{"id":269,"date":"2024-09-02T16:49:41","date_gmt":"2024-09-02T23:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/?p=269"},"modified":"2025-05-01T11:50:03","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T18:50:03","slug":"obscure-cats-eye-cryptantha-ambigua-and-c-eastwoodiae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/2024\/09\/02\/obscure-cats-eye-cryptantha-ambigua-and-c-eastwoodiae\/","title":{"rendered":"Obscure cat\u2019s-eye (Cryptantha ambigua and C. eastwoodiae)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

During the first half of the 20th century, many botanical luminaries passed through Pullman to visit the WSU herbarium and botanize the surrounding countryside. One of the brightest of these visitors was Alice Eastwood, head of the Department of Botany at the California Academy of Sciences from 1894-1949. Eastwood was an expert on the flora of California and the western United States, naming nearly 400 species during her lengthy career. She is perhaps best known for risking her life to rescue the type specimens housed at the California Academy during the fires that engulfed San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. Eastwood climbed the iron stair railing to the sixth floor (the stairs themselves had collapsed) and then devised a rope and pulley system to lower boxes of type specimens to an assistant on the ground floor. In all, she saved 1500 priceless types from destruction, though all her personal belongings and the rest of the herbarium were destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

   In June, 1925, Eastwood visited Pullman and accompanied the herbarium\u2019s curator, Harold St. John, on a collecting excursion to the Palouse grasslands of Whitman County. Near the town of Winona, the pair collected an annual Cryptantha<\/em> with wiry stems, tiny white flowers, and bristly, spreading hairs. St. John later named the plant in honor of Eastwood in his 1937 Flora of Southeastern Washington and Adjacent Idaho. <\/em>Alas, Cryptantha eastwoodiae<\/em> would prove to be a synonym of another species, Cryptantha ambigua<\/em>, previously named by Asa Gray in 1878. The same species being named multiple times was not uncommon in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as taxonomists often worked in isolation and the opportunities to share and study relevant specimens were few until the development of more efficient means of travel and mail. As for Alice Eastwood, she had at least 60 other plant species named after her, many of which are still recognized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

   Harold St. John taught botany and was curator of the herbarium at WSU (then the State College of Washington) from 1920-1929. He left Pullman to chair the botany department at the University of Hawaii and wrote one of the earliest floras of the islands. St. John was a prolific describer of species and a noted \u201csplitter\u201d or someone who names new taxa based on minor morphological differences. Unfortunately many of his names met the same fate as Cryptantha eastwoodiae<\/em> and are no longer accepted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

   Obscure cat\u2019s-eye occurs widely across western North America on sandy to rocky soils in foothills, grasslands, and deserts. Like other annual Cryptantha<\/em> species, fruits are required for positive identification. The four hardened nutlets of obscure cat\u2019s-eye are finely bumpy on the back and completely hidden within the bristly calyx at maturity. Its tiny, tubular flowers are pollinated by gnats or male mosquitoes. – Walter Fertig, September 2, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Obscure<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the first half of the 20th century, many botanical luminaries passed through Pullman to visit the WSU herbarium and botanize the surrounding countryside. One of the brightest of these visitors was Alice Eastwood, head of the Department of Botany at the California Academy of Sciences from 1894-1949. Eastwood was an expert on the flora […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"wsuwp_university_location":[],"wsuwp_university_org":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":460,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_location?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_org","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_org?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}