The breakdown of land bridges between North America and Eurasia ultimately gave rise to the disjunction, or separation, of the two realms’ floras, and allowed for the development of distinctly New and Old World northern hemispheric species such as the maples. From their origins in what is now central China, the trees that would become today’s maples had begun to explore new environments. The best estimates indicate that the modern maples split from their nearest relatives, the two-species Chinese genus of Dipteronia and, more distantly, the buckeyes ( Aesculus spp.), beginning some sixty million years ago, in the middle of the Paleocene. The proximity of five dozen maple species all growing in a common environment makes it possible for me to investigate the evolution and ecology of the genus. For this unparalleled collection contains over 500 trees representing half of the roughly 130 maple species described to date-the vast majority of which are native to East Asia. Yet a tour of the Arnold’s maple collection, accredited by the Plant Collections Network of the American Public Gardens Association, will quickly evince the phenomenal biodiversity of the maple genus. These New England natives, along with three Western endemics, make up the North American maple flora: just nine species across the continent, compared, for instance, to more than 250 oak species. negundo) and shade-tolerant understory acquaintances like the stripe-barked ( A. saccharum) common urban trees such as silver maple ( A. Local visitors to the Arboretum’s maple collection may recognize a few familiar friends: dominant forest species like red ( Acer rubrum) and sugar maple ( A. In this case, my choice is to study maples ( Acer) and my design is to explore the evolutionary context and ecological consequences of their biodiversity. Putnam Postdoctoral Fellow at the Arnold, I have the good fortune of executing a research program of my particular choice and design for two years. Yet a more focused look shows that there is a great deal of diversity within these genera, and that this diversity is of ecological consequence in our rapidly changing world. And justly so: there are both superficial and profound differences between, for example, oaks (genus Quercus) and pines ( Pinus). When casually botanizing during a walk in the woods, we tend to simplify our observations, often at the level of the genus.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |