premise of the narrative, but that danger is overcome as both Peter and the hunters demonstrate their domination over nature when they capture the wolf.  But human kindness is again displayed as instead of killing the wolf, it is saved for a zoo or, in some later versions, banished back to the wilderness.  Oh, and along the way, Sonia escapes unharmed!

Peter and the Wolf is believed to be the most performed and recorded piece of classical music ever written.  More than 400 recording are available.  Most serious and not-so-serious actors have jumped at the chance to narrate the piece, including Sting, Patrick Stewart, Sophia Loren, Sean Connery, Captain Kangaroo, William F. Buckley, Allan Sherman and Weird Al Yankovic.  Prokofiev was so mesmerized by the project that he wrote it in just one week.  As his biographer related, “That he never forgot what it meant to be a child, and how children think, is evident in the playful but never condescending music he wrote for them, most of all the phenomenally successful ‘Peter and the Wolf,’ written when Prokofiev was a boy of forty-five.”

References:

Historical Boys Uniforms.  Young Pioneers.  Available at:  http://histclo.com/youth/youth/org/pio/pioneer.htm.   Accessed May 1, 2017.

Morrison, Simon.  2010.  The People’s Artist:  Prokofiev’s Soviet Years.  Oxford University Press, Oxford.  512 pages.  Accessed May 1, 2017.

Russian Crafts.  Ivan Tsarevitch and the Gray Wolf.  Available at:  https://russian-crafts.com/tales/ivan_tsarevitch.html.  Accessed May 1, 2017.

Smith, Tim.  2008.  Essay:  Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.”  Public Broadcasting System, Great Performances.  March 26, 2008.  Available at:  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/peter-the-wolf-essay-prokofievs-peter-the-wolf/27/.  Accessed May 1, 2017.

Taxonomy as we know it began on May 1, 1753.  Before then, the naming and description of species was a free-for-all.  Species were described by long, cumbersome Latin names that were given randomly by different observers.  A single species might have several names that the originator changed at will.  The common wild briar rose, for example, was called Rosa sylvestris inodora seu canina by one botanist and Rosa sylvestris alba cum rubore, folio glabro by another.  From now on, that would be different.

Linnaeus is a name familiar to anyone who has taken a biology course.  Carl von Linne, or as we know him, Carolus Linnaeus, was born in 1707 in Sweden, studied medicine and became a prominent Swedish doctor, eventually serving as the physician to the Swedish royal family.  His family name was taken from the linden tree, a favorite of his father, a minister.

Like his father, Linnaeus loved plants.  At the time, studying plants was part of studying medicine, because doctors needed to know which plants to prescribe as drugs for their patients’ ailments.  But Linnaeus’ interest went much farther.  He explored the agricultural and economic uses of plants, including creating gardens and indoor growing environments in which he hoped to produce varieties of tropical plants that could grow in Sweden.  He wasn’t particularly successful in that work.

He was successful, however, in figuring out a way to organize plant identification that was simple and standard.  He created the binomial system we use today, designating a plant’s identification by a genus name and a species name, both in Latin so that common names wouldn’t confuse botanists and the public.  He worked on this gradually over years, eventually publishing Species Plantarum on May 1, 1753.  He named the wild briar rose Rosa canina.

Species Plantarum inventoried and classified every known plant at the time, 6,000 species in all.  The book immediately became the standard way to classify organisms, marking its publication as the historical beginning of modern taxonomy.  His innovation allowed much better communication among scientists and also allowed the public to participate in botanical exploration and discovery.

Linnaeus followed up his botanical treatise with a complete binomial taxonomy of known plants and animals in 1758, the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.  The biological basis of his classification was challenged because he used only sexual characteristics in his ordering of plants—some considered it too restrictive, and others thought it was obscene.  But his system of classification—genus and species—has become standard.

Some also consider Linnaeus a pioneer in ecology.  He understood that the relationship between a plant and its environment was crucial to its success.  That is why he was so convinced that he could breed plants with traits that were more adapted to the cold environment of Sweden.

