Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Yesterday we visited a section of Table Mountain National Park, a part that was formerly called Cape Peninsula Park. The latter includes a large natural area that houses the extreme southwestern tip of Africa: The Cape of Good Hope.
On the night before, though, we dined on bobotie, a recipe from the Cape Malay region of South Africa, though Wikipedia gives it an ancient origin. Rita made the salad and main dish:
Bobotie appears to be a variant of patinam ex lacte, a dish documented by the ancient Roman writer Apicius consisting of layers of cooked meat, pine nuts, and seasoned with pepper, celery seeds and asafoetida. These were cooked until the flavours had blended, when a top layer of egg and milk was added. When the latter had set, the dish was ready to be served. C. Louis Leipoldt, a South African writer and gourmet, wrote that the recipe was known in Europe in the seventeenth century.
The bobotie, made with fruit as well, was terrific:
But Martim, who, I’m told, is a creditable baker, made a pear crumble with chocolate. I had it with sour cream on top. Yum!
On the drive there, we saw dozens of chacma baboons by the roadside, along with many signs saying “Beware of baboons” or “Do not feed the baboons.” They are hungry and aggressive, and often vicious. If show them a banana, you have a good chance of dying. This one was grooming another, and the groomee apparently enjoyed its belly rub.
A troop. The babies are very cute, but the signs have made me scared of them. As I said before, a few years ago one of these squalid primates, being chased by a guard, jumped on Martim’s back and knocked him over.
A map of the park, which occupies the Peninsula. There’s a large “false bay” to the east which fooled early sailors who took a hard left at the Cape of Good Hope prominence at the tip of the Peninsula. Rather then turning into the false bay, you take a gentle left and, lo, you’re on the way around Africa.
The first European to circle the southern tip of Africa was the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias in early 1488, paving the way for a route from Europe to India. Dias was in on the beginning of Vasco da Gama‘s successful expedition that made it to India exactly ten years later, and then returned. (Dias, however, got off at the Cape Verde Islands, and died on another venture around Africa in 1500, perishing in a storm—ironically at the Cape of Good Hope.)
This area is where the warm currents of the Indian Ocean meet the frigid currents from Antarctica. This is described below:
The entrance to False Bay, with the Cape of Good Hope (a small mountain) to the right and out of sight (see below):
The False Bay is where you wind up if you make a hard left at the Cape of Good hope. You have to make a gentle left heading towards Gansbaai and then keep hugging the African coast to really circle the southern tip of Africa:
The Cape of Good Hope, described as the extreme southwest tip of Africa, is the smallish “mountain” denuded of vegetation, to the rear:
Lo, the Cape of Good Hope:
A happy kid and his dad at the Cape. (The kid was laughing, not crying.)
A “pagoda”, or species of Mimetes, related to Proteus:
Common silkypuff (Diastella divaricata), also found only on the Cape Peninsula:
A plant with the Afrikaans name of Hangertjies (Erica plukenetii):
Watch out for tortoises! Apparently the park is loaded with tortoises, but it was chilly yesterday and none showed. We did see one reptile (see below):
A black girdled lizard (Cordylus niger), which occurs only in several mountains on the Cape Peninsula, so it’s a narrow endemic:
Spot the lizard, peeking out for a bit of sun:
A sign by a steep cliff near the Cape of Good Hope. The meaning is clear:
A common eland (Taurotragus oryx), the second largest antelope in the world after the giant eland (also of Africa). Note two red-winged starlings on its back, eating the mammal’s parasites.
The widespread Greater Crested Tern (Thalasseus bergii), distributed widely in the tropical and subtropical Old World:
The park harbors common ostriches (Struthio camelus), and three of them crossed the road ahead of us. I was terribly excited as this was the first ratite I’d seen in the wild. They are BIG! (The black color gives this away as a male; females are browner.)
Evolution wound up with some strange (but well adapted) products:
One of several bontebok (Damaliscus pygargus), a medium-sized antelope.
