M. Patrick Griffith

Montgomery Botanical Center · Administration

Conservation is increasingly central to the botanic garden mission. Living plant collections are important components of conservation. Critical evaluation of living conservation collections with population genetic analysis can directly inform ex situ conservation strategy. Here, we quantify the degree of genetic variation captured through a populat...

A new species of palmetto, Sabal antillensis, native to Curaçao and Bonaire, is described and illustrated. The new species is characterized by a pachycaulous habit, a compact crown of leaves, large seeds, and frequent fiber bundles in leaflet transection. Details on history, morphology, distribution, habitat, and conservation status are provided.

Premise of research. Conservation of plant species often requires ex situ (off-site) cultivation of living collections. Cycads constitute the most imperiled major group of plants, and ex situ collections are an important part of conservation planning for this group, given seed recalcitrance, difficulties with tissue culture, and ongoing in situ thr...

A new palm species, Sabal lougheediana, is described and illustrated. This critically endangered island endemic, native solely to Bonaire, is characterized by a compact crown of leaves, erect leaf segments, distinctive leaf scars, and frequently vascularized fiber bundles in leaflet transection. Detail on history, morphology, range, habitat, and co...

Imperiled plant species can benefit from ex situ cultivation to safeguard against loss of genetic diversity and possible extinction in the wild. Few studies use genetic monitoring in endangered plant species to evaluate how well current management practices maintain genetic diversity and limit inbreeding and relatedness after plants are brought int...

Zamia decumbens Calonje, Meerman, M.P.Griff. & Hoese, a threatened cycad species from Belize, is showcased and illustrated based on field observations as well as plants cultivated in the ex situ conservation living collections of Montgomery Botanical Center (MBC) in Coral Gables, Florida. This once obscure species was described in 2009, studied in...

At the Montgomery Botanical Center (MBC), Miami, Florida, USA, a graduate course on Plant Taxonomy and Nomenclature, administered by the Florida International University (FIU)-Biology Department, was held April 25–29, 2022.

Chinese yew ( Taxus wallichiana var. mairei ) is ranked as a rare and endangered plant of first-grade protection of China. It has been widely cultivated in 17 provinces of China over the past few decades. However, little is known about the dispersion, rewilding, and ecological influence of Chinese yew’s offspring during cultivation. Here, we report...

Under the old taxon Principes, palms were once the Princes of the Kingdom Plantae. First on Engler’s list, they occupy a cherished place to botanists, and remain treasured centerpieces of many gardens. In turn, botanic gardens have put forward a decades-long effort to conserve these widely admired plants, keeping a number of palm species from extin...

Global conservation policy and action have largely neglected protecting and monitoring genetic diversity—one of the three main pillars of biodiversity. Genetic diversity (diversity within species) underlies species’ adaptation and survival, ecosystem resilience, and societal innovation. The low priority given to genetic diversity has largely been d...

Genetic diversity is a critical resource for species’ survival during times of environmental change. Conserving and sustainably managing genetic diversity requires understanding the distribution and amount of genetic diversity (in situ and ex situ) across multiple species. This paper focuses on three emblematic and IUCN Red List threatened oaks (Qu...

Premise of research. Ex situ plant conservation can be improved through genetic analysis. One area of interest is the relative value of conserving smaller or larger populations, and how sampling strategies for these might differ. Current practice emphasizes collecting large sample sizes from some populations and limited sampling from others, and ai...

Growth dynamics of pachycaulous stems of arborescent cycad plants are not well understood, and most observations have been made in cultivated garden plants. We studied Cycas micronesica plants in Guam, Tinian, and Yap to understand the influences of geography, plant size, sex, and herbivory on stem growth. We also determined the changes in demograp...

The 10th International Conference on Cycad Biology (Cycad 2015), taking place between August 16th and August 21st, 2020, was very well-attended and truly international in scope, with over 150 attendees hailing from 17 different countries. During this six-day meeting, four days were devoted to its academic schedule of presentations which included se...

Effectively conserving biodiversity with limited resources requires scientifically informed and efficient strategies. Guidance is particularly needed on how many living plants are necessary to conserve a threshold level of genetic diversity in ex situ collections. We investigated this question for 11 taxa across five genera. In this first study ana...

Maintaining a living plant collection is the most common method of ex situ conservation for plant species that cannot be seed banked i.e. “exceptional” species. Viability of living collections, and their value for future conservation efforts, can be limited without coordinated efforts to track and manage individuals across institutions. The zoologi...

The morphology of the early ontogenetic stages of cycad foliage may help resolve the relationships between extinct to extant cycad lineages. However, prior to this study, fossil evidence of cycad seedlings was not known. We describe a compression fossil of cycad eophylls with co-occurring fully developed leaves of adult specimens from the early Pal...

Key message Complex protein-containing reproductive secretions are a conserved trait amongst all extant gymnosperms; the pollination drops of most groups include carbohydrate-modifying enzymes and defence proteins. Abstract Pollination drops are aqueous secretions that receive pollen and transport it to the ovule interior in gymnosperms (Coniferal...

Premise of research. The genus Zamia L. (Zamiaceae), consisting of 79 species, is the most species-rich and widely distributed cycad genus in the New World and arguably the most morphologically and ecologically diverse genus in the Cycadales. However, a strong phylogenetic framework for this genus is still lacking. Methodology. We used a multilocus...

Cycads are among the few plants that have developed specialized roots to host nitrogen-fixing bacteria. We describe the bacterial diversity of the coralloid roots from seven Dioon species and their surrounding rhizosphere and soil. Using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, we found that all coralloid roots are inhabited by a broad diversity of bacte...

Alpha diversity pairwise comparisons among sets of populations and compartments. (DOCX)

Differences of bacterial diversity between the two populations from D. merolae (set “Natural population” comparison). Venn diagram showing the shared OTUs and genera (in parenthesis) between the D. merolae samples from botanical garden and natural population. (TIF)

Alpha diversity metrics for the 12 samples of genus Dioon (set “All Dioon species”). (DOCX)

Adult individual of Dioon merolae from the natural population. (TIF)

Taxonomic diversity and abundance of bacterial genera in the endosphere from Dioon merolae (set “Natural population”). A) Heat tree of taxonomic diversity, the node width and color indicate the number of reads assigned to each taxon. Of the 20 most abundant genera (green) the symbol “&” represents the bacteria that have been reported as nitrogen-fi...

Premise of research. After Cuba, the three largest islands of the Greater Antilles are Hispaniola, Jamaica (JAM), and Puerto Rico (PR), all of which are inhabited by the Zamia pumila complex, a monophyletic group of dioecious gymnosperms treated as a single polymorphic or as many as nine species. We sought to test the following hypotheses for Zamia...

Cycads are among the few plants that have developed specialized roots to host nitrogen-fixing bacteria. We describe the bacterial diversity of the coralloid roots from seven Mexican Dioon species and their surrounding rhizosphere and soil. Using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, we found that all coralloid roots are inhabited by a broad diversity...

With 30 threatened species (14 categorized as Critically Endangered and 16 as Endangered, sensu IUCN), Coccothrinax (c. 54 species) is the flagship palm genus for conservation in the Caribbean Island Biodiversity Hotspot. Coccothrinax has its centre of taxonomic diversity in these islands, with c. 51 endemic species. We present a conservation frame...

Premise of research. The extant genera of cycads (order Cycadales) can be readily distinguished by the anatomy of their leaflets. In particular, the genus Dioon possesses a unique cellulosic fiber type in the leaflet mesophyll, not found in any other genus. We examine living material of all 15 species of Dioon to confirm preliminary observations an...

Botanic gardens are organized around plant collections, and climate change will affect those collections. Land loss is expected for gardens near sea level, prompting a loss of plants from the collection. Future collection development requires planning for these losses, which in turn requires assessment of the extent and rate of collection loss. We...

Conservation of imperiled plant species often requires ex situ (offsite) living collections. Protocols for developing these collections most often emphasize sampling depth, but little is known about the genetics of such collections. This study compares how well a single collecting protocol can capture the diversity in wild populations of two closel...

Premise of the study: The Bahamas archipelago is formed by young, tectonically stable carbonate banks that harbor direct geological evidence of global ice-volume changes. We sought to detect signatures of major changes on gene flow patterns and reconstruct the phylogeographic history of the monophyletic Zamia pumila complex across the Bahamas. Me...

The last Florida population of Buccaneer Palm is barely surviving

Palms (Arecaceae) are perhaps the most important tropical plant family for human use, both for utility and ornamental horticulture. The wide diversity of palm species with different seed germination characteristics necessitates tailoring horticultural practices to the needs of each. This is crucial for production and conservation horticulture. In t...

Here we present a method which combines bypassing the mucilage content of the cacti by using dissected epidermis with an semi-automated kit with high quality results. This method is suitable for automation, provides yields sufficient for next-generation sequencing applications like RAD-seq or whole genome resequencing, and can be implemented with m...

The Cycadales are a group of significant global conservation concern and have the highest extinction risk of all seed plants. Understanding the synchronisation of reproductive phenology of Cycadales may be useful for conservation by enabling the targeting of pollen and seed collection from wild populations and identifying the window of fertilisatio...

Coccothrinax jimenezii M.M. Mejía & R.G. García is a Critically Endangered palm species restricted to Haiti (one population near the city of Gonaïves with 43 individuals) and the Dominican Republic (one population on the shores of Lago Enriquillo with 18 individuals). The species faces two major conservation challenges: (1) water level rise in the...

The United States Culture Collection Network was formed in 2012 by a group of culture collection scientists and stakeholders in order to continue the progress established previously through efforts of an ad hoc group. The network is supported by a Research Coordination Network grant from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and has the goals of...

A high proportion of plant species is predicted to be threatened with extinction in the near future. However, the threat status of only a small number has been evaluated compared with key animal groups, rendering the magnitude and nature of the risks plants face unclear. Here we report the results of a global species assessment for the largest plan...

• The presence of gelatinous (tension) fibers (GFs) in the roots of two extant cycadales (Cycas and Zamia) in a recent publication raises interesting issues of GF distribution in seed plants. An immediate question that arises from this discovery is whether GFs occur consistently in the radicle of all extant cycad genera and therefore might have a s...

Editor: Félix Forest Premise of research. Conservation of plant species often requires ex situ (off-site) cultivation of living collections. Cycads constitute the most imperiled major group of plants, and ex situ collections are an important part of conservation planning for this group, given seed recalcitrance, difficulties with tissue culture, an...

Rare plant reintroductions are designed to increase the number of individuals in the wild, but can also improve genetic diversity of populations, reducing both short-term and long-term extinction risks. We used microsatellites developed for the genus Pseudophoenix H. Wendl. ex Sarg. to determine how reintroduced plants of the endangered Pseudophoen...

Pseudophoenix ekmanii, P. lediniana and P. vinifera (Arecaceae) are endemic to Hispaniola. The more wide-ranging P. sargentii also occurs on the island. Population genetic diversity and structure of Pseudophoenix was investigated using ten microsatellite loci. The study focused on populations from Hispaniola, but also included samples from other Ca...

The palm species Pseudophoenix ekmanii (endemic to the Dominican Republic) and P. lediniana (endemic to Haiti) are the only Critically Endangered species (sensu IUCN) of the genus. Results are presented of recent field research and population genetic studies targeting P. lediniana. The field research confirmed that wild plants of P. lediniana are r...

The Bahamian archipelago has a rich flora with 89 endemic species. An international symposium held at Nassau in October 2012 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of the "Flora of the Bahama Archipelago" provided a forum to discuss plant conservation issues on these islands. This article builds on conclusions from this symposium and...