So, next time you complain about having to learn the two-name scientific identification of a plant or animal, stop and thank Linnaeus that you can describe a species in two words–instead of a paragraph of nonsense!

References:

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Species Plantarum.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/topic/Species-Plantarum.  Accessed April 30, 2018.

University of Aberdeen.  Carolus Linnaeus, Species Plantarum.  Available at:  https://www.abdn.ac.uk/special-collections/carolus-linnus-species-plantarum-458.php.  Accessed April 30, 2018.

University of California Museum of Paleontology.  Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778).  Available at:  http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/linnaeus.html.  Accessed April 30, 2018

John James Audubon is unquestionably the greatest artist of avian life that the world has ever seen.  Others may surpass him in technical detail or realism or expressive emotion, but none performed the feat that makes him the king of ornithologists.

Jean Rabin was born on April 26, 1785, in what is now Haiti.  He was the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and his French mistress.  His mother died soon after his birth and he was sent to France to live with his father’s wife.  In France, he lived the good life of a wealthy merchant family.  He wanted for little, as he said:  “Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment.  Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them.”

His father and step-mother adopted him formally, changing his name to Jean-Jacque Audubon.  In 1803, when he was 18, his father snuck Audubon out of the country to avoid his drafting into Napoleon’s army.  On the ship to America, he changed his name to an English form:  John James Audubon.

He was sent to his father’s estate in Mill Grove, Pennsylvania, to oversee a lead mining business.  The business failed, and Audubon, with his new wife, Lucy, moved to Kentucky, settling first in Louisville, later in Henderson.  His attempts at business again failed, and Audubon was briefly jailed over his debts.

But his interest in birds and drawing them never faltered.  He said, “I never for a day gave up listening to the songs of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, or delineating them in the best way I could.”  The wilds of America gave Audubon a blank canvas to fill with bird life. Lucy knew that her husband had an extraordinary talent, and she encouraged him to explore, discover and paint.  Audubon made money however he could—painting portraits, teaching dance, performing taxidermy—but Lucy kept bread in the house for her and their children through work as a teacher and governess.  He wrote, “My wife determined that my genius should prevail, and that my final success as an ornithologist should be triumphant.”

Audubon sought that triumph through a grand plan—to paint every bird in America, at life size, in a natural setting.  “How could I make a little book,” he wrote, “when I have seen enough to make a dozen large books?”  When he had amassed enough paintings to demonstrate his skills and visualize his dream, he sought a publisher.  Finding none in the United States, he traveled to England in 1824.  He was an immediate sensation.  His paintings fascinated the aristocracy, feeding their romantic view of the American frontier.  Audubon sold subscriptions to his paintings—for the astounding prices of $1,000, a near fortune at the time—around England and Europe.  He found a publisher and engraver to carry the work forward.

He returned to America and continued the enormous task before him.  He traveled throughout the continent, shot or bought birds, mounted them immediately and then drew and painted them.  Page by page his portfolio expanded.  His monumental Birds of America was published in serial form from 1827-1838.  The completed work included 435 life-sized prints of 1065 birds in 489 species.  It was printed on the biggest paper available, called an elephant folio, each piece measuring about 26 inches by 39 inches.  Laid side by side, the prints would stretch for one-quarter of a mile.

Birds of America rightfully established Audubon as the greatest bird painter of all time, but he was more than just an artist.  He was the first person known to have put bands on birds to track their migration; he tied colored yarn on the legs of Phoebes, learning that they returned to the same location year after year.  He performed experiments to show that vultures were visual scavengers, disproving the common belief that they found food by scent.  He wrote a companion book for his prints, Ornithological Biography, that described the natural history of the species he drew.  He was hard at work on an equally grand vision to paint all the mammals of North America, but the project ended with his death at age 65.

He was also a conservationist, fully aware that the transformation of the eastern U.S. from forest to farm and then to city was reducing the abundance of birds and other wildlife.  He succinctly summed up his—and, I would venture, our modern—philosophy of conservation:  “A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.”