They have white butts:
Martim took these pictures for me; the birds come to a feeder in our garden. This is a Cape White-Eye (Zosterops virens), native to southern Africa. The source of its name is obvious.
And two photos of a beautiful male Southern double-collared sunbird (Cinnyris chalybeus); the female is brown. As you can guess from where it’s sitting and the shape of its bill, it’s a nectar feeder. It’s a metallic malachite green with a red and a yellow collar:
I’ve written quite a bit about the brouhaha over species names of plants and animals considered offensive to biologists and laypeople.
Remember first that every species has two names: the Latin binomial that is standard for the scientific literature (e.g., Passer domesticus), and the “common” name, which varies among countries (e.g., “House sparrow” in English). Along with the present climate of trying to purify the world from words considered offensive and hurtful, scientists have been trying to purify species names, too, changing common names to conform to modern ideology.
They’ve had mixed success with animals. Common bird names, for example, are being purified, especially when birds are named after “bad people”, like John James Audubon. Anybody who had a connection with the slave trade is toast. In fact, some have suggested that we simply ditch all common names derived from people’s names, and use descriptors of the bird’s appearance and location. But even that has its drawbacks. Reader Lou Jost, for instance, pointed out that there is substantial benefits to conservation to name organisms after people, both in Latin binomials and common names:
. . . . naming species after people has always been a powerful tool that biologists have used to thank their patrons, recognize their field assistants and honour their colleagues or loved ones. This is the highest honour that an individual biologist can bestow on a person; we have very little else at our disposal. In recent years some biologists have also used the naming of species to raise funds for research and, especially, for conservation. Guedes et al. mentioned the auctioning of names by the Rainforest Trust. Fundación EcoMinga2 —an Ecuadorian non-governmental organization that is managed by some of us — was the beneficiary of two naming auctions for species new to science3,4. With these funds the foundation was able to pay for journal publication fees so that the resulting articles would be open access as well as pay for some of the logistics of the investigations. Most importantly, we were able to use the funds to help to directly conserve many hundreds of hectares of the habitats of these very same species. In many megadiverse countries of the tropics, funds for these purposes are otherwise scarce or non-existent.
And of course common names vary from language to language, so the purification process occurs only in Anglophone countries.
The debate over the Latin binomials for animals has already been settled by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), which decided that ANIMAL bibnomials will not be changed, for those Latin names are standard throughout the literature, and changing them now would seriously screw up the literature. The ICZN did suggest, however, that Latin names proposed for newly described species not be such as “would be likely to give offense on any grounds. But that is only their suggestion, not a rule. So you could still name a species like the blind cave beetle Anophthalmus hitleri(yes, it was named in der Führer’s honor), though I doubt anybody would do that now. As for common names, the ICZN has no authority over them, and no recommendations. I agree with their decision not to give new Latin names to already-described species, as this would seriously confuse the scientific literature. And of course what’s considered “offensive” changes as our morality and ideology changes. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, for instance, were slaveholders, and any Latin binomials with their names would be seen as “offensive”; as should “Washington, D.C.” site of the ill-named “Jefferson Memorial.”
But the ICZN decision goes for animals only. The botanists, on the other hand, have just decided that offensive Latin names for plants already given can be changed, and some will be changed. Click below to read the article in Nature:
Excerpts (bolding is mine):
For the first time, researchers have voted to eliminate scientific names of organisms because they are offensive. Botanists decided that more than 200 plants, fungi and algae species names should no longer contain a racial slur related to the word caffra, which is used against Black people and others mostly in southern Africa.
he changes voted on today at the International Botanical Congress in Madrid mean that plants such as the coast coral tree will, from 2026, be formally called Erythrina affra, instead of Erythrina caffra.
“We throughout had faith in the process and the majority global support of our colleagues, even though the outcome of the vote was always going to be close,” says Gideon Smith, a plant taxonomist at Nelson Mandela University (NMU) in Gqeberha, South Africa, who proposed the change along with fellow NMU taxonomist Estrela Figueiredo.