Unlabelled: • Premise of the study: Reaction wood (RW) in seed plants can induce late and usually secondary changes in organ orientation. Conifers produce compression wood (CW), generated by compression tracheids, which generate a push force. Angiosperms produce tension wood (TW), generated by tension wood fibers (TWF) often described as "gelati...

Premise of research. Cycas is the earliest-diverging extant lineage in the ancient order Cycadales, well separated phyletically from the other nine extant genera. Despite the ancient status of Cycas, all extant species are no more than 12 Myr old, and many extant species have become known only in recent decades. Given this context, a broad survey o...

Several individuals of the Caribbean Zamia clade and other cycad genera were used to identify single copy nuclear genes for phylogeographic and phylogenetic studies in Cycadales. Two strategies were employed to select target loci: 1) a tblastX search of Arabidopsis conserved ortholog sequence (COS) set and, 2) a tblastX search of Arabidopsis-Populu...

Living botanic garden plant collections are a fundamental and underutilized worldwide resource for plant conservation. A common goal in managing a botanical living collection is to maintain the greatest biodiversity at the greatest economic and logistic efficiency. However to date there is no unified strategy for managing living plants within and a...

This Special Issue provides an overview of the current status of plant conservation genetics in Latin America. We begin with a thorough review that summarizes the scope and depth of research in this area. Several case studies then exemplify current trends and highlight the importance of integrating genetics and conservation in Latin American, and p...

A review of available Caribbean Island red-lists species (CR and EN categories based on the IUCN guidelines from 2001, and E category established according to the IUCN guidelines from 1980) is presented. A database of over 1,300 endemic species that are either Critically Endangered or Endangered sensu IUCN was created. There are molecular systemati...

Cycads comprise the most threatened major group of plants on earth and many species require horticultural assistance to ensure their survival. Appropriate container substrate properties, especially relatively high air space content, are crucial to successful cultivation of most cycads from seed. Cycad substrates in common use include substantial po...

Background and aims: Despite a recent new classification, a stable phylogeny for the cycads has been elusive, particularly regarding resolution of Bowenia, Stangeria and Dioon. In this study, five single-copy nuclear genes (SCNGs) are applied to the phylogeny of the order Cycadales. The specific aim is to evaluate several gene tree-species tree re...

Syagrus (Areaceae: Cocoseae) is a NewWorld palm genus occurring through most of South America, with one species in the eastern Caribbean. Relationships within Syagrus, Cocoseae and Attaleinae (Arecaceae) are investigated via cladistic analysis of 130 structural characters in 69 ingroup and three outgroup species. The data resolve relationships and...

Phylogenetic analyses based on molecular data revealed that the Venezuelan endemic, Opuntia lilae, considered a species of Opuntia s.s. since its description, actually represents a species of the mostly Brazilian clade, Tacinga. Through ancestral state reconstruction, we also identify morphological synapomorphies of the Tacinga clade, which further...

A conservation assessment for the three cycad species native to the Bahamas Islands is presented. Results are based on field surveys on all islands where these species occur. Zamia angustifolia is native to Eleuthera, Zamia integrifolia is native to Abaco, Andros, Eleuthera, Grand Bahama and New Providence, and Zamia lucayana is endemic to Long Isl...

Cycad aulacaspis scale [CAS (Aulacaspis yasumatsui)] is a highly destructive pest insect worldwide. CAS feeds on cycad (Cycas sp.) plantings and is also posing a problem for the foliage industry. The use of spent coffee grounds to prevent or control CAS has received increased popularity in the last few years. This study assesses whether the applica...

Palms have been characterized as tolerant of high winds, but that may be a simplified view. The effects of hurricanes on palm collections at Montgomery Botanical Center offered the opportunity to investigate aspects of natural selection for wind tolerance. A major finding is that wind tolerance is correlated with geography - Caribbean palms are mor...

Mona Island provides an important habitat for an interesting Caribbean xeric flora, which is noted for prominent Cactaceae as well as other succulent and pachycaulous plant species. A literature review demonstrated the need for documentation of this unique xerophytic flora. Here, we detail its succulent flora, and provide photographic documentation...