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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
A Most Surprising Fern: Serendipity And Browsing In Botanical Search, Douglas Tuers
A Most Surprising Fern: Serendipity And Browsing In Botanical Search, Douglas Tuers
Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science
This article is a case study of botanical field work in the eastern United States in the early twentieth century. These cases will be analyzed as instances of browsing and serendipity. Browsing and serendipity have a rich literature in information science and this article will draw on this literature in order to better understand serendipity in botany. This article will show how botanical localities support browsing and serendipity for the botanists who search them. This article will also show how botanical institutions and botanists interface with localities in order to further support browsing and serendipity. As a whole this article …
The Found World: The Role Of Findability In The History Of Botany, Douglas Tuers
The Found World: The Role Of Findability In The History Of Botany, Douglas Tuers
Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science
This study will investigate how a community of botanists used the findability inherent in botanical localities to rediscover species that were previously lost to botany. This article will look at the literature that announced the rediscovery of three species in the vicinity of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. These species are Heuchera hispida, Phlox buckleyi, and Gaylussacia brachycera. These three plants were rediscovered over a short period of time, about 13 years from 1919 to 1932. This study will draw from the announcement of these rediscoveries. In each of these cases there was a surrounding literature that …