Their proposal takes species names based on the word caffra and its derivatives and replaces them with derivatives of ‘afr’ to instead recognize Africa. The measure passed in a tense secret ballot, with 351 votes in favour against 205 opposed.
Alina Freire-Fierro, a botanist at the Technical University of Cotopaxi in Latacunga, Ecuador, says it was good that the ‘caffra’ amendment was passed, because of the offence it causes. But its passage could open the door for other similar changes, she says. “This could potentially cause a lot of confusion and problems to users in many fields aside from botany.”
And that’s the rub! I can barely agree with the notion of changing “caffra” (a derivative of “kaffir”, a deeply insulting term for a black African—the African equivalent of the n-word), but only because changing “caffra” as the species name to “affra” will not cause much confusion. But in general I think the botanists, do what they will with the common names of plants (“Trumpet vine” may have to go), should go along with the ICZN, and leave Latin names of plants alone, both new and old. The damage to the scientific literature is potentially large. Yet the International Botanical Congress also seems to be vetting all newly suggested Latin names as well:
A second change to the rules for naming plants that aimed to address problematic names, such as those recognizing people who profited from the transatlantic slave trade, also passed — albeit in a watered-down form, says Kevin Thiele, a plant taxonomist at the Australia National University in Canberra, who made the proposal.
Scientists attending the Botanical Congress Nomenclature Section voted to create a special committee to deal with the ethics of names for newly described plants, fungi and algae. Species names — usually determined by the scientists who first describe them in the scientific literature — can now be rejected by the committee if deemed derogatory to a group of people. But this applies only to species names given after 2026, not to historical names that Thiele and others would like to see eliminated.
Still, this opens the door to Pecksniffian policing of plant names. I am not comfortable with someone vetting all suggested new binomials for offense, as “offense” is a slippery word, and a mere suggestion (like the ICZN’s) should suffice for guidance. As for changing older names, well, the botanists have created a slippery slope here. If they can change one name, they might change others, as was suggested by Thiele in an earlier article:
Kevin Thiele, a plant taxonomist at the Australia National University in Canberra, expects that, if his proposal to create a mechanism to remove offensive names is approved, a relatively small number of species names would change. It’s likely that the argument for stability in species names would be outweighed only in cases in which plants are named after “sufficiently egregious” individuals, he says.
One change Thiele would like to see is to a genus of flowering shrubs, most of which have yellow blooms and are found in Australia, called Hibbertia, with new species routinely discovered. They are named after George Hibbert, an eighteenth-century English merchant who profited from the slave trade and fought abolition. “There should be a way of dealing with cases like Hibbert,” he says.
You know how these things go. Once “caffra” is changed to “affra”, people like Thiele will create a movement to change older species names not derived from “kaffir”, because, after all, opposing changing the names of plants named after those in the slave trade (or who did other bad things) would be considered racist, and who wants to be called a racist? (Note that even the vote for “caffra”—>”affra” was pretty close.) It is the loudest people, even when they’re in the minority, who ultimately win in this kind of endeavor.
These acts are performative only, for offensive species names don’t seem to affect whether people go into botany or zoology because of offensive Latin binomials (I haven’t heard of a single case). The Botanical Congress should simply make a suggestion to avoid offensive Latin binomials and then keep its sticky fingers off names that botanists suggests for new plants. And, after making the “caffra” change, they should vow that this one change will be the only older species name to be changed, and will also be the last one.
The statue of Carl von Linné, located on the Midway, has been spray painted with several phrases, including “death 2 amerikkka” and “death 2 academy.” The Midway is part of the Chicago Park District and the statue is not on University property.
– Nathaniel Rodwell-Simon, News Reporter
Now we can’t be sure that the protestors encamped here defaced this statue, but I haven’t seen it defaced in the 38 years I’ve been here. And the correlation with The Encampment, as well as the message, is striking. Defacing it makes no statement except “I am ignorant and hateful.”
