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Botany in the Bronx
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18604 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
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4 / 1991 |
2,666 Words |
| Author
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Linda Joyce Forristal
Linda Joyce Forristal, Life editor for The World & I, is a
member of Les Dames d'Escoffier and is on the board of the
Weston A. Price Foundation. |
The well-known author Oliver Sacks, who wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, likes to stroll the beautiful grounds of the New York Botanical Garden for inspiration; and because of the significant role it plays in his life, the movie Awakenings, which is about his psychiatric work, was partially filmed there.
However, it is not only literary figures who are drawn to this special place but the affluent as well. Recent donations by the Rockefellers have made possible the revival of an old plan for an exquisite rose garden, and $10 million from the Annenbergs has financed the renovation and upkeep of the Victorian conservatory, which has been renamed the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. But the New York Botanical Garden, an oasis in the midst of the turbulent Bronx, should also be known for its excellence in scientific endeavors, which, like its showy and varied gardens and displays, serve as a basis for its existence.
From its inception, the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) had always had two faces. Its founders were a mix of rich patrons--including Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and J. Pierpont Morgan--and one lone scientist, Nathaniel Lord Briton, then a full professor of botany at Columbia University. (The Brittons had toured the Royal Gardens at Kew on their honeymoon, and Mrs. Britton was inspired about the possibility of a comparable American garden.) The prestigious patrons saw the garden as an appropriate site to fund for future generations, while Britton envisioned the garden as a place for the advancement of botanical science and knowledge.
These dual purposes have left their imprint. The NYBG is noted for its community outreach in the form of educational seminars, a school of horticulture, garden shows, tours, and seasonal displays; it even hosts an annual performance of the Metropolitan Opera. But at the same time, the garden is a center for world-class scientific research, and it could be successfully argued that science is its real core.
The systematics program
Plant taxonomy, or systematic botany, as it is sometimes called, is the heart of science at the garden. Starting with Britton himself, NYBG scientists generally have focused on the orderly classification of plants. In fact, Britton and colleague Addison Brown authored one of the most definitive botanical tomes, An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, in 1896. Since that time, a large proportion of floristic works published in the United States have come
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