References:

Audubon Society.  John James Audubon, The American Woodsman:  Our Namesake and Inspiration.  Available at:  http://www.audubon.org/content/john-james-audubon.  Accessed April 21, 2018.

Biography.  John James Audubon.  Available at:  https://www.biography.com/people/john-james-audubon-9192248.  Accessed April 21, 2018.

Brainy Quote.  John James Audubon Quotes.  Available at:  https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/john_james_audubon.  Accessed April 21, 2018.

Chowder, Ken.  2007.  John James Audubon:  Drawn From Nature.  American Masters, PBS.  Available at:  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/john-james-audubon-drawn-from-nature/106/.  Accessed April 21, 2018.

Florida Museum of Natural History.  John James Audubon.  Available at:  https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/naturalists/audubon01.htm.  Accessed April 21, 2018.

Japan celebrates “Botany Day” annually on April 24.  The celebration recognizes the life and career of Tomitaro Makino, the Father of Japanese Botany, on his birthday.

Tomitaro Makino was born on April 24, 1862, son of a wealthy brewer of the Japanese national drink, sake (died 1957).  His family met with tragedy, however, as both his father and mother died by the time he was five years old.  He was raised by his grandmother, who considered him a frail child.

Makino, however, must not have been frail.  He attended primary school, but his real interest was plants.  He spent his spare time roaming the countryside of his native Kochi Prefecture, hiking continuously, climbing mountains and collecting plants.  His extensive collecting revealed the high plant biodiversity of an ecosystem he loved, Mt. Yokogura.  Over the course of his life, he collected more than 400,000 specimens (now held in his herbarium at the University of Tokyo).

Formal schooling was not for Makino, and he left at an early age to pursue botany independently.  He visited Tokyo when he was 19, meeting Japan’s leading botanists.  Tokyo, he decided was where he could learn the best, so he moved there in 1884.  He was granted access to the University of Tokyo’s herbarium and allowed to attend classes even though he was not a registered student.  He became a gifted illustrator of plants, using traditional Japanese brush and ink techniques

His affiliation with the University of Tokyo continued without interruption for nearly fifty years.  He founded The Botanical Magazine (Tokyo) in 1887, regularly publishing his own articles and botanical illustrations.  He was employed by the university starting in 1891, working for 47 years until retiring in 1939.  He founded the scholarly Journal of Japanese Botany in 1916 and served as its editor for the next two decades.  The university awarded him a doctorate in 1927, based on his acknowledged reputation, although he never sought such credentials and refused to use such titles.

Both his spirit and his work ethic were heroic.  He described 1500 new plant species, including wild species but also cultivated vegetables and ornamental plants.  In 1938, he published “The Illustrated Flora of Japan,” which contained 3235 illustrations, all drawn by Makino himself.  It remains a standard work to this day.  After retiring from the university, he devoted himself to educating the general public, both through popular presentations and magazine articles.

He well deserves his recognition as the Father of Japanese Botany.  He was made an Honorary Citizen of Tokyo and awarded the Japanese Order of Culture.  The botanical garden in his home of Kochi has been renamed in his honor.  At his death in 1957, at the age of 95, a memorial to him noted,

“When talking of plants he was fascinating, and when writing of them his prose was charming and witty.  It is no wonder that all who came in contact with him loved him.  By his efforts and his influence he advanced the standard of plant taxonomy in Japan to its present high levels, and this remains as a memorial of his great achievement as a botanist”

References:

Hisauchi, Kiyokata et al.  1957.  Rectificiation:  Tomitaro Makino 1862-1957.  Taxon 6(5):125-127.  Available at:  http://www.jstor.org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/stable/pdf/1216089.pdf?refreqid=excelsior:cfc9b5186f8cfb6bc44dee8ce3bb3f26.  Accessed April 21, 2018.

Makino Botanical Garden.  An Overview.  Available at:  http://www.makino.or.jp/index_e.html.  Accessed April 21, 2018.

Makino Memorial Garden & Museum.  About Tomitaro Makino.  Available at:  http://www.makinoteien.jp/03-makino/e.html.  Accessed April 21, 2018.