Webinar: Photographer Dornith Doherty Pictures the Future of Biodiversity
March 30, 2022
Amanda Sciandra:
All right. I'm Amanda Sciandra from the National Museum of Natural History. I'm a brown haired woman wearing a dark blue sweater sitting in front of a full bookshelf and a window with a plant. An onscreen is a photograph of banksia seeds taken by our guest tonight. And the date in time and title of tonight's event, "Photographer Dornith Doherty Pictures the Future of Biodiversity". Thank you for joining us.
As people continue to trickle in Chicago, North Dakota. Hello, hello, I'll go through our standard housekeeping notes for those who are new to our programs. First closed captions are available by clicking the arrow next to the CC button on the Zoom toolbar. We'll open up for audience Q&A after the conversation, but feel free to submit your questions at any time in the Q&A box on that toolbar since the Q&A goes by so quickly. So you can help us answer as many questions as possible by submitting them as you have them. And let us know if your question is specific to either of our guests or for both. All right, so let's get going.
This discussion is the sixth and final program in a series of talks since last September with artists featured in a recent exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History called "Unsettled Nature: Artists Reflect on the Age of Humans". And although the exhibition recently closed, these programs have been a way for us to bring the exhibit to you.
So I'm not sure if you had a chance to check it out in person, or if you've been following along with our series along the way. But if you're curious about the exhibit or past events, you can check out the link in the Q&A box. Tonight's featured artist is photographer Dornith Doherty. Dornith will be in conversation with Scott Wing one of the co-curators of the Unsettled Nature exhibition. Scott Wing is a research geologist and curator of paleobotany at the National Museum of Natural History whose research focuses on fossil plants and the history of climate change between 70 and 40 million years ago. Thank you to Scott and Dornith and to all of you for joining us. Scott, I turn it over to you. You could tell us more about the exhibition and introduce Dornith. Thanks.
Scott Wing:
Thanks very much, Amanda, I really appreciate it. It's a pleasure to be with everyone this afternoon, and I'm really looking forward to the conversation with Dornith, but I thought before introducing our featured guest, it would be good to take a few minutes to just give you an overview of the exhibition. It's closed now, so it might be that your best chance to learn more about it is to look at some of the programs that are archived on the website that Amanda mentioned.
The show was a result of a curatorial for collaboration between Joanna Marsh who's the head of interpretation and audience research at this Smithsonian American Art Museum and myself. I'm, as Amanda said, a paleontologist, and paleoclimatologist here at Natural History. I don't think the Natural History Museum has ever hosted an art exhibit until this one, but it was something I really wanted to try because even though natural science exhibits are to me, a really artful and beautiful thing, they don't reach everyone.
And art is a way of reaching some people who may not find a natural history approach to be quite so to their taste. And art has a very long history, of course, of being a very powerful way of getting people to think. So the full title of the exhibit was "Unsettled Nature: Artists Reflect on the Age of Humans". The phrase "age of humans" may be familiar to a lot of you. It's also called the "Anthropocene" epoch. And that's something that some of us geologists are now proposing in a much more formal way. But the idea in popular use is that it captures the idea that humans now influence all the systems that we used to think of as natural. And I put that word in quotes. Ecosystems, climate, the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans. Those are all processes that we used to think of went on out there somewhere in the natural world.
Ecological and evolutionary studies tell us that we're part of those systems and we certainly are dependent on them, but science is also showing us that there's no part of nature that's pristine if by that you mean uninfluenced by us. So using a geological term like Anthropocene also emphasizes that our influence on the earth is going to be persistent. It's essentially permanent. That's a sobering thought, but it's also one that forces us to redefine what we mean by nature. So what's unsettled about this exhibit, if you will, is not only nature, but also our feelings about nature and how we relate to it. So the show had seven different artists in it, and the one of them was David Maisel, also Ed Burtynsky, they both tend to produce aerial photos of human influenced landscapes.
This one's of copper mine spoils in Chile. The images tend to have an abstract and very colorful pattern that we thought was beautiful at first glance. But of course, as you learn more about these places, you realize that the effects may have been devastating for the plants and animals that live there. And thinking about that can be quite sad. But the beauty of the image might draw you in and make you think about it.