If you don’t know who Linnaeus was (also called Carl von Linné after he became a nobleman), you can read about him here. He was a Swedish botanist and formulated the system of Latin binomials to identify organisms. (I visited his house, which still stands, when I lectured at Uppsala, but don’t have time to post the pictures.) He was amazingly productive, widely admired, and is known as “the Father of Modern Taxonomy.” Why some chowderhead would deface his statue defies me.
Here’s the lovely statue from the front, which I always admire when I walk by it on the Midway. It was created by Frithiof Kjellberg in 1891, installed the same year, and then relocated in 1976. And what a great thought to memorialize a famous biologist whom almost nobody has heard of!
Photographed by Joe Lothan, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
A science paper at last! Truth be told, I don’t come across many science papers that are both of general interest and that I can explain easily. But I do have several more in the queue.
A colleague sent me an old paper (from 2006), but its age does not diminish how spectacular the results are. And in short, the results are these: a group of 15 phenotypically similar (but probably not closely related) orchids in SW South Africa are pollinated by females of a single species of bee, which collects oil produced by the flowers and feeds it to their offspring.
This poses a problem, because orchids are pollinated by affixing sticky pollinia (sacs of pollen) collected from a flower of one species to the next flower of the same species. (The orchids in this group do not self-fertilize). With pollen sacs from 15 different orchid species sticking to a bee, how can a plant be sure that its own pollen gets transferred to another individual of the same species, rather than to another individual of a different species, in which case cross-species pollination would produce either inviable or maladapted hybrids?
The bees and orchids have solved this in a very clever way.
But let’s back up: the paper, from the American Journal of Botany, can be seen for free by clicking on the screenshot below, and the pdf is here.
The reason the author, Anton Pauw, gives for his 8-year investigation is that, he says, the “conventional wisdom” in botany is that it’s not adaptive for a bunch of flowers to depend on a single species of pollinator. That’s because if some environmental fluctuation or other contingency makes the pollinator rare (or even drives it extinct), the flowers wouldn’t get pollinated. This would imply that flowers should evolve to attract several species of pollinator, for those flowers that are generalists in this way are less likely to become rare or extinct themselves.
But this doesn’t seem to be the case in this group of 15 orchids, which, according to Pauw’s observation, come from three different genera (molecular phylogeny also suggests that they’re not each other’s closest relatives, though they look remarkably similar). Yet all are pollinated by a single bee, Rediviva peringueyi. This is in a genus called “long-legged oil bees.”
The flowers, as I said, look like each other, all produce oil that the bee collects, and all live in the same area, as well as flowering at the same time. As the author says,
Subgroups of similar plant species can be recognized within the extensive oil-bee pollination system. The one examined here includes 15 oil-secreting orchids that share the following syndrome of floral features: pale yellow-green flowers without extensive black markings; secretion of floral oil as a pollinator reward; characteristic pungent scent; flowering period 15 August to 25 October peaking in September; flower depth 5–8 mm (Fig. 1a–n). The species occur in close association with one another in the lowlands of the Cape Floral Region and include members of three genera (Pterygodium, Corycium, and Disperis). According to the pollination syndrome concept, the similar floral features of this group indicate a shared pollinator. My aim was to test this prediction through extensive field work.
Figure 1 below (click to enlarge; caption from paper) shows how similar the flowers are. The pollinating bee (R. poeringueyi, which I’ll henceforth call “the bee”) is shown in the middle. The arrows show where the pollinia of each orchid species gets attached:
Figure 1. The Rediviva peringueyi pollination guild. Center, the oil-collecting bee R. peringueyi, arrows indicate pollinarium attachment sites of orchid species. (a) Pterygodium catholicum. (b) P. alatum. (c) P. caffrum. (d) P. volucris. (e) Corycium orobanchoides. (f) Disperis bolusiana subsp. bolusiana. (g) D. villosa. (h) D. cucullata. (i) D. circumflexa subsp. circumflexa. (j) P. inversum. (k) P. hallii. (l) P. platypetalum. (m) D. ×duckittiae. (n) P. cruciferum. (o) D. capensis var. capensis. Attachment sites f–i after Steiner. Pollinarium attachment sites are confirmed in a–g. Pollination and/or pollinarium attachment are predicted in h–o on the basis of floral features. R. peringueyi 5× life size, orchids 2× life size. Images e, h, k by Bill Liltved.
