Science in the City

The seagrass collected in Tampa Bay sat in a bucket of seawater by the front door, tantalizing me with its pungent, sulfurous wafting. I would steal harried moments in passing to dangle a bit of it before attending to the next chore at hand. Finally, late the following night, I had an opportunity to compare what I’d found with the references I had compiled online and in print.

Where at first it seemed I’d found two distinct types of grass, there simply wasn’t a distinguishing characteristic I could find to separate them into different species. I retracted my initial e-mail to my overseas mentor before he confirmed what I had suspected: that I rather had found two variants of the single species Halodule beaudettei. While I was disappointed not to have two species in hand, the improbability of traveling so far to find anything and then being able to key it out to species was thrilling enough. I photo documented the herbarium specimens, and preserved them in a plant press. From the same pressed individuals, I warapped sprigs of grass in seawater-soaked newspapers, along with identifying labels in Ziploc bags. I put the whole batch into an oversized bag, aloing with a sheet of ice I specially poured to fit the sleeve of plants. I wanted to keep the plants as fresh as possible without freezing them into mush. Through TSA security (out with the ice) and on tthe plane from Tampa to Atlanta, then Atlanta to New York, the grass looked almost as green and healthy as it did under southern skies just a few days prior. I speculate that growing in such a muck-y, hot and low-visibility environment, the plant was physiologically hardier than the ones I’d seen in Australia, which oxidized pretty badly in just a few days in some cases. The plant press containing the herbarium voucher specimens eventually got to New York after being mis-routed through Baltimore, but on Tuesday the 29th, everything was in place to extract the DNA from our plants. one hurdle (collection) had been surmounted….another lay ahead.