Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
allow reconstructions of paleoenvironments that are increasingly accurate
and mutually consistent.
PALYNOLOGY
Pollen is the male or sperm-bearing element in angiosperm and gymno-
sperm (seed plant) reproduction. Spores are more diffi cult to defi ne because
they occur in a wide range of organisms, including bacteria, fungi, algae,
bryophytes, and ferns. Mostly they are microscopic asexual reproductive
structures of the non-seed plants. Pollen is familiar as a principal cause
of allergies, but spores can also have insidious effects, at least for about
48 percent of the world's population (Balick and Beitel 1989). Pollen has
long been used in forensics to identify the place where a suspect has been
recently and at what time of year. The surface of bullets is too smooth to
retain fi ngerprints, so nanotags are being added to the surface of cartridges
that transfer to the hands of the user, and the adhesive is a coating of pol-
len (Weintraub 2008). Ozone levels can be estimated from the amounts of
DNA-protecting pigments contained in the spore wall (Barry Lomax, cited
in Morton 2005).
A somewhat bizarre chapter in the annals of palynology was written by
Clara S. Hires ([1965] 1978), a scion of the Hires Root Beer family. Hires
had graduated from Cornell with a degree in botany, and somewhere along
the way she became fi xated on fern spores. She had the resources to estab-
lish Mistaire Laboratories in Milburn, N.J., and spent her life arguing that
what others were calling pollen of pine, hemlock, and other plants were ac-
tually variously oriented tetrads of fern spores. Her unique perspective was
known to most botanists, and when she occasionally presented papers at na-
tional meetings they were met with consideration and understanding. John
Mickel of the New York Botanical Garden wrote a thoughtful review of her
book and pointed out some of its pitfalls to the unwary. For example, Hires
believed that many misinterpretations arose from the fact that biologists
did not know how to focus a microscope or interpret three-dimensional
structures. Her terminology included “scales like tiny pink roses,” and there
was no bibliography, although reference was made to her 1916 class notes
and to a Mr. Wizard TV program.
Suggestions for improvements, and restraint, were often made to Hires
privately, but unabashed she carried on. At a meeting of the American In-
stitute of Biological Sciences in the late 1960s, she encountered a noted au-
thority on fern taxonomy and evolution, the always effusive Warren H. Wag-
ner Jr. of the University of Michigan. Wagner was unaware of Hires's special