The bees also collect pollen and nectar, too, but not from these orchids. From these 15 orchids they take only flower oil (I had no idea it even existed), and do so by, as you can see in the photo below, gripping the plant with the bee’s middle and hindlegs and collecting the oil with modified forelegs. In the process (and of course this is why the flower produces oil and scent to attract the bee). During oil collection, the pollinia of the orchid, which is sticky, attaches to the bee’s body. That’s also shown in the photo below.
This, of course, raises the problem noted above. If a pollen sac from one of the 15 orchid species is stuck to the bee’s body, how can it be guaranteed to pollinate the same species of orchid, for there’s no guarantee that the next flower the bee visits will be from the same species. (All the orchids are, after all, flowering at the same time.)
The answer is the cool part of the story. Each orchid has evolved to stick its pollen to a different part of the bee’s body. And each orchid has its female parts placed so that the pollinia from its own species, stuck to a specific place on the bee’s body, will contact it’s own species-specific style (the female bit that gets the pollen for fertilization). Thus cross-pollination is prevented by the specificity of where the pollinia stick to the bee and bu the specific position of the female part of each orchid, which has evolved so, that when the bee collects oil, the right pollen will land on the right stigma.
Paux found this out by identifying the different pollina of the flowers (they have different shapes), and trapping wild bees to see where the pollinia of each species was stuck to the body. That’s what’s shown in the figure above: each letter corresponds to the orchids depicted around the edges, and the arrows show where on the bee’s body the pollinia from each species are stuck. Notice that they’re all different. Except for two, that is: the pollinia from orchids b and c, which both stick to the foretarsi of the bee’s middle legs.
Does this mean there’s cross-pollination between orchids b and c, which would be bad? No, because the pollinia of these two species are of different length, and the stigmas of the two orchids are placed so that each will get the pollen from the right species.
This is a remarkable example of specificity in pollen placement; I know of nothing similar! You can see below, in “b” and “c” of Fig. 3, that the pollen are stuck to very specific parts of the body. In “b”, the pollen of the flower Pterogodium cathlocium get attached to the bee’s “basistarsi” on the middle legs (the most distal part of the large leg tarsi), while the pollinia of the orchid Pterygodium volucris get attached to the ventral surface of the bee’s abdomen. The pollen sacs on the flowers have to be in very different places to accomplish this, and the bee has to collect oil in a specific position to get the pollinia stuck to the right spot.
(From paper): Fig. 3. Rediviva peringueyi pollination mechanism. (a) Female R. peringueyi collecting floral oil from the apex of the lip appendage of Pterygodium alatum with a rapid rubbing motion of the front tarsi. The bee hangs onto the lip appendage with the middle tarsi, onto which the pollinaria (visible) become attached. Bar: 3 mm. (b) Several pollinaria of P. catholicum attached precisely to the basitarsi of the middle legs of R. peringueyivia the sticky viscidia. Bar: 1 mm. (c) Pollinaria of Pterygodium volucris attached to the ventral surface of the last abdominal segment of R. peringueyi. Bar: 3 mm.
Note that several types of evolution appear to be involved in this phenomenon:
a.) Convergent evolution of the different, unrelated orchids so that they develop a common scent, appearance, and “lip” that allows the bees to hang on while collecting oil.
b.) Divergent evolution of the orchids so that each evolves a lip and pollinia position that will stick its pollen to a previously uncolonized part of the bee’s body
c.) Possible evolution of the bee’s behavior so that it “knows” how to hold onto each species of flower to collect oil (this might not involve genetic evolution, but simply be due to learning).
So this is the cool way that fifteen different species of orchids can pollinate members of their own species, even if they’re all serviced by the same species of pollinator. According to Pauw, though, this doesn’t solve the problem raised at the beginning: such specificity makes the whole system precarious—liable to collapse if anything happens to the pollinator. And indeed, he says that the degree of pollination of the orchid species vary strongly from year to year. So it goes.
