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Collectors of the UNC Herbarium
Lisa Marie Giencke
(b. 1982)
Information compiled in May 2006 by Carol Ann McCormick,
Assistant Curator of the University of North Carolina Herbarium
Lisa Giencke worked in
the University of North Carolina Herbarium from 2002 - 2006
in several capacities. She deposited about 400 specimens (most
from Battle Park in Orange County, NC), and annoted many existing
specimens in our fern collection. Ms. Giencke's greatest legacy
to the Herbarium was her expertise in computer technology: she
piloted the conversion of our data to the SPECIFY database and
authored the Herbarium's website.
Ms. Giencke was born
in Kandiyohi County, Minnesota, and graduated from the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. in Biology in 2003.
She was the winner of the Francis
J. LeClair Award, given annually to an outstanding graduating
senior for academic excellence in biology with an emphasis in
plant sciences.
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Lisa Giencke
photograph by Laura Cotterman, 2003
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Ms. Giencke was the first Mary
McKee Felton Herbarium Intern. Her project for the Internship
involved the fern and fern allies. Major taxonomic changes
have affected the naming and arranging of southeastern United
States ferns and fern allies at the familial, generic, and
specific levels, with numerous new species named in recent
years and many name changes reflecting new understanding of
higher level relationships. For instance, there is now general
consensus that the genus Lycopodium (the clubmosses)
in eastern North America actually represents at least three,
and probably more like seven to nine genera, as reflected
in the Flora of North America volume published
in 1993. The nine herbarium cases of specimens of ferns and
fern allies at the University of North Carolina Herbarium
had not kept up with the times, and speciens of some species
were filed under two or even three diffent names. Giencke
worked with Curator Alan Weakley to correctly identify, annotate,
and rearrange the specimens according to the more modern treaments.
Additionally, Giencke entered the label and locality data
into the Herbarium's database (1). As a result, anyone can
now access NCU's fern and fern ally collection via the NCU
ATLAS to generate a map of the taxa and to view the label
data from specimens.
In 2004 Ms. Giencke continued to work in the Herbarium on
the Flora
of Virginia Project, then in 2005 shifted her primary
focus to the flora of Battle
Park. On July 1, 2004, at the request of James Moeser,
Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
the North Carolina Botanical Garden assumed responsibility
for Battle Park, a wonderful wooded tract on the east side
of campus and downhill from the Coker Arboretum. The tract
includes one of the most awe-inspiring legacies of the University,
which, furthermore, symbolizes the important connection between
nature and art: the stone amphitheater known as Forest Theatre.
Although not a pristine forest, much of the 93-acre Battle
Park consists of forest that predates European settlement
in the area (1740). The park is named for Kemp Plummer Battle,
president of UNC from 1876 to 1891, who laid out the original
trail system and spent many happy and contemplative hours
within the forest (2).
Giencke began the botanical inventory of Battle Park by scouring
the UNC Herbarium for any specimens collected there, then
entered these specimens into the herbarium's database. Then,
together with Dr. David Vandermast (Elon University) and Dr.
Peter White (North Carolina Botanical Garden), additional
specimens were collected in the Park, and a complete checklist
of the plants of the park was compiled. Their report on the
history and flora of Battle Park is in preparation (May 2007);
copies will be deposited at the North Carolina Botanical Garden,
as well as in the Couch Biology Library and the North Carolina
Collection of Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina
in Chapel Hill. Label information on all specimens held by
NCU collected from Battle Park is available at NCU ATLAS.
In 2006 Giencke moved to southern California
to participate in the ecological
restoration of San Clemente Island. San Clemente Island,
the southernmost of the eight California Channel Islands.
It lies 55 nautical miles (nm) south of Long Beach and 68
nm west of San Diego. The island is approximately 21 nm long
and is 4-1/2 nm across at its widest point. Since 1934, the
island has been owned and operated by various naval commands.
A core component of the effort to restore the native habitat
of the island is to clear exotic vegetation and to plant native
shrub species. To aid in the effort, the Navy has established
a native plant nursery where shrubs are grown and then transplanted
to sites on the Island that lack native shrub cover and have
low habitat diversity (3, 4).
In 2007 Giencke will be entering the
Masters degree program in the College of Environmental Science
and Forestry at the State University of New York and working
with Dr. Donald
Leopold. An early project in the lab will be to continue
monitoring populations of Hart's Tonguefern, Asplenium
scolopendrium L. var. americanum (Fern.) Kartesz
& Gandhi. Giencke reports, "I was out at Split Rock,
where the Hart's tonguefern was first discovered, 4 days after
the 200th anniversary of Pursh's discovery of it, so that
was exciting in a really botanically nerdy way."
SOURCES
1. Weakley, Alan S. (2003) Lisa Giencke
hired as first Mary McKee Felton Herbarium Intern. North Carolina
Botanical Garden Newsletter, issue of September-October, 2003.
2. Cotterman, Laura (2006) Battle Park, http://ncbg.unc.edu/pages/39/,
accessed on 14 May 2006.
3. Anonymous (undated), http://www.scisland.org/aboutsci/aboutsci.php,
accessed on 14 May 2006.
4. Anonymous (undated), http://www.socalrangecomplexeis.com/FactSheets\HabitatRestorationFactSheet_FINAL.pdf,
accessed on 14 May 2006.
  
Curriculum North Carolina UNC
In Ecology Botanical Garden Biology Department
University of North Carolina
Herbarium
CB# 3280, Coker Hall
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3280
phone: (919) 962-6931
fax: (919) 962-6930
email: herbarium@bio.unc.edu
Last Updated: 15 May
2007 |
