Natural History

Ethnobotany and Medicinal Plants in New Amsterdam

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Dr. Joel W. Grossman, the archaeologist who directed the excavation of the early-17th century shoreline block of the Dutch West India Company at Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, will discuss &#8220Dutch Ethnobotany and Medicinal Plants in 17th Century New Amsterdam&#8221 on Saturday, June 6, 2009 at 12:00 noon in the Arthur and
Janet Ross Lecture Hall, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York.

The dig exposed the deeply-buried remains of the colony’s first warehouse, the artifact-filled cisterns of its earliest inhabitants, and a well-preserved record of changing colonial plants. Grossman’s lavishly illustrated talk will explore the intriguing transatlantic links between the Leiden Hortus, or botanical garden, of the University of Leiden, East and West India Company doctors, institutionalized plant collecting and Native American informants in 17th Century New Amsterdam.

Grossman’s talk is presented as part of the New York Botanical Garden’s Quadricentennial Celebration: The Glory of Dutch Bulbs: A Legacy of 400 Years: May 1-June 7, 2009. Discover indoor and outdoor displays that feature large swaths of bright flowering bulbs and companion plants inspired by the great tulip and lily gardens of Holland. See Nybg.org/dutch_bulbs for other offerings on June 6th, and all the events being offered as part of the Glory of Dutch Bulbs program. For directions please call: (718) 817-8779- for general info: (718) 817-8770.

The Mannahatta Project Uncovers NYC in 1609

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A new web site (now in Beta) sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society shows viewers what New York City looked like before it was a city. After nearly a decade of research the The Mannahatta Project uncovers online the original ecology of Manhattan circa 1609. According to the site:

&#8220That’s right, the center of one of the world’s largest and most built-up cities was once a natural landscape of hills, valleys, forests, fields, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, beaches, springs, ponds and streams, supporting a rich and abundant community of wildlife and sustaining people for perhaps 5000 years before Europeans arrived on the scene in 1609. It turns out that the concrete jungle of New York City was once a vast deciduous forest, home to bears, wolves, songbirds, and salamanders, with clear, clean waters jumping with fish. In fact, with over 55 different ecological communities, Mannahatta’s biodiversity per acre rivaled that of national parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Great Smoky Mountains!&#8221

The goal of the Mannahatta Project is no less than &#8220to re-start the natural history of New York City.&#8221 The site includes a virtual Mannahatta map that allows you to see Mannahatta from any location, block-by-block species information, lessons on the science and technology used to create the site, hundreds of layers of digital data, place-based lesson plans for elementary and high school students that meet New York State standards, an online discussion page, and event listing.

Recent updates to Mannahatta include the ability click on a city block to find out what type of plants and animals called it home, whether the Lenape people lived or worked there, and what kind of landscape features appeared on that block. You can also use the slider bar to fade from Mannahatta to modern day to see how the island has changed in the last 400 years.

Last week a related multimedia exhibit &#8220Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City&#8221 also opened at the Museum of the City of New York.

Wild, Unsettled Country At The Adirondack Museum

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The Adirondack Museum has announced a new exhibit, A &#8216-Wild, Unsettled Country’: Early Reflections of the Adirondacks, that will look at the early efforts to convey the Adirondacks visually to the wider world. The exhibit will open on May 22, 2009 &#8211 meaning that year-round Adirondack Park residents should be able to catch the exhibit for free the last week of May.

The first Europeans to see the Adirondack landscape of northern New York State came to explore, to document important military operations and fortifications, or to create maps and scientifically accurate images of the terrain, flora, and fauna.
These early illustrations filled practical needs rather than aesthetic ones.

The exhibition will showcase approximately forty paintings from the museum’s exceptional art collection, including works by Thomas Cole, John Frederick Kensett, William Havell, John Henry Dolph and James David Smillie.

Also featured are fifty of the engravings and lithographs of Adirondack landscape paintings that brought these images to a wider audience and provided many Americans with their first glimpse of the &#8220howling wilds&#8221 that were the Adirondack Mountains.

While tourists were flocking to Saratoga Springs, N.Y. in the 1830s, few ventured north into the &#8220lofty chain of granite&#8221 visible from Lake George. One guidebook described the mysterious forms as &#8220a wild repulsive aspect.&#8221 Little was known of these yet-unnamed mountains.

