scholarly journals The expeditions of the research yacht Utowana and the building of the plant living collections of the oldest botanical garden of Cuba

Webbia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-166
Author(s):  
Rosalina Montes Espín ◽  
Ileana Fernández-Santana ◽  
Amanda Lucía Vitlloch Ramos ◽  
Leosveli Vasallo Rodríguez ◽  
Mario A. Lima Cruz ◽  
...  

Cienfuegos Botanical Garden is the oldest functioning botanical institution of Cuba. It was established originally as a joint endeavor between sugar magnate Edwin F. Atkins and Harvard University in 1901. Between 1925 and 1934, the research yacht Utowana performed ample plant germplasm collections for the USDA in the New and Old World as well as archeological and zoological surveys in the Neotropics. The botanical expeditions were conducted mostly, under the leadership of David Fairchild. In this contribution we review to what extent Utowana expeditions and collections were instrumental in building the living collections of Cienfuegos Botanical Garden. A total of 278 accessions (comprising 254 species) were introduced into this garden directly or indirectly through these expeditions. Currently 57 of these species (132 individuals) are still part of its living collections. Interestingly, five of the Caribbean expeditions of this research yacht carried plant material between the Cienfuegos Botanical Garden and two other botanic gardens that were operated by US entities, namely the Lancetilla Botanical Garden in Honduras (owned by the United Fruit Company) and the Summit Gardens in Panama City (managed by the Panama Canal governmental agency). Our study also shows that plant material collected during Utowana expeditions was sent from Old World and Caribbean Island botanic gardens to Cienfuegos Botanical Garden. Thomas Barbour, director of this botanical institution between 1927 and 1946 joined four of these plant hunting endeavors. He provided strong support for the growing of the Cienfuegos Botanical Garden living collections with plant material collected during Utowana expeditions. 

Worldview ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 4-8
Author(s):  
Martha Bennett Stiles

Seventy-three years ago the U.S. connived in the secession of the Republic of Panama from Colombia in return for the privilege of building a canal across the Panamanian Isthmus "on a strip of land leased in perpetuity." Within this 533-square-mile zone the U.S. was to exercise, forever, all those rights that it "would possess and exercise if it were the sovereign of the territory..." Today the significance of that "if" is much debated.Although Ronald Reagan's campaign position—that the Panama Canal Zone is as much a part of the U.S. as is Alaska—has been deplored by the Ford Administration, it maintains strong support in the Senate.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Martin

Purpose This paper aims to examine the tourist business and marketing strategies of a US agribusiness giant, the United Fruit Company (UFCO), between its incorporation in 1899 and 1940. It considers how tourist marketing served the company’s public-relations interest and tourism’s broader connection to narratives of US ascendancy in the Caribbean Basin. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on original research in a series of published company materials, including annual reports and a wide variety of marketing materials, as well as a variety of rare primary sources documenting the experiences of US tourists on UFCO cruises. Findings From its incorporation in 1899, the UFCO developed a Caribbean cruise business as a vital part of its strategies of vertical integration and expansion around the region. Marketing tropical travel at a time when tropical disease dominated US perceptions of such places required a thorough conceptual makeover, and UFCO publicity played an important part in this process. The company advertised Caribbean destinations first for their therapeutic possibilities, but by the 1920s, a framework of anachronistic space and picturesque primitivism predominated in marketing campaigns. The structure of this narrative naturalized the company’s, and more broadly, US, hegemony in the region. While on cruises, tourists became witnesses to and participants in a series of spectacles and activities highlighting the company’s technological prowess and benevolence. Originality/value This analysis centers on a largely overlooked dimension of the famed banana company’s enterprise. It is grounded in a wide collection of primary sources largely untapped by researchers, a source base that brings tourist perception and experience into the story of this company’s marketing efforts. This research brings tourism and leisure into the historical discussion of US power in early-twentieth-century Latin America.


2007 ◽  
Vol 73 (21) ◽  
pp. 7114-7117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobain Duffy ◽  
Edward C. Holmes

ABSTRACT A phylogenetic analysis of three genomic regions revealed that Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) from western North America is distinct from TYLCV isolated in eastern North America and the Caribbean. This analysis supports a second introduction of this Old World begomovirus into the New World, most likely from Asia.