Ellie Irons had photographs of weedy, urban lots. And to me, looking at these, asks the question, do you prefer a tidy concrete lot, or an untidy one, or do you prefer one that's covered with weeds as we call them. Plants that have been introduced and didn't naturally grow there. Another artist in the show is Jenny Kendler. She created a piano, a player piano and the notes played on this piano represent the projected population decline of the African elephant based on current trends of poaching.
Andrew Yang presented a 3D artwork with seeds that had been harvested from the crops of birds that had flown into windows. And he was sort of in a plaintive and artistic way, completing perhaps the life cycle of those seeds by germinating them and growing them up. And that brings us... Oh, and we also had Bethany Taylor whose art made directly on the walls of the museum, helped people visualize the connections between different elements of ecosystems.
And also perhaps some of the forces that perturb ecosystems and may break down the connections. The upper left image there is a satellite photo of superstorm Sandy hitting the east coast of the US. And then onto the final slide, which is one of Dornith Doherty's. This is an X-ray of on the left, blight resistant potato plants reminding us that our agricultural ingenuity has allowed us to feed an enormous human population, but also perhaps that monocultures are inherently vulnerable systems. So each of the artists in the exhibition aims to put us back on our heels, to make us re-examine, surprise, unsettle us, and to awaken us to our own impact on the planet.
It's my pleasure today to be talking with Dornith Doherty about her artwork in the exhibit. Dornith was a 2012 Guggenheim fellow. She primarily with photography, on paper, video, animation installation, and scientific imaging. Her work reflects upon poetic questions about life and time through artworks created at the intersection of art and science. Among her chief concerns are the philosophical, cultural and ecological questions that are often left invisible when considering human entanglement in our rapidly changing environment. This confluence of interests has led her to ongoing collaborations with scientists, archives, botanical centers, and research institutes focused on the preservation of biodiversity and enhancing environmental resilience. So with that, I'd like to introduce Dornith and ask her to take it away.
Dornith Doherty:
Hi, everybody. I hope you can see me okay. And thank you, Scott, for... I think I have a problem, with the chat being open. But thank you, Scott, for that lovely introduction. And I'm really looking forward to speaking with you after I talk about my work, we had such a lively discussion at the practice session.
So I'm going to talk about the three works that were in the exhibition, but I wanted to start by giving an overview of the long term project that they came from. And also before I get started, I wanted to say thank you to this Smithsonian, to Scott and to Amanda Marsh, who... I'm sorry to Joanna Marsh who organized the exhibition and Amanda and the rest of the Smithsonian team who organized this talk today. So I started spurred by the impending completion of the monumental Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway I initiated a project in 2008 called Archiving Eden.
And this is the Svalbard Vault itself. On the right hand side of the screen, you can see that there is a concrete triangle, which is actually the entry to the vault. It's a remote and secure seed bank that is buried deep inside a mountain so tall that if both polar ice caps melt, the collection of seeds will remain safe.
I was inspired by the simultaneously optimistic and pessimistic nature of the efforts to create a global seed bank. On one hand, volunteers, scientists and governments from around the world are collaborating to create the first ever truly global botanical backup system. But on the other hand, the bleak gravity of climate change, food insecurity and political instability has created the need for an inaccessible and fortified vault.
I was invited to photograph at Svalbard two years after I started the project. And when I stepped in the vault, it took my breath away. You have this recognition that you're surrounded by fertile and diverse seeds, resting in a state of suspended animation, and preserved for a distant and unknowable future. So that moment was so profoundly moving and you have the sense of here I am almost at the north pole. And I'm also at one of the most biodiverse places on the planet
In the time between my first impulse to photograph the Svalbard Vault and now "Archiving Eden" expanded into a wide ranging expeditionary project that explored almost 20 national banks across five continents, from Australia to Brazil. And this photograph and the next one are from the Brazil seed banks. So the national seed banks I photographed have facilities that research agricultural improvements. They do crop discovery and preservation techniques.
