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"We're all stoked by the idea that there might have been one kind of bacteria on Mars, and we're willing to spend a billion dollars on that," Peter Raven complains. This series, he adds, will serve as an essential, authoritative reference for scientists and the conservation community to use in protecting rare and endangered species.

The first volume of "Flora" finally appeared in 1993 and contained sobering commentary: "Compared to some parts of the world, such as Europe, our mastery of vegetation is very superficial," wrote botanists Michael G. Barbour and Norman L. Christensen. "The passage of time will not guarantee better understanding, because the extent of natural vegetation annually grows smaller. Historical accounts that document what we had 100-200 years ago are, in turns, exhilarating and depressing as a sense of discovery turns into a sense of loss."

The North America project has evolved into an elephant of a task. In 2000, when the series should have been completed, only four of thirty volumes were ready, and all the money was gone. That year Chanticleer, a private garden and foundation in Pennsylvania, stepped forward -- the only charitable group to do so -- to revive the beast with some funding. The one proviso: Publish two volumes a year and finish it by 2011.

Following several reorganizations, editorial director Jim Zarucchi, a Harvard-educated son of a California fireman, took charge in 2002. "There's a lot of work that needs to be done, like planning, getting more funding and support, convincing authors and editors that these timelines are for real," Zarucchi says, a closed-lipped smile creeping across his face. "You have a lot of independent sorts."

"Obsession and independence -- it goes with the territory," chimes in Zarucchi's colleague Kay Yatskievych, the project's production coordinator. "One of my favorite sayings is, 'People who say a thing can't be done should stay out of the way of people who are doing it.'"

The 65-year-old Yatskievych started her professional life as an artist but was seduced by botany 30 years ago during a project photographing and painting plants. She spent twenty years cataloguing every wildflower in Indiana for a field guide she produced herself, doing everything from the writing and photography to the page layout.

Luckily, Yatskievych married a fellow botanist who can appreciate what he calls her "single-mindedness" when project deadlines loom. "She cuts me a lot of slack when I'm in maniacal mode," explains George Yatskievych, who is also a researcher at the Missouri Botanical Garden. The perfect pair, they are, neither objecting to ten