Community News

Following in Darwin's footsteps, three scientists chart an island's flora

March 23, 2007

By Bill Cary, The Journal News (Original publication: March 26, 2007)

Combining a mix of old-fashioned plant collection techniques from the days of Charles Darwin with state-of-the-art Web technology, three scientists from the Lower Hudson Valley have just returned from a 10-day trip to the Caribbean that allowed them to map out the complete flora of the island of Saba. They collected about 1,000 specimens, including mosses and lichens, on the 5-square-mile island in the Netherlands Antilles and created a Web site with photos and descriptions of each plant. It's the first such comprehensive plant catalog for a Caribbean island.

Bill Buck of Kent served as team leader for the group that also included Scott Mori and his wife, Carol Gracie, both of South Salem. Buck, an expert on mosses, and Mori, a flowering plant specialist, both work full time as curators at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, one of the sponsors of the project. Gracie, who photographed all of the specimens for the expedition's specially created Web site (sweetgum.nybg.org/saba/index.html), works part time at the Botanical Garden. She is also the author of "Wildflowers in the Field and Forest" (Oxford, 2006).

The Web site, which is fully available to the international scientific community, was launched March 10 in a special ceremony on Saba. "What's unusual is that for the first time Saba residents will have access to what we've collected," Buck says. "There's no way they would ever be able to afford a natural history museum, so we've created a virtual museum for them."

"Over half the island is completely undisturbed," he says, making it ideal for plant collection. The topography on the volcanic, 5-square-mile island ranges from dry, desertlike areas covered with low scrub to lush jungle to a cloud forest 2,877 feet above sea level. "What's surprising is that such a small island has such a wide range of flora with so many species," Buck says.

Unlike neighboring St. Maarten, Saba has remained mostly undeveloped. It has no beaches and no sources of fresh water other than collected rainwater. Most of the island's visitors are either scuba divers drawn to the nearby Saba Bank or hikers who come for the great trails and limited number of paved roads, Buck says.

During their 10-day stay, Mori, Gracie and Buck were up early every day and out on the trails collecting and bagging plants until mid-afternoon. Then they returned to their hotel to process and label their collected specimens. "This is what we call fun," Buck says. "It sure beats sitting in my office looking at a computer." Mori says he was able to dry and field press his specimens using a two-burner electric stove, which yields better specimens than the gas-powered stoves he has to use on many of his plant-collecting trips to South America. The pressed plants will be stored in the herbarium at the Botanical Garden.

Unusual plants he found on Saba include mountain mahogany, wild begonias and mountain fuchsia, which boasts brilliant red flowers pollinated by native hummingbirds.

The project was funded by a group called Conservation International, which hopes to tackle the neighboring island of St. Eustatius as its next plant cataloging operation.

Soon after the New York Botanical Garden was founded in the late 1890s, research scientists chose the Caribbean for their first international expedition, Buck says. "We saw this as a great opportunity to get back into the area."

Reach Bill Cary at wcary@lohud.com or 914-696-8554.

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