Author(s):  
Katja Neves

Botanic gardens came into existence in the late 1500s to document, study, and preserve plants originating from all over the world. The scientific field of botany was a direct outcome of these developments. From the 1600s onward, botanic gardens also paid key roles in acclimatizing plants across distinct ecosystems and respective climate zones. This often entailed the appropriation of Indigenous systems of plant expertise that were then used without recognition within the parameters of scientific botanical expertise. As such, botanic gardens operated as contact zones of unequal power dynamics between European and Indigenous knowledge systems. Botanic gardens were intimately embroiled with the global expansion of European colonialism and processes of empire building. They helped facilitate the establishment of cash-crop systems around the world, which effectively amounted to the extractive systems of plant wealth accumulation that characterize the modern European colonial enterprise. In the mid-20th century, botanic gardens began to take on leading roles in the conservation of plant biodiversity while also attending to issues of social equity and sustainable development. Relationships between lay expertise and scientific knowledge acquired renewed significance in this context, as did discussions of the knowledge politics that these interactions entailed. As a consequence of these transformations, former colonial exchanges within the botanical garden world between Indigenous knowledge practices and their appropriation by science came under scrutiny in the final decades of the 20th century. Efforts to decolonize botanic gardens and their knowledge practices emerged in the second decade of the 20th century.


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1934578X1000500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra Bertoli ◽  
Szilvia Sárosi ◽  
Jenő Bernáth ◽  
Luisa Pistelli

The aromatic profiles of five commercial thyme cultivars (T. vulgaris ‘Silver Poise’, T. vulgaris ‘Erectus’, T. vulgaris ‘Faustini’, T. × citriodorus ‘Anderson's Gold’, and T. × citriodorus ‘Silver Queen’), cultivated in Italy, were defined both by their static headspaces (HS) and essential oils (EOs). In addition, a botanical garden sample of T. vulgaris was considered as reference material to evaluate the morphological and phytochemical differences from the selected market samples. Extractions of the volatile constituents of the different plant material were carried out by SPME (static headspace, HS) and hydrodistillation (HD) processes. GC-MS analysis provided the separation and identification of approximately 70 components in the HS samples and 50 in the hydrodistilled essential oils, accounting for more than 95% of the total. The typical main constituents of T. vulgaris were detected in all the EO samples, although qualitative and quantitative differences were found among the selected ornamental Thymus varieties. Thymol (50-55%) was the marker constituent for the three T. vulgaris cultivars, while geraniol (61-67%) characterized the essential oils of the two T. × citriodorus varieties. In all the analyzed essential oils, non-oxygenated (16-79%) and oxygenated (5-26%) monoterpenes were the typical volatile constituents. Specific target compounds (thymol, geraniol and 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one) were selected to characterize the five thyme cultivars that are considered at present only as ornamental plants. A comparative evaluation of their EO quality was carried out in order to propose them as alternative sources of Italian raw plant material for industrial production.


2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLARE HICKMAN

AbstractOften overlooked by historians, specialist gardeners with an expert understanding of both native and exotic plant material were central to the teaching and research activities of university botanic gardens. In this article various interrelationships in the late Georgian period will be examined: between the gardener, the garden, the botanic collection, the medical school and ways of knowing. Foregrounding gardeners’ narratives will shed light on the ways in which botanic material was gathered and utilized for teaching and research purposes, particularly for medical students, as well as highlighting the importance of the garden as a repository of botanic material for the classroom. In this way, the blurred lines between art and science, skill and scholarly activity, and shared pedagogic practices between botany and anatomy will be revealed.


2017 ◽  
Vol 135 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-158
Author(s):  
Jan Rupp

AbstractCaribbean writing in English highlights the call for a pluralization of world literature(s) in a double sense. It is produced in multiple Caribbean spaces, both domestic and diasporic, and it clearly stands for the extension of what used to be a rather small set of (Western) world literature. Moreover, not least as a legacy of the colonial New World/Old World distinction, visions of the world are at the heart of the Caribbean spatial imaginary as probed in many literary works. This article explores the trajectory of Caribbean spaces and Anglophone world literatures as a matter of migration and circulation, but also in terms of the symbolic translation by which experiences of movement and space are aesthetically mediated. Because of its global span across different locations Caribbean writing in English is constituted as world literature almost by definition. However, some works pursue a more circumscribed concern with domestic spaces and local artistic idioms, which affects their translatability and redefines a conventional ‘from national to world literature’ narrative.


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