In 1836, the New York State legislature authorized a survey of the state’s natural resources. Artist Charles Cromwell Ingham was asked to join geologists Ebenezer Emmons and William C. Redfield during one of the first exploratory surveys. During the trip, he painted The Great Adirondack Pass, &#8220on the spot.&#8221 The original painting will be shown in the exhibition.

The exhibit will also include photographs-stereo views and albumen prints-sold as tourist souvenirs and to armchair travelers. William James Stillman took the earliest photos in the exhibition in 1859. These rare images are the first photographic landscape studies taken in the Adirondacks. Photos by Seneca Ray Stoddard will also be displayed.

Significant historic maps will illustrate the growth of knowledge about the Adirondack region. In 1818, it was still a mysterious &#8220wild, barren tract&#8230-covered with almost impenetrable Bogs, Marshes & Ponds, and the uplands with Rocks and evergreens.&#8221 By 1870, the Adirondacks had become a tourist destination with clearly defined travel routes, hotels, beaches, and camps.

&#8220A &#8216-Wild, Unsettled Country’&#8221 will be on exhibit in the Lynn H. Boillot Art Galleries. The space includes the Adirondack Museum Gallery Study Center &#8211 a resource for learning more about American art. In addition to a library of reference books, a touch screen computer allows visitors to access images from the museum’s extensive fine art collection.

The Gallery Study Center will include a media space as part of the special exhibit. The documentary film &#8220Champlain: The Lake Between&#8221 will be shown continuously. The film, part of the Lake Champlain Voyages of Discovery project, has aired on Vermont Public Television in recent months.

&#8220A &#8216-Wild, Unsettled Country’&#8221 is not just for adults. Family-friendly elements include Looking at Art With Children &#8211 a guide for parents as they investigate the arts with youngsters- the Grand Tour Guide &#8211 a colorful and engaging map that encourages exploration of the Adirondack sites shown in the paintings- and ten different Wild About! guidebooks that urge kids to be &#8220wild&#8221 about maps, prints, history, and more.

Photo caption: View of Caldwell, Lake George, by William Tolman Carlton, 1844. Collection of the Adirondack Museum.

NYC: Douglas Brinkley on Roosevelt, Wilderness Warrior

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In his new book, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, Douglas Brinkley (Professor of History and Baker Institute Fellow, Rice University) looks at the pioneering environmental policies of President Theodore Roosevelt, an avid bird-watcher and naturalist with Adirondack ties at the American Museum of Natural History’s Linder Theater in New York City tomorrow, Tuesday, April 28, 6:30 pm. Admission will be $15 ($13.50 Members, students, senior citizens).

Roosevelt was a pioneer of the conservation movement and was involved with the American Museum of Natural History from childhood. As a matter of fact, the original charter creating the Museum was signed in his family home in 1869, and the Museum has a permanent hall in tribute to Theodore Roosevelt and the contributions he made to city, state, and nation throughout his life. A book signing will follow this program.

Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History and Baker Institute Fellow, Rice University, is the author of several books, including The Unfinished Presidency, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc, and The Great Deluge (which won him the 2007 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award)- he is also a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and an in-house historian for CBS News. He has earned several honorary doctorates for his contributions to American letters and was once called the “the best of the new generation of American historians” by the late historian Stephen E. Ambrose.

For questions regarding this event, please contact Antonia Santangelo at 212-769-5310 or [email protected].

Teddy Roosevelt and The Adirondack Forest Preserve

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This post has been cross-posted to Adirondack Almanack, the blog of Adirondack culture, history, and politics.

In the heart of the Adirondacks is the Town of Newcomb, population about 500. The town was developed as a lumbering and mining community &#8211 today tourism and forest and wood products are the dominate way locals make a living. As a result the Essex County town is one of the Adirondacks’ poorer communities ($32,639 median income in 2000).

