{"id":202,"date":"2015-04-15T15:22:17","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T15:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opuntiads.com\/griffiths\/?page_id=202"},"modified":"2024-08-24T10:48:05","modified_gmt":"2024-08-24T14:48:05","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/opuntiads.com\/griffiths\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/h2>\n
\"Joe<\/a>
Joe Shaw<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Joseph Shaw received his degree in Botany from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received a PhD in the area of plant sciences from the University of California, Davis. He tought undergraduate and graduate botany and molecular plant biology for 10 years at Auburn University. Thereafter he worked in industry annotating the human genome and as a scientific writer.<\/p>\n

The Details<\/h3>\n

David Griffiths (1867-1935) was a botanist employed by the Bureau of Plant Industry (USDA). He studied the genus Opuntia as part of a project to develop forage for cattle in dry climates. An expert on cacti, Dr. Griffiths described over\u00a0one hundred Opuntia species from the USA and Mexico and wrote extensively about the genus. Additionally, he\u00a0took thousands of black and white photographs. Many are\u00a0stored as glass negatives at the\u00a0Smithsonian Institution Archives<\/span><\/a> (Washington, DC) where they can\u00a0be viewed by the public.<\/p>\n

Dr. Vicki Funk of the Smithsonian Institution described the negatives and how to find them (Griffith’s Cactus Negatives<\/span><\/a>; January 1988, Taxon 37[1]:76-107). Negatives can be scanned by visitors to produce positives. I scanned many of the glass negatives into positive-image TIFF files and uploaded over 150 images to this Web site.<\/p>\n

Over the years some negatives broke as they were moved from one storage place to another, and the emulsion peeled\u00a0from others. However, many\u00a0negatives are intact and have exceptional quality and clarity.\u00a0Some\u00a0of the negatives are 5 \u00d7\u00a07 inches, and others are 8 \u00d7\u00a010. Because they are\u00a0large, the\u00a0negatives can produce superb photographs if the emulsion is intact.<\/p>\n

I am still in the process of scanning images and learning how best to process these black and white negatives. It is important to preserve the images before more break or degrade\u00a0because many are the single photographic record for poorly understood \u00a0species. These images can help resolve current-day taxonomic questions.<\/p>\n

Taxonomy<\/h4>\n

The species names given here are those provided by\u00a0Dr. Griffiths as recorded by the Archives, and some\u00a0may not be aligned with with\u00a0modern taxonomic treatments. But, most of the images depict familiar species correctly (see Opuntia Web<\/a>), and\u00a0they\u00a0are in agreement with current-day understandings. This\u00a0information is a rare\u00a0look\u00a0into the botany of the past at the time each species was discovered. What did scientists\u00a0see and what did they think as they were actually discovering and naming new species of plants<\/p>\n

Image numbers reflect the Smithsonian Institution Archives catalog numbers.\u00a0An additional sentence or two may be available for some of the images such as the date when the photograph was taken or where the plant was grown. Contact the Archives or write to me if you desire additional information.<\/p>\n

Sharing<\/h4>\n

All of the images are in the public domain and you can freely make copies. If I have them, I will forward large-size images too. \u00a0However, I ask that you reference opuntiads.com as the modern-day developer. Write to me at jshaw[at]opuntiads.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction Joseph Shaw received his degree in Botany from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received a PhD in the area of plant sciences from the University of California, Davis. He tought undergraduate and graduate botany and molecular plant biology for 10 years at Auburn University. Thereafter he worked in industry annotating the human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-202","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opuntiads.com\/griffiths\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opuntiads.com\/griffiths\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opuntiads.com\/griffiths\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opuntiads.com\/griffiths\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opuntiads.com\/griffiths\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/opuntiads.com\/griffiths\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opuntiads.com\/griffiths\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}