Other herbaria holding significant
numbers of Ruth specimens include:
* The Albert Ruth Herbarium at Texas Christian University (FW)
was transferred to BRIT in 2001;
* Ruth's specimens formed the basis for the herbarium at Texas
Women's University (TCSW);
* Arnold Arboretum (A);
* New York Botanical Garden (NY) has several
hundred of Ruth's specimens, including many types;
*The Smithsonian Institution (US).
The Fort Worth Public Library
has Albert Ruth's correspondence, notebooks and papers relating
to the Ruth Herbarium.
Milton Podolsky, Jr, of Fort
Worth, Texas contacted the UNC Herbarium in 2006 concerning some
items of Ruth's in his possession. He was a good friend of Albert
Ruth's daughters. Gertrude Ruth (died ca. 1966) owned a record
store on Main Street in Fort Worth. In her later years, Edith
Ruth (died ca. 1969) moved to California to live with her niece,
Annette Mott.
Looking for Linnaea:
The high Smokies still protect some secrets on their rugged slopes
by Peter S. White
The Tennessee Conservationist vol. XLVII, September/October,
1981, No. 5, pages 14-16
On August 13, 1892, Albert Ruth, an educator
and amateur botanist, rounded a bend on a mountain woodland trail
in Sevier County, Tennessee. It was a perfect day for collecting
in the mountains -- the weather was fair and the temperature cooler
than the 85 degrees recorded back in Knoxville, where Ruth worked
as superintendent of city schools. As he walked, his eyes scanned
the ground. He hesitated for a moment to examine a flower which
had caught his eye. Twin pink flowers rose from a plant with a
prostrate stem and roundish opposite leaves, each leaf with a
few indentations near the tip. He collected a representative piece
of the plant, put it in his vasculum (an old-time botanist’s
tin collecting box) and continued up the trail. It was one of
some 50,000 collections Ruth would make during his 85 years of
life, but it is of special interest to Tennessee botanists. August
13, 1892, was the first and last time Linnaea borealis,
twinflower, has been seen in Tennessee.
Linnaea is a far northern plant
which is known, except fro Ruth’s record, only as far south
as West Virginia, where it is quite rare. It is frequent in northern
New England and farther north – occurring in spruce-fir
woods and in and around bogs. The plant holds a special significance
for all botanists. It was one o the favorite plants of Linnaeus
and is, of course, named for him. Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist
who is the father of modern plant classification. As a young student
of plants, Linnaeus encountered twinflower in Finland (Linnaea
borealis is a “circumpolar” plant; that is,
one which is found both in North American and Eurasia in the far
north). Portraits of Linnaeus often show the botanist holding
a sprig of Linnaea borealis or the plant is
shown as a twining border on the canvas.
Amateur botanists like Albert Ruth have
made significant contributions to our knowledge of plant distribution
and classification. Ruth himself made many important finds during
his 30 years of collecting in East Tennessee. He collected the
first specimen of Trillium luteum in Knoxville
– and hence Knoxville is the “type locale” and
Ruth’s specimen is the “type” of that species
(plant names are based on “types” – the actual
plant from which an official scientific description is taken).
Asarum ruthii [Hexastylis arifolia
(Michx.) Small var. ruthii (Ashe) Blomquist], the rare
Heterotheca ruthii [Pityopsis ruthii
(Small Small] and Carex ruthii are among the
plants named for the Knoxville botanist who made the first collections
of each species.
So we know that Albert Ruth had a good
eye and was a dedicated field man – exploring many parts
of east Tennessee at a time when transportation was less easy
than today. Like all amateur botanists, a pure love of botany
drove him on. Like some amateurs (and professionals), Ruth had
his quirks – we know from an old newspaper clipping that
he pressed plants with an old printing press with a large iron
wheel. The dedication of amateur botanists is seen today in such
organizations as the Tennessee Native Plant Society and the efforts
of amateurs in mapping rare plants of Roan Mountain last year.
But what of Ruth’s record? The lack
of verification in the last 90 years, and the frustrations of
looking for the plant in the past couple of years tempt one to
conclude that perhaps it has become extinct in Tennessee or even
that it was never here. Ruth’s herbarium label is vague
– it reads only “Sevier County – in mountain
woods.” That phrase describes a rugged area of over 100,000
acres. Today, rare plant botanists often find themselves puzzling
over maps and wondering about the most likely spots to check.
Where was Albert Ruth on August 13,
1892? In my current research on rare plants in the Smokies I have
tried out dozens of scenarios and then discarded them, after fruitless
searches. If we can complain about Ruth’s vague label, we
must also realize that some old labels are even worse, bearing
such phrases as “mountains of North Carolina.”
The history of Ruth’s specimen and
how his discovery came to light is a fascinating one and gives
us both case for hope and despair in terns of our belief in his
find. In 1907 Albert Ruth moved to Fort Worth, Texas, (he was
forced into “unwilling retirement”) taking many of
his collections with him, including the Linnaea specimen.
In Texas he continued to collect prolifically until his death
in 1932, but as one Texas botanist wrote, “unfortunately
he rarely put exact localities or information about the plants
on his label.”