The folks in Newcomb (and also in North Creek in Warren County) often promote their communities’ connection to Theodore Roosevelt’s ascendancy to the presidency. Teddy’s nighttime trip from a camp in Newcomb to the rail station at North Creek as William McKinley lay dying from a bullet delivered by Leon Czolgosz&#8216-s .32 caliber Iver-Johnson handgun is usually considered Roosevelt’s great tie to the Adirondack region. There is a annual celebration of Roosevelt this weekend, but more of that later.

Roosevelt was the first American president to find the long-term conservation of our natural resources and important goal. According to the great wiki &#8220Roosevelt set aside more land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined, 194 million acres&#8221:

Roosevelt created the first National Bird Preserve, (the beginning of the Wildlife Refuge system)&#8230- recognized the imminent extinction of the American Bison&#8230- urged Congress to establish the United States Forest Service (1905), to manage government forest lands, and he appointed Gifford Pinchot to head the service&#8230- In all, by 1909, the Roosevelt administration had created an unprecedented 42 million acres (170,000 km?) of national forests, 53 national wildlife refuges and 18 areas of &#8220special interest&#8221, including the Grand Canyon.

A longstanding question from Roosevelt’s time still creates raging debates in Newcomb &#8211 should the state keep buying land in Newcomb (and elsewhere) to add to the Forest Preserve while it continues to ban logging?

Here is a short history of the movement to log the Adirondack Forest Preserve prior to 1900:

1798 &#8211 New York State sells 4 million acres of the Macomb Patent for eight pence an acre. Political and corporate interests would control much of the Adirondacks for the next century. In 1855 for example, the state sold three entire townships to a railroad company for five cents an acre, even though the price had been set by law at 75 cents an acre.

In 1885, the Forest Preserve Act was passed establishing the New York State Forest Commission and declaring that &#8220The lands now or hereafter constituting the forest preserve shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not sold, nor shall they be leased or taken by any corporation, public or private.&#8221

With the establishment of the Forest Preserve came calls to log it. In 1890, the Commission argued that new Forest Preserve lands should be purchased with money from the sales of timber (softwoods over 12 inches in diameter). In 1892, the state legislature established the Adirondack Park within the Forest Preserve and stated it would be &#8220forever reserved, maintained and cared for as a ground open for the free use of all the people for their health or pleasure, and as forest lands necessary to the preservation of the headwaters of the chief rivers and a future timber supply.&#8221

The following year later the State Legislature approved the logging of Tamarack and Spruce 12 inches and up and any size Poplar. The New York Evening Post reported that fifteen bills were rushed to the New York Legislature &#8220nearly all of which are directly to the advantage of the timber and land sharks.&#8221 The following year, the American Forestry Association, the New York State Forestry Association, the Adirondack Park Association, and the Genesee Forestry Association, held a &#8220Forest Congress&#8221 in Albany which opposed the lumbering plan.

The move to log the Forest Preserve created a backlash from conservationists and that, along with a report form the State Comptroller outlining immense fraud, bribery, and illegal cutting, led to inclusion of a formal ban in the New York Constitution in 1894. &#8220The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed.&#8221 The American Forestry Association also opposed this plan.

In 1898, New York Governor Frank Black, pushed for a 40,000 acre experimental forestry station to be run by Cornell Forest School, which was established by the same law. Cornell University started the forestry program but closed its doors in 1903, it was headed by Bernhard Eduard Fernow.

In 1898 Teddy Roosevelt was elected Governor. Roosevelt believed that someday, forestry could be applied to the state’s Forest Preserve &#8211 he said so in his 1900 annual message: &#8220We need to have our system of forestry gradually developed and conducted along scientific principles. When this has been done it will be possible to allow marketable lumber to be cut everywhere without damage to the forests.&#8221

Roosevelt brought in Gifford Pinchot and the United States Division of Forestry who devised a plan to lumber Township 40 in the Totten and Crossfield Purchase. About 25 men were hired under forester Ralph Hosmer and local lumberer Eugene Bruce to survey the woods and lay out a plan to log the Forest Preserve. With the failure of the plan’s adoption came the virtual end to serious attempts to log the Adirondacks en masse.

