Dennis Wm. Stevenson
Faculty
New York Botanical Garden
Science Department
Posted 9-19-24

 

I have seen approaches to botanical research undergo fundamental changes in my career. My anatomical work has moved from "slice and dice” botany to using electron microscopy to scanning electron microscopy to genomics doing in situs for gene expression during development. Similarly, systematics has moved from basically field and herbarium work to exploring chemistry, cytology, gene expression, and using whole genomes and bioinformatics tools to name a few. When I was a postdoc at Fairchild Tropical Garden in the late 1980s, there was a famous retired Cornell cytologist/geneticist, L. F. Randolph, in his late 80s who came down for the winter to raise crops of Tripsacum for his genetic studies on the origin of Zea. When he was young, there were no cars, airplanes, space travel, or even electricity in most homes. One day, I said to him, “It must be amazing to see the changes that have occurred in your lifetime and in your science.” His reply was, “That is nothing compared to what you are going to see.“ I would maintain the same answer applies to the next generation of scientists.

The first image shows Dr. Stevenson in Panama in the field with Zamia lindleyi

How Dennis got interested in the botanical sciences:

I became interested in botany as a sophomore undergraduate taking an introductory botany course to fulfill a required core curriculum year of laboratory science. The teaching by Robert Essman was awesome; the content was very interesting and engaging and opened a whole new academic experience for me. For context, I was raised on a family farm with a large woodland and streams. My grandfather was well versed in natural history, particularly that of the vegetation. I think I may have been preconditioned to enjoy botany and that was reinforced when I took a plant morphology course and became a botany major. The faculty at The Ohio State University was very supportive, and I was encouraged to participate in departmental activities and to join the Botanical Society of America. That was 56 years ago. I received the same welcome into BSA and attended my first meeting that coincidentally was held at Ohio State that same year. That experience set the course for me to pursue graduate work in botany.

I finished a MS in plant anatomy under Richard A. Popham. The topic was “Ontogeny of the primary thickening meristem in seedlings of Bougainvillea spectabilis" (Stevenson, D. W., & R. A. Popham. 1973. Amer. J. Bot. 60: 1-9.). This was my first publication in the American Journal of Botany with many more to follow in AJB. I then spent a year teaching introductory botany at Texas A&M University before moving to UC Davis to complete my PhD with Ernest M. Gifford, Jr. I continued research in developmental plant anatomy and developed an interest in systematics as the result of discovering Hennig’s 1966 textbook Phylogenetic Systematics in the UCD library. This stimulated a pivotal change in my thinking and later in my career when I did a NATO postdoc at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew during 1976-77. I was exposed to Hennigian Systematics by Chris Humphries and colleagues at the British Museum of Natural History. Upon return to the USA I spent three years as a Harvard postdoc with Barry Tomlinson at Fairchild Tropical Garden where I developed my continuing interest in monocots and cycad biology. When I arrived in New York at Barnard College and the New York Botanical Garden, I began to go to the seminars and interface, along with Vicki Funk and Art Cronquist, with the cladists at the American Museum of Natural History. This solidified my interest and continued participation in the cladistic movement. The other important aspect of my early career development was the push by advisors, fellow students, and other colleagues to be eclectic in my thinking and my research. The long-term effect of this can be seen primarily in my cycad work and publications that range from classification and flora treatments to cytology, developmental anatomy and morphology, phytochemistry, paleobotany, etc.

Dr. Stevenson at the MBC lab.

Dennis's advice for those just starting their botanical journey:

One thing I learned early on as a student was to give presentations at the annual BSA meetings. Because I have to prepare illustrations and prepare the talk in terms of content and efficiency, I am well on the way to writing a manuscript for publication. If one were to look at the talks I have given in my career, they would find that over 90 percent of them have been published as peer-reviewed papers. This is a simple straightforward way to success.

Dennis's other passions:

Besides my academic work in botany, I also enjoy the horticultural side, field work and travel, as well as, hiking and freshwater fishing by rowboat.

 
Recent Article in the American Journal of Botany:
Organellomic data sets confirm a cryptic consensus on (unrooted) land-plant relationships and provide new insights into bryophyte molecular evolution. Amer. J. Bot. 107: 91-115. Bell, D., Q. Lin, W. K. Gerelle, S. Joya, Y. Chang, Z. N. Taylor, C. J. Rothfels, A. Larsson, J. C. Villarreal, F-W. Li, L. Pokorny, P. Szövényi, B. Crandall-Stotler, L. DeGironimo, S. K. Floyd, D. J. Beerling, M. K. Deyholos, M. von Konrat, S. Ellis, A. J. Shaw, T. Chen, G. K.-S. Wong, D. W. Stevenson, J. D. Palmer & S. W. Graham. 2020.

To see a full list of Dennis's AJB and PSB articles, click here.

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