Then, back in Knoxville, a tragedy for
Tennessee botany occurred – in 1934 Morrill Hall [at the]
University burned to the ground (it is perhaps unfair to suggest
that the fire spread from the zoology end of the building), destroying
the herbarium that contained the best documentation of the state’s
flora in 30,000 to 50,000 pressed plants. It represented the sweat
and struggle of years of botanizing, including important collections
of Augustin Gattinger, author of the state’s first flora.
In an earlier day, Albert Ruth himself had worked as a volunteer
in the university herbarium and had corresponded with Gattinger
concerning the state’s flora. Tennessee was suddenly without
the collections on which all plant identification is based. It
was without the documentation necessary to produce a state flora.
Years of work were gone.
It is a tribute to Tennessee’s botanists
that they were able to summon the energy to begin again. They
organized communal work nights when they would all gather together,
regardless of rank, to mount pressed plants on herbarium paper.
They organized collecting expeditions. And they wrote letters
to botanists all over the country requesting donations of pressed
plants that had been collected in Tennessee.
It was Dr. A. J. “Jack” Sharp
(he has been at the University since 1929 and is now professor
emeritus there) who decided to write to the daughter of Albert
Ruth in Texas. Could any of her father’s pressed plants
be purchased? By return mail, Dr. Sharp received a shipment of
Ruth’s collections. He began to go through the pile and
he soon came to a plant that caused him to stop in amazement.
Before him was a distinctive plant never reported from Tennessee.
The plant had been misidentified by Ruth as Mitchella
repens (a low plant which also has roundish opposite
leaves), but Jack Sharp immediately recognized its significance.
Above Ruth’s label he wrote in the correct name: Linnaea
borealis. It is now clear why Ruth never brought his
collection to the attention of Tennessee botanists – it
had been the subject of mistaken identity for 40 years and lay
buried in his extensive collections.
But the label with the pressed plant also
gives us some cause for doubt. Ruth apparently wrote the label
in Texas – for the label is printed with “Flora of
Texas” across the top and Ruth then crossed out “Texas”
and wrote in “Tennessee” with a hurried script. Hence,
the label was written at least 15 years after the collection.
Errors may have occurred if Ruth was simply relying on memory.
On the other hand, he may have been copying notes he made on the
newspaper in which the plant had originally been pressed and stored.
And if he did not collect the plant in Tennessee, where did he
get it? It does not occur in Texas. Did he receive it in a trade
with a northern botanist?
For rare plant botanist of the modern day,
the tale related above is all too familiar. Intriguing collections
from an earlier day and a more unspoiled landscape come to us
through the haze of time. If we feel the frustrations, however,
at the same time there is a mystery that adds to the excitement
of the search.
There is currently an important effort
underway to assess the state’s rare plants – such
botanists as Robert Kral of Vanderbilt; Paul Somers of the Department
of Conservation’s Heritage Program in Nashville; Leo Collins,
Bob Farmer and Dave Webb of TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority];
Tom Patrick, Gene Wofford and Murray Evans of the University of
Tennessee [Knoxville]; Vernon Bates, Wayne Chester, John Wanden
and other professionals and amateurs are trying to come to terms
with concepts of rarity and endangerment with regard to the plants
of this diverse and rich state.
My own work in the Great Smoky Mountains
National Park was initiated two years ago when park service personnel
realized they needed more information to adequately protect the
park’s flora. The park’s flora contains some 120 species
that are listed on either the Tennessee, North Carolina or national
rare plant lists. The National Park Service, through its mission
statement, is dedicated to the ideal of protecting the species
within its borders and thus is an important regional and national
refuge for rare species, both plants and animals. Since 1979 we
have been creating a data bank on all the rare species in the
park. For the top priority species – the rarest of the rare
– we are establishing population monitoring. Of course,
one of the difficulties in assessing change in rare plant populations
is the lack of a good data base. We are trying to remedy that
lack now. To date, many old records have been verified, but Albert
Ruth’s long-lost record of Linnaea has not yet been confirmed.
Is it here? The mists of the high mountains still protect some
secrets on the rugged, rhododendron-tangled slopes.
Photo caption page 15:
The plant that Albert Ruth had in his collection was labeled as
Linnaea borealis. If his records are correct, his discovery of
the plant in 1892 was the first and last time the plant was seen
in Tennessee. The twinflower is pictured on a note card designed
and distributed by the Tennessee Native Plant Society. The cards,
to support the conservation of Tennessee’s wild flora, may
be ordered through the Department of Botany, The University of
Tennessee, Knoxville, 37916.
Photo caption page 16:
The mountain paper birch was not discovered in Tennessee or
in the Smokies until 1977. John DeLapp, Cindy Mitchell and Fred
Huber, by their discovery, helped support the theory that there
are more plants to be discovered there.
Editor’s Note: Peter S. White
is a research botanist at the Uplands Field Laboratory in the
Great Smoky Mountains National Park. [Dr. Peter S. White is
currently the Director of the North Carolina Botanical Garden
and Professor of Biology at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill (2006).]
UPDATE: Peter White and
a band of intrepid hikers set out in 2006
to re-find Ruth's Linnaea borealis in Sevier County,
Tennessee.
View a powerpoint slideshow
of the expedition.