It's fascinating to consider questions about extending life and contemplating time at radically different scales. Seeds collected now will be safeguarded beyond our lifespans for 200 years or more. And some plants like apples and citrus are preserved by cloning because the offspring created by seeds do not mimic, don't have the same characteristics as the parent plants. So they can be stored in cryogenic tanks or as live collections that will persist for centuries. This citrus collection in Italy was established 500 years ago, and it's mirrored in the US's living collection of apples. This seed bank or live collection for apples is located in Geneva, New York.
So one important for seed banks is the care of the collection over this kind of generational time span. The size and condition of the collections are not really a reflection of the richness of a particular country's biodiversity, but rather a reflection of the resources they're able to devote to this effort and the amount of importance they place on preserving plants for the future.
The question of resources profoundly impacts what plants are chosen to be saved. Most seed banks don't save wild plants. Unless they're wild relatives of crops that we have under production for economic botany or food. And if you look at this particular photograph, it kind of shows how important economics are. This is the Svalbard Vault the year I was there and the white boxes are the contribution to the vault for that year from the United States. And the little red box on the left is all the seeds that were sent from Uganda. So it becomes almost like a bar graph of how much economics matter.
As I photographed the constant, agonizing quest to preserve the tiny spark of life in delicate, vulnerable seeds, many only the size of a grain of sand like these orchid seeds I became fascinated by the complex issues surrounding the role of human agency and plants in relation to gene banking.
And so I wanted to expand the project in ways that could be more open ended, metaphoric and contemplative. So this led me to more direct collaborations with the research biologists at the seed banks. And they allowed me to use onsite X-ray machines to make images of the seeds and other materials that they saved in the collections. It's been a privilege to have an opportunity to witness this important global endeavor so very closely, and to create artworks within a network of very general scientists who granted access and supported my endeavors in so many different ways.
So Archiving Eden actually has two parts. It's the photographs of the spaces and technology and technological interventions that are required to place plants and seeds in a state of suspended animation that we've been looking at, and digital collages made from X-rays of the robust and fertile living materials, safeguarded in the banks. The extraordinary visual power of the X-rays springing from this technology's ability to record what's invisible to human vision, maintains the sharpness and visual acuity and descriptive power of the photographs of the documentary photographs, but they also invite more slippage between what's shown in the image and what the image might be about.
So it allows me to create artworks that touch upon different aspects of the complex systems that are embedded in the very act of seed banking, and allows me to create connections between the tiny seeds, the collective effort to save our plant life and through those efforts, possibly preserve human life on earth as well. As I've photographed the seed banks each one has of collecting expeditions and their participation in the global exchange of plants and information between the new and old worlds that began after 1492 and continue to this day.
I've explored some of these themes related to geographical displacement, assisted migration and archives in several artworks. I should go back. That last one was titled kangaroo grass and I use blue a lot. And for me, the delft or indigo blue in X-ray collages referenced not only the process of cryogenic preservation, but also the cultural exchange that happens at the intersection of east and west and trade that has happened since 1492.
So this triptych kind of following along the ideas of cultural exchange and expeditions and collecting, this one was inspired by Alfred Russell Wallace's "Cabinets of Curiosities", which of course have their own particular history and ties to British colonial studies. But the artworks shimmer and change from tones of greens to blues as viewers walk past. And this tension between stillness of the print and the changing of the color reflects the cryogenic freezing process, as I just said. But also my focus on the elusive goal of stopping time in living materials, which at some point we may all want to do.
And now to give you a little bit of background or my thoughts about the works in the exhibition. This one is titled famine. And I thought that what Scott said was right on about what inspired this piece. It's a work on paper and it's created from X-rays of blight resistant potato plants, which ties into my family's own history of displacement from Ireland in the mid 19th century.
We had to migrate to the U.S. because of the Irish potato famine among other British colonial policies and governmental policies. But the population of Ireland at that point dropped by 30%. And this artwork also shimmers and changes colors when you see it in person. And the colors are inspired by the varieties of corn but also the drawing process that is part of seed banking. Corn's an important crop, domesticated and developed by civilizations in Mexico 7,000 years ago, and is an enormously important crop today. It said that the current version of corn that most monocultures have can't survive without human care. So I chose to explore the preservation of a rare, wild relative called husk corn.
And I was able to X-ray these Wollemi pine cross sections in Australia to create this piece, a small remnant population of these trees that flourished during the time of the dinosaurs was found in a remote canyon in Australia. And through the dedicated efforts of the seed bankers in Australia, they were able to preserve this ancient tree. And now it can be found at almost every major botanical garden in the world. So even though we don't know what the future will hold for us, and it's kind of a depressing and anxiety filled time in terms of climate change and the future of biodiversity, the preservation of these species changed the trajectory of the future. And even a little change when you see it over 200 years might make a big difference. So thank you and Scott, I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Scott Wing:
Thanks very much, Dornith. That was wonderful to see. So I almost feel like warning the audience here that we did have a conversation before this one and it almost devolved into a nuts and bolt conversation about how you X-ray plants. Because of course, scientists also X-ray plants for scientific reasons, but I kind of think that's probably not what people want most to hear about. So let me ask a question about X-rays from another point of view, which is well, what's the artistic attraction to an X-ray? Is it the details of form that it reveals? How do you think about X-ray as opposed to just normal, visible light photography?
Dornith Doherty:
Well, Scott, that's a great question. Thank you. One of my attractions to it is this notion that light photography, it is bringing something that is invisible to light. So you might not... And here what we have is the X-ray setup that I use at the US National Bank in Fort Collins, Colorado.
And for me, I think it's really about the peering inside these living forms that allow you to see something that you can't see through photographic means or traditional means. And that abstraction allows for an open-endedness that is not as... You're not so tied to the description of what it is. I mean, I know that for instance, the seed bankers use X-rays as a quick way to do statistical analysis of what's inside the seeds. Are they full? Are they empty? Have they been damaged by insect eating at some point in their journey to the seed bank. And for me, it was really about this notion about looking at the spark of life when you're surrounded by these efforts.
Scott Wing:
It's interesting because in someone who studies fossil plants, which is what I do, we use X-rays to reveal the details of living plants that are hard to see. So in that sense, we're doing exactly what you're doing. But the reason we're doing it is because often fossils actually show details of venation of leaves or where the vascular strands run in a plant that you can't see with the unaided eye in a living one. So if you want to make that comparison. It's really intriguing to me how parallel in some ways, what your take on an X-ray is to somebody who works on fossils. So [crosstalk 00:24:53]-
Dornith Doherty:
Well, just to follow up on that, it's interesting because I'm working with a couple of botanists right now, and they're looking at those tiny, tiny details that you can't see through plant clearings, but also X-rays, and also scanning electron microscopes so that they can identify, that those tiny details actually help you identify. And for me, I think I'm stepping back a step where I'm trying to spark a conversation that is not tied necessary early to classifying or identifying, but a broader global question about the role of plants. But I love that sensation of looking closely and the beauty that you find in these tiny, tiny things.
Scott Wing:
Yeah. The intricacy of the forms inside plants is just something that everyone should appreciate. And I'm so glad that you're making that possible. But you just mentioned working with scientists and of course, as a scientist, I know that, we're all really wonderful and extremely easy to get along with. People who are never fussy about anything. But I'm actually curious how those collaborations go. And do you find crossing the... Famously, we're supposed to belong to two different cultures, but I've never really felt that way, but I wonder whether you do.
Dornith Doherty:
Well, I have had such great experiences working with the scientists. And they are so generous with their time and this conversation. There's always something that pops up in a conversation that sparks an idea for either the scientist or myself that you wouldn't have maybe come up with if you swim in your own little pond.
And so that cross fertilization of conversations is so interesting to me. The picture that's on screen right now is LJ Grauke and he is in Snook, Texas. He's part of the USDAR's pecan breeding program, pecan and hickories diversity. And he traveled the world, pecans migrated all over the world with missionaries and then proceeded to evolve in sight.
And in the beginning of his career, he went and collected samples of all those diverse pecans and brought them back to Texas and put them on this island garden that you have to take a canoe to. And so it's this awesome... It was fascinating to walk through this orchard that he had lived with for 30 years, cross breeding and releasing new varieties of pecans based on this earlier collection of something that had migrated through these other means earlier. So that kind of history of human migration and scientific invention is so interesting to me.
Scott Wing:
Yeah, I can't help but mention that I think the first plant I ever cleared was a relative of pecans and hickories. I cleared living representatives from east Asia of that same family, because I was studying fossils from Wyoming. So 55 million year old fossils that are related to those guys. And I wanted to be able to look at the tiny details of their seeds and leaves. So it's a group with a great fossil record, if anyone wants to know.
Dornith Doherty:
[crosstalk 00:29:08]. And such an interesting thing. When I was in Italy photographing that citrus collection, interestingly enough they were working on pecans and trying to introduce them to European market, because they are such a unique that they were having a hard time getting a foothold in Europe. Which I thought was interesting, but they prefer walnuts.
Scott Wing:
Yeah. That's really interesting. I didn't know that. So I'm also very envious, I admit, of your traveling to seed banks and particularly to the Svalbard Seed Bank, because just how can you not want to go there if you like plants or even if you don't like plants. Even if you just like amazing landscapes. And so can you... I mean, how did you get there and did you... I've heard that there's a hotel in Longyearbyen, that's sort for people who come to do projects up there.
Dornith Doherty:
Yeah, I was invited. They only opened this bank for two days a year. And it took me two days to fly there. And this is me standing with literally every piece of warm clothing I owned on. Because all my gear is about dispersing heat, not holding it in. And it took me two days to get there. Some of my film was damaged because I was still using film at that point, by the X-rays, the multiple X-rays of changing planes.
And right after I was taking this photograph, I walked up the hill for that first picture, and there was an Arctic gust and it knocked me and my camera down the mountain. And I slid the whole way down to this little parking lot. And because I was using 19th century technology basically, a view camera, for those of you who are photographers in the audience, I was able to kind of stand up and shake myself off. But it was quite the adventure. And it was so amazing to go.
Now, I've heard that they have... Because of the interest in the seed bank, they have a visitors center. Obviously you still cannot go inside the seed bank because it's so much tied into diplomatic security and cultural patrimony of the individual countries.
Scott Wing:
Yeah, the whole... And is it true you have to be at least remembering that there's the possibility of polar bear attack even going around town?
Dornith Doherty:
Yes. And it was funny because people kept giving me advice about... Two people had just been killed by polar bears when I was there. Two women that were out jogging. And so everybody carried a gun. The Uber driver had a gun, in case there was an encounter with the polar bears and they kept giving me advice about, well, if you're in a spot that there's normally seals, and there are no seals, that means there's a polar bear nearby. And the polar bears blend in because they put their paw over their nose. And so that's the only black spot. So they blend in. And anyway, but because I was from Texas, I didn't know where seals would be or not. So it was hilarious.
Scott Wing:
I was going to say-
Dornith Doherty:
It was quite the adventure. And literally every time I'd go to a seed bank, there's some equivalent experience that is so culturally inflected. That people are telling you about polar bears and seals, or when I was in Russia, I was in this tiny, tiny... Well, actually, it was a remote plant research station that had 1,000 people in the town, and every single person worked at this plant research station. And it was called Botanica. And just the experiences of doing that and seeing these groups of people so dedicated to the same cause, preserving biodiversity. It's been such an amazing project.
Scott Wing:
It sounds a little like doing field work in paleontology, off in the middle of nowhere, with a bunch of people who are really dedicated to finding fossils or whatever. I wonder how different it would be if they were astronomers looking at the stars, probably the same spirit to some degree.
Dornith Doherty:
Oh, yeah. And that is an interesting idea about that. What I've been impressed by are these small teams of people that are really working remotely. And yet they will... One of the ways that I access banks or choose which banks to photograph is they'll tell me a story. One of the scientists will say, "Oh, well, if you like this, you should go to this place because they're doing this really cool research." And then they'll send an email and the scientists very generously will say, "Sure, come on down. We'd love to have you." So I think that kind of camaraderie is so special and so important in research.
Scott Wing:
Yeah. I mean, that's been my experience too. I'm glad to hear that other people have had it. You showed the picture of Wollemi pine cross sections. And we put that exhibit partly because of the amazing history of that species, that it has this long fossil record, and then was assumed to be extinct and then rediscovered in the 90s in just this tiny population.
One of the things that keeps me coming back to this topic is that I think in general, most of us have... We kind of lead with a judgment. We lead with, oh, that is bad, or that is good. And in reference to anything that happens around us. The first thing we want to know is who's the bad guy, who's the good guy? Or is this bad, or is it good?
And having a species that has been brought back from this tiny population maybe for some of us that kind of gives humans the... It's an example of our potential to be good guys, or it's an example of our potential to preserve biodiversity, even biodiversity that might not have made it on its own. So that we're actually occasionally doing things, and the same would be true for ginkgo and Dawn redwoods and a bunch of other things. Even, maybe for corn. And I'm intrigued by how you might think about morality... Boy, talk about third rail topics.
Dornith Doherty:
Go for it Scott, go for it.
Scott Wing:
There's nobody here, but you and me. When you're working on a piece and you're trying to convey something, are you thinking... I mean, you must be thinking about the visual aspects. I should cut this question short and let you say... But you see where I'm going. It's like, how much of it is the idea of human action good, bad? How much of it is the sort of, "Oh, I like playing with this effect?"
Dornith Doherty:
Well, but underpinning that this effect or the visual is that conversation about the race to prevent extinction. And so I'm of the position of like, let's save everything we can. And I regret that... Oh, I see the bananas are on... Since we've come to extinction and the possible extinction of our favorite banana. That because of all these changes that are happening, that we have to try to save what we can. We have to get as many plants on the ark as we can.
And so, for me, it comes down to having to make the choices, because there's not unending resources. So the ethical or the moral question for me is how anthropocentric we're being in terms of what we're saving. A lot of times, it's things that are known to benefit humans or very human oriented, rather than trying to save a catalog.
And I realize that it's impossible because we're limited, but the gravity of the situation is sometimes overwhelming for me. And so when I hear about these stories of fighting against the odds, or even with, as you were calling it, assisted migration. One thing I can't get out of my mind is that story you told me when we met the first time about the small remnant population of that are in the U.S., that I had never heard of.
Scott Wing:
The Torreya.
Dornith Doherty:
Yeah, and the fact that people are questioning whether or not they should be moved, if it's too much of an intervention just to move them, rather than let nature take its course and have them drowned because they're on the coast and rising seas. It's just so interesting.
Scott Wing:
Yeah. I believe that we probably should give the audience a chance to submit some questions. And I think those questions will be relayed to me via the magic of Zoom. And I don't know if there are questions lined up or not. Let's see, here's one from Monica. "Are there redundant seed banks in case one gets taken out for some reason? Are there banks all over the world or only in cold places?"
Dornith Doherty:
I can answer that question. Which is seed banks are like computer backup systems. The Svalbard Vault is actually a backup for national banks around the world. And the reason it's on Svalbard is one, because it's so remote also, because if the electricity went out. Say there was really a catastrophe and there was no electricity, the seeds would... Now there's been a permafrost problem, but the seeds would stay cold enough for 200 years. And so there are backup systems. And in fact, there's the wheat seed bank and there's crop seed banks around the world. I might be answering this in too much detail. But recently in Syria, they couldn't get to the wheat seed bank and they had to go back to Svalbard as a backup and take some out and grow new wheat crops and make two new wheat seed banks in the Mediterranean basin. I believe one was in Morocco.
Scott Wing:
Here's another set of questions. And I think this one's sort of trying to get at something that really interests me too. That your images document a very important story. So this is maybe the lesson or the theme behind the images, but also they're very graphic and very visually pleasing and sort of intricate. And I guess I'm still curious how you balance the aesthetics with the meaning? And is that going on in your mind? I know this is almost like asking a writer how do you write a novel, sort of like give me detailed notes, but do your best.
Dornith Doherty:
Well, for me, it is a visual problem when I'm in the seed bank is how do I make an image of the lab or the site that will make people pause and maybe wonder what they're looking at? And then wonder why that might be important. And so I think the beauty is a real key aspect of that. Because we're inundated with images every day. And so having a... These are very large scale pictures, they're digitally stitched, so they can be 12 foot tall if necessary.
So when I show them... I take them in grids of like 15 and then bring them back in the studio and make these giant collages that are super, super, highly detailed. So you could zoom in endlessly and see all the little details of all the notes on the tiny vials. But for me, it is a balance between the two, but I think that the beauty is super important because it makes people pause and engage with the work. Which right now it's like with... It's so sad to look at a picture of a polar bear which is a spokes animal for climate change, that I can barely bear to look at a picture of a polar bear anymore. So being able to have people not have that sense of just complete despair when they look at it is also important.
Scott Wing:
Yeah. We try very hard to find a way to let people be unsettled because we always want people to think, but also not to leave them feeling hopeless. And so another question about process. Do you ever come back with a set of images and find things that are completely surprising to you? In other words, do you ever discover something that not... I don't mean trivial, but actually sort of, "Oh, I had no idea that when I was composing that I would get this effect."
Dornith Doherty:
Well, not in the photographic process, because taking a grid of photographs is time consuming and you can't... I have a tripod and it takes a while. So I'm not often surprised by that, but with the X-rays I am. And that you will peer inside and you're looking at the outside of the object and then you put it inside. And sometimes it's just... Beet seeds, for instance, or the most beautiful seeds. When you open them up, it looks like you're looking at stars. And so that kind of surprise happens with X-rays, but not as much with the photographic part.
Scott Wing:
Thanks. So Elizabeth wanted to know, you mentioned a coastal plant. Oh, I think I know. She's talking about Torreya, which we were chatting about before this conversation. And Torreya, it's close to the Gulf Coastal plain. It's probably not under any direct threat for being inundated, but the climate is changing fast enough that it prefers the coolest and wettest sites in its native range, in I think it's Southern Georgia and the Florida panhandle. It's a conifer species, T-O-R-R-E-Y-A.
And there are two species in the genus. One of them is in California. One of them is in... Two north American species, one in California, tiny relic population called the Torreya pine and the others in on the Gulf Coastal plane. And that has 100 million year long fossil record. So it's a real relic of... It's very much like a Wollemia, except hasn't been spread around the world quite so much. Someone else is wanting to know how the seed get to the seed bank in Svalbard. And how do people decide what they're going to preserve either there or in any seed bank?
Dornith Doherty:
Well, the ways that the seeds are selected in Svalbard is that they're backup ones from the national banks that participate. And it took the person who established the bank 35 years to get it going. And part of that is because of the very elaborate system of treaties and agreements. So that it's a trust thing to be able to put things in the seed bank.
So the scientists of any particular country are collecting seeds and saving them. And there are networks that exchange seeds between companies too, but I'm skipping over that for simplicity's sake. And they will have a collection and it takes about 5,000 seeds to save a species. So they'll have a set of 5,000 in their bank, a set of 5,000, maybe in another bank, in the same country, and then a set of 5,000, more or less. Of course somebody's going to write in who says, "No, no, no, it's not exactly 5,000." But it's roughly 5,000 in Svalbard. So that's the decision making process. I don't know if I answered that question. Scott, did I answer that question?
Scott Wing:
Well, I mean, I wonder also... Is it also partly, are they choosing strains like of a crop that are perhaps going out of fashion or do they suspect that a particular cultivar has environmental tolerances that might be useful?
Dornith Doherty:
Oh, I see, yeah. So that varies by country.
Scott Wing:
Yeah.
Dornith Doherty:
Some counties have really broad, but shallow banks where they're trying to get one of every kind of plant and then some have like... Corn, for instance, would be an example of that, where you have one kind of corn and then all it's wild relatives that they can find, because it's such an important crop. And if something happens like a potato blight or what's happening to the bananas, they want to have as much diversity banked as they can so that they might be able to find a natural, resistant thing.
And then another interesting story about how plants get to the bank is that some countries they don't have the funding. And so the Gates Foundation was paying for the shipping for some of them. In the case of the Uganda box, the Gates Foundation paid for the seed bankers in Uganda to be able to ship those seats that time. So it's an interesting... That's another way of how do things get in the seed bank, which might be... And it's a written question, there's a little bit of ambiguity.
Scott Wing:
More than one way to interpret it. I should make a plug for a book that actually, I don't know if you've encountered it. It's an old book by John McPhee called Oranges. If you've never read it, it's a very short little book, but it's just a delightful exploration of all the things that can go wrong with cultivating oranges and how there was a lime blight. Because as you were saying in your talk citruses don't breed true.
So they're mostly grafted onto root stock. And so you end up literally with every lime in every orchard in Florida being exactly the same genotype. So there's no variation at all. And if in this case, some kind of blight comes in and that particular genotype, they're all the same individual genetically, if that's vulnerable to that disease, man, you have a real problem. So they had part of what he describes is this scramble to find limes that were resistant to the blight, which was quite an effort. So it's a fascinating book if you've never found it.
Dornith Doherty:
Well the funny thing is I'd love to read that book, because I've read a couple of history of citrus, which is part of the research for the seed banking. And there's a great story behind the Meyer lemon, which there was a Dutch plant discoverer. It's again kind of expeditionary who died under mysterious circumstances. And it's so interesting that storyline, but yes, absolutely. I'm going to read that. I love McPhee's writing.
Scott Wing:
Yeah. That's wonderful. Alejandra wanted to know if you could talk a little bit about when your interest in nature and biology started. So do you recall not being interested?
Dornith Doherty:
Well, I think that is... I was the kid in kindergarten, they would bring like a coffee can and collect locust shells in elementary school. So I was always, always interested. And interested in the scientific process as well. But the other part that I really, really love is I love metaphor and I love poetry and I love the creative process.
And I think that for me having something that is tied to the real, but has that ability to kind of meld the real with the fictional or the imaginary is really important to me. And so they're not competing interests, they're friendly interests. And it's a way of kind of engaging with the natural world that's from a slightly different perspective.
Scott Wing:
That's a beautiful explanation. I think this is the last question or two, they're sort of related. Edith wanted to know as a member of the public, non-scientific community, please advise on what you recommend we can do related to the future of biodiversity. And Alejandra is there anything you can think of that the public biologists, teachers can do to help this fascination spread to more people? I think those are things that we both probably have to think about.
Dornith Doherty:
Yeah. Well that engagement with, I think that people have seen that people have turned to nature during the pandemic in an interesting way. Our parks have never been as populated as they are now. But in terms of direct action, I would say lobby your Congress people. A lot of times individual action really counts, but also collective action on a national and global scale is imperative. And so that would be the thing that I would suggest, in terms of really trying... Get funding for seed banks, get funding for any kind of restorative landscape project that you can find.
Scott Wing:
Yeah. I think there is nothing like becoming involved in that kind of activity, writing people and writing leaders and forming community groups. It's how we change the culture, which is one of the lessons of the Anthropocene I think is that we need to change ourselves. And we can do that. We have that capacity. We're pretty good at learning. So maybe this is something that we can all learn to help out with.
I believe we are just about at the end of our time, it's been a really delightful conversation. I want to thank you so much. And obviously many future conversations could happen here. But I don't know how many people who are on this Zoom have participated in other evening programs around Unsettled Nature. If you have, I hope you've enjoyed them. And I hope that the unsettling has been kind of going on in your mind and in your brain as well as out there in the world. There's certainly plenty of unsettling going on out there. So with that, I think we are... Let me see if there are any last kind of bookkeeping thing.
I should ask, maybe Amanda, is there a form for people to fill out on tonight's... Yes, there is a survey and it will show up when you sign off. And we really urge you to fill that out. The only way we know how to make these programs better is if we can hear how they were for you and what you liked and what you didn't like. So please let us know. And besides that, I think we're at a good spot here. I think we're a minute short, but perhaps we'll see you next time. There will be more evening programs even if not about Unsettled Nature. Thanks very much Dornith and thanks everybody for coming.
Dornith Doherty:
Thank you.