Another aspect of this system is the possible extinction of the bee. In a sad ending, Pauw notes that the habitat for both orchid and bee is disappearing:
The biggest challenge in this study was the scarcity of suitable study sites. About 80% of lowland vegetation has already been transformed by urbanization and agriculture (Heijnis et al., 1999). What remains are scattered fragments of natural habitat, mostly less than 1 ha in size. In many of these fragments, the absence of R. peringueyi and repeated pollination failure in the entire guild was recorded. We have probably already lost the chance to understand the intriguing flowers of species such as P. cruciferum, which persists in fewer than five remnants of natural vegetation where they seldom, if ever, receive pollinator visits. In contrast with the pollination systems of the north temperate regions, which almost invariably involve several ecologically equivalent pollinator species (Waser et al., 1996; Fenster et al., 2004), the pollination system described here is dependent on a single insect species. This presents a challenge for conservation because of the low level of ecological redundancy means that the loss of R. peringueyi may trigger linked extinctions amongst the plants in the R. peringueyi pollination guild. It seems unlikely that the R. peringueyi pollination guild will persist in a modern, cultural landscape without unique conservation planning.
If the bee goes extinct, so will every one of these orchid species, for their reproduction depends on the insects. There’s a lot more to study here, and I’m hoping that they’re trying to save some habitat for both plant and insect. Since pollination itself has been observed in only about five of these orchids, there’s a lot more observational work to be done. Further, the DNA analysis of the orchids, indicating that they are not a “monophyletic group” (i.e., not each other’s closest relatives) was rather crude, and that needs to be done using more modern methods. If they are not each other’s closest relatives, then we have a new and solid case of “convergent evolution” (unrelated species developing very similar traits).
This didn’t appear on my Google screen, but reader Dennis tells me that yesterday Google in Canada posted a Doodle honoring the 155th birthday of Carrie Matilda Derick (1862-1941).
Derick, a geneticist specializing in plants, was in fact the first female professor in any subject in a Canadian university. She was also the founder of the botany department at McGill University, but wasn’t made a professor for three years after she’d been running the department! (See below.) The Library and Archives Canada recounts some of her achievements, which were not only in botany, but in popularization of science and political activism:
As well as teaching and doing research, Derick published numerous articles on botany, including “The problem of the ‘burn-out’ district of southern Saskatchewan,” “The early development of the Florideae,” and “The trees of McGill University.” Many articles were aimed at the scientific community, earning her the respect of colleagues around the world and the distinction of appearing in the 1910 edition of American men of science. Others were intended to bring an understanding of nature to a general audience. In addition, she wrote biographical sketches and political essays.
At the same time that she was leading a busy and sometimes difficult academic life, Derick was deeply involved in social activism. Her main interests were women’s suffrage and education, but she worked for many causes throughout her life. Her energy and commitment are reflected in a partial list of the organizations she was involved with: the Local Council of Women (Montreal); the Protestant Committee of the Council of Education; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the Montreal Suffrage Association; the National Council of Education; the Federation of University Women of Canada; and the Montreal Folklore Society.
Carrie Derick
Sadly, this Doodle is seen only in the blue places below, i.e., Canada. It’s the first one-country Doodle I’ve seen, and that’s a shame. It does us well to remember the indignities suffered not all that long ago by women in academia, and to mourn the loss of scientific advances caused by the marginalization of women. Wikipedia gives the evidence (my emphasis)
In 1891, Derick began her master’s program at McGill under David Penhallow and received her M.A. in botany in 1896. She attended the University of Bonn in 1901 and completed the research required for a Ph.D. but was not awarded an official doctorate since the University did not give women Ph.D. degrees. She then returned to McGill and “continued to work, teach, and administer” in the botany department. In 1905, “after seven years of lecturing, assisting Penhallow with his classes, researching and publishing, without any pay increments or offers of promotion, Derick wrote directly to Principal Peterson and was promoted to assistant professor” at one-third the salary of her male counterparts. Derick was only officially appointed as professor of comparative morphology and genetics by McGill in 1912 after three years of running the department following Penhallow’s death. She was the first woman both at McGill and in Canada to achieve university professorship. She retired in 1929.
This is my 9,970th post, which means that within the week we’ll get to post number 10,000. I’m still pondering the 172 comments on the thread following “The 10,000th post: what shall it be?“, in which readers suggested way to celebrate this landmark. If I decide to use one of those suggestions, that reader gets an autographed copy of WEIT with a cat drawn in it. Given that there will probably be nearly ten posts today, as there’s a lot to say, I expect the Big Day to be Thursday or Friday. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot below to go there) celebrates Anna Atkins (1799-1871), a British botanist and photographer. Today would be her 216th birthday, and her distinction was to be the first person to publish any book that included photographs. In fact, she may have been the first woman to take a photograph. The Doodle gives an idea of what her photos looked like:
Anna Atkins
Here’s the title page of that pathbreaking self-published book, which appeared in 1853 (the first commercially published book with photos, by William Henry Fox Talbot, appeared 8 months later). This and all photographs are taken from the British Library’s site.
The captions were in her Atkins’s own handwriting, and the book went through three editions. According to Wikipedia, only 17 copies still exist, and they’re extremely valuable: one was auctioned off for £229,250 in 2004. But you can see the whole book for free, as the British Library has most of it scanned in (go here).
Here’s one of the pages from the table of contents, in Atkins’s handwriting:
From Vox we have some information about the process she used (their text indented):
Early photographers struggled with a problem: they couldn’t easily develop their pictures because the existing techniques were slow, expensive, or required dangerous chemicals. Herschel came up with a solution: using an iron pigment called “Prussian blue,” he laid objects or photographic negatives onto chemically-treated paper, let them be exposed to sunlight for around 15 minutes, and then washed the paper. The remaining image revealed pale blue objects on a dark blue background. This was a cyanotype — a new way to print photographs permanently.
Herschel primarily used cyanotypes to copy notes, but when Atkins heard about the opportunity, she leapt at it. Though she’d shown herself to be a capable artist, she realized instantly that cyanotypes were a better way to capture the intricacies of plant life and avoid the tedium — and error — involved with drawing. As importantly, her passion for botany allowed her to see a new application of the exciting technology.
So, in 1843, she began making a photographic book of algae.
Atkins’ British Algae was the definition of a labor of love. Published in piecemeal over a decade, from the 1840s to the 1850s, the book was made at home using her own materials. From what we know, she collected the algae with the help of her friend Anne Dixon and dried and pressed it, the same way you might press flowers. Then, she identified it using William Harvey’s Manual of British Algae. Finally, she made the cyanotype by laying each piece upon the paper (that’s why, technically, her pictures are called photograms, not photographs, because they didn’t use a camera). The book’s text appears in her own elegant cursive.
The book wasn’t a profit-making enterprise for Atkins, but it was an important one. It stands as the first book illustrated with photographs, and it brought together photography and botany for the first time. Atkins took the most fleeting and unusual of subjects — British algae — and made it timeless.
You have to really love algae to do something like this.
Psychotria elata, a neotropical plant in the family Rubiaceae, has become internet-famous because of its flowers—or rather the shape of the red bracts (modified leaves) before the flowers mature. As The Amusing Planet notes:
These gorgeous pair of red, luscious lips belong to a plant known as Psychotria elata, a tropical tree found in the rain forests of Central and South American countries like Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama and Ecuador. Affectionately, Psychotria elata is called Hooker’s Lips or the Hot Lips Plants. The plant has apparently evolved into its current shape to attract pollinators including hummingbirds and butterflies. According to Oddity Central, the bracts are only kissable for a short while, before they spread open to reveal the plant’s flowers.
Without having seen it, I am still 100% sure that Central and South American kids pick these bracts and run around with them in their mouths.
In the end, though, I think a less salacious and more appropriate name would be “Marilyn Monroe lips”
