by Vera Evenson, Curator of the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi
A great quote I heard lately, “ The first person served by Service is the Server,” perfectly exemplifies the impact the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi has had on our decades-long volunteer, Rosa-Lee Brace.
Sam Mitchel, the founder of our mycology herbarium in l965, inspired Rosa-Lee to study fungi during those early years and to become an expert and teacher of the Ascocmycetes and other mushrooms. Later along with her husband Bob, this dedicated pair repowered the mycology collection by spending thousands of volunteer hours retroactively and meticulously going through thousands of specimens in the collection, boxing, assessing photos and correcting errors and updating the taxonomy. The needs of a mushroom collection that they knew and loved provided this goal for them in their later years to do this great work. They both felt valued. They both knew they were doing a work that would be here for decades and decades. They honored their friend Sam Mitchel.
In their intense investigation of the mycoflora of the Wheat Ridge Greenbelt, Bob and Rosa-Lee discovered a very unusual puffball. After years of collecting and studying this unusual mushroom, they showed it to world-renowned specialist Dr. Orson Miller who declared it a new subspecies of Mycenastrum. The discovery was announced to the world in a fine article in Mycologia, a peer-reviewed journal in 2005, with Rosa-Lee as co-author; it was highlighted by Rosa-Lee’s amazing photomicrographs of the taxon.
After the passing of Bob last year, our herbarium still provides a place where Rosa-Lee is honored for her expertise and sought after for her wisdom. She considers it a sanctuary as well as a place to express her need for service.
Rosa-Lee was honored last year with the prestigious Bernice “Pete” Peterson Award for exceptional volunteer service to the Gardens. Her contributions equal over 7,500 hours, and between her and her husband Bob, were the equivalent of over 5 1/2 years of full-time service.
If you are interested in the academic study of mycoflora, please contact us to explore volunteer opportunities.
What tamarisk trees taught me
Managing the environment versus managing people surely should be very different… or are they? Lately I have been challenged to make such an analogy and found it surprisingly compelling. Through the course of my 15 years studying invasive species biology and restoration ecology, as well as learning from the horticulturists here at Denver Botanic Gardens, I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a bad plant… but that certainly there is plant “behavior” that we may deem harmful, such as when tamarisk trees dominate a riverbank to such an extent that nothing else can possibly grow.
Are tamarisk inherently “bad”?
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The new colleciton will be housed with the existing two herbaria, in its own case
Did you know that Denver Botanic Gardens is a museum accredited by the American Association of Museums? We are proud to announce the addition of an ethnobotanical herbarium to the list of official museum collections at DBG. The other collections are:
The 12th collection, the Ethnobotany Collection, documents those plants that are being used or have been used in the past by humans in our region. These include medicinals, plants used for spiritual purposes, plants used to track the seasons, aphrodisiacs and others. There are three main components of the collection: The Market Collection (specimens purchased at Botanicas and other Native and Hispanic markets), Colorado Native Plants (species that grow in our region that are used by people), and Plants Used by Native Americans. The collection will be a resource to educators, DBG staff, researchers, and the interested general public.
This newest collection is made possible by the donations and expertise of Dr. Don Hazlett, DBG Adjunct Researcher, who has volunteered many hours compiling and curating the collection. He has been aided by Virginia Till, another valuable DBG volunteer with particular interest in ethnobotany.
“We are very fortunate to have Dr. Hazlett doing this work” says Dina Clark, Curator of the Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium who made the presentation of the proposal to the board last week, “The Ethnobotany Collection is a real asset to Denver Botanic Gardens that supports each of our core values of sustainability, diversity, relevance and transformation.”
For more information about our plant collections, visit our website, soon to be updated to include our newest collection.
Three new Colorado records of mushroom species were discovered among our collections of our Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi, thanks to a visit from Gasteromycete specialist, Dr. Scott Bates. Dr. Bates identified a Tulostoma and a Geastrum (an earth star, pictured above) which have never been documented as occurring in the state before now. The Geastrum has been collected three times throughout the last decade right here in the Botanic Gardens, presumably brought in by landscaping projects and then the spores have migrated with the help of our gardeners. It has not been reported here in the wild but Scott Bates has recorded it from Arizona in natural habitats.
These are puffball-type mushrooms, fungi that form pretty, bulbous, white fruiting bodies; what we know as mushrooms are the fruiting body or reproductive part of the fungi,
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It is with utmost pleasure that I report that the official dedication of the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi was a smashing success. Click Here for a video of the event. Approximately 45 colleagues, friends, and admirers of the late Dr. Mitchel met for a formal luncheon today with presentations by Vera Evenson, Curator of the Herbarium; Dr. Barry Rumack, Colleague who worked with Sam on mushroom poisoning research; Dr. Hope Miller, mycologist; and Rosa Lee Brace, long time friend, patient and colleague of Sam’s.
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The mushroom discovered that may be a new species
Gary A. Monroe @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database
Denver Botanic Gardens staff were among the thirty-six scientists who donated their time in the first Soapstone Prairie Natural Area Bioblitz, surveying all species in a 24-hour period. Ten scientist teams inventoried insects, mammals, fungi, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and of course plants.
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Stephanie Strudley in tamarisk stand
Ready or not, the beetles are coming, and one student is helping us to understand the implications. Stephanie Strudley successfully defended her thesis research on biocontrol beetles in tamarisk stands and has now earned her Masters in Science (MS) from the University of Denver Department of Biological Sciences. The biocontrol beetle, Diorhabda elongata, was introduced from Asia to help control invasive tamarix. Stephanie conducted groundbreaking work to investigate the effect of these organisms on other insects in the ecosystem under the mentorship of Dr. Anna Sher, Director of Research and Conservation at Denver Botanic Gardens and in collaboration with Dr. Andrew Norton, Associate Professor, and his lab group at Colorado State University.
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One of the rare Penstemon species tested
“It might be used for medicines some day” is an often-cited justification for protecting imperiled plant species when scientists are pressed to justify our work to protect species that have no perceived “use.” And yet, it appears that no one has specifically looked at the likelihood that this is true… until now. Dr. Don Hazlet, Adjunct Researcher with Denver Botanic Gardens and ethnobotanist, will be submitting a report to the Colorado Natural Areas Program this week of the results of his studies on the biochemistry of 80 of Colorado’s rarest plants.
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