The annual Newcomb Roosevelt celebration is this weekend (Sept. 5, 6, and 7)

Newcomb Visitor Interpretive Center Opening Celebration (Friday night, Sept. 5, at 6:30 p.m., and featuring Adirondack Folksinger-Songwriter Peggy Lynn)

Craft Fair (Saturday, Sept. 6, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 7, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. at the Newcomb Central School)

Quilt Show (Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 6-7, 9 a.m. &#8211 5 p.m. at the Newcomb Visitor Interpretive Center).

All Weekend Long: Wagon Rides to Camp Santanoni, Free Pony Rides, Wool Spinning, a Classic Car Exhibit, Historic Guided Tours of Newcomb and Village of Adirondac, the Ty Yandon 5K Memorial Foot Race, and the TR Naturalist Challenge.

Fireworks on Saturday evening, Sept. 6, at the Overlook (Musical Entertainment beforehand)

For more information, contact the Newcomb Chamber of Commerce at (518) 582-3211.

1800s Natural History Survey of New York Online

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The mid-1800s Natural History Survey of New York has been posted online at the New York State Library here. According to a recent note from the Library’s staff:

The Natural History Survey of New York, undertaken in the mid-1800s, covered zoology, flora, mineralogy, geology, agriculture and paleontology. The NYS Library has digitized the first three components of the survey so far. The &#8220Zoology of New York&#8221, or the &#8220New York Fauna,&#8221 is a five-volume set published from 1842-1844. This pioneering study by James E. De Kay addressed both recent and fossil mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, mollusks and crustaceans. The hand-colored plates in part 1 (Mammalia), part 2 (Birds) and part 5 (Mollusca and Crustacea) can be found at the end of those volumes. &#8220A Flora of the State of New-York,&#8221 a two-volume set by John Torrey, was published in 1843- at the time, it was the largest single work of its kind published. The hand-colored plates are listed after each volume. &#8220Mineralogy of New-York&#8221 by Lewis C. Beck was published in 1842 and provided detailed descriptions of minerals found in the state, with information on their uses in the arts and agriculture.

Here is a description of the Northern District from the Survey’s preface (note the presence of wolverines [photo above] &#8211 alternate spellings are in the original):

The Northern District comprises, as its name imports, the northern portion of the State, which forms an irregular truncated triangle, bounded on its western side by Lake Ontario and the River St. Lawrence, on its eastern side by Lake Champlain and Lake George, and lying north of the Mohawk valley. This district, in its southern and southeastern portions, rises into numerous conical peaks and short ranges, attaining in some places an elevation of more than five thousand feet. Towards Lakes Champlain and George, these subside suddenly to the level of those sheets of water. To the north and northwest, this descends by a gradual and almost imperceptible slope towards the River St. Lawrence. This slope is watered by the Oswegatchie, the Moose and Black rivers, the Raquet [sic] and Grass and St. Regis rivers, all arising from numerous lakes embosomed in the mountainous regions of its southern parts. Lake Champlain, a part of its eastern boundary, extends north and south one hundred and forty miles, is twelve miles wide in its broadest part, and discharges its water through the Sorel river into the St. Lawrence. Into the southern part of this lake is also poured the waters of Lake George or Horicon, thirty-seven miles long, and varying from one to seven miles in breadth. The cluster of mountains in its southeastern portions may be considered as an offset from the great Appalachian system, which, descending through the States of Maine, New-Hampshire and Vermont, passes southwesterly between the Western and Hudson river districts, and is continued under the name of the Allegany range of mountains. In this region too we find the Sacondaga, Cedar, Jessup, and other tributaries of the Hudson, within a short distance of those which pour into the St. Lawrence. This mountainous region comprises the counties of Essex, Hamilton, Herkimer and Warren, and the southern part of the counties of Clinton, Franklin and St. Lawrence, and has been estimated to contain an area of about six thousand square miles. Its zoological character is strongly impressed by the features just alluded to. The chief growth of trees in this district are the Spruce, Pine, Larch, Balsam, Fir and Cedar. We find in this district many of the fur-bearing animals, such as the Sable, the Fisher, and the Beaver. Here too roam the Moose, the Wolverine, and others now only found in high northern latitudes. It also forms the southern limits of the migration of many arctic birds- and we accordingly meet here with the Canada Jay and Spruce Grouse, the Swan, the Raven and the Arctic Woodpecker.