MOUNT IDA — The teeming plant world could become a virtual mystery in the coming decades as college students increasingly shy away from studying botany and universities across the U.S. shutter their long-standing herbaria.
Since 1988, the number of research universities offering botany degrees has dropped by half, according to National Science Foundation research funding statistics. And the National Center for Education Statistics reports that fewer than 400 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral botany degrees were awarded in 2012. Educators say that's because students are being pushed into more modern, technology-related majors.
Current botanists fear that will lead to a dearth of people able to teach about, identify and use plants, which could harm conservation efforts and even the ability to develop alternate fuels and important medicines. At the same time, universities and states struggling under budget cuts are closing the sometimes-expensive task of maintaining herbaria— collections of plant species that botanists can reference or use for genetic material.
"We aren't going to understand what we have in the world. By some estimates only 20 percent of the (plant and animal) species in the world have been identified," said Joe Miller, a program officer at the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology.
In a clearing on the side of a rural Arkansas highway, about a dozen researchers scoured the rocky glade for a threatened annual called the Missouri bladderpod, which blooms with clusters of small yellow flowers. Only 75 populations of the threatened species exist in the world, and all are close enough to urban centers to be in danger, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission botanist Theo Witsell said.
The 39-year-old, carrying a small shovel and a handful of large plastic bags, plucked a few purple flowering plants from the ground by the root.
"I think one of the things that's happening in this field of study is there aren't a lot of open jobs," Witsell said. "But as people get older and they retire, you then have fewer people who are qualified for those jobs."
Witsell hopes to conserve some of the glades, where he said scientists are still finding new species of plants. That's where botanists' skills are irreplaceable, Miller said.
"If we are able to name a plant, then we understand its biology," Miller said. "If we understand its biology, then we can use the comparative method to understand and predict how it could be used."
For example, Quinine is a malaria treatment that occurs naturally in cinchona trees. He said if botanists identify plants with similar taxonomies that react similarly to their surroundings, plant biologists could do genetic research to find medical uses.
See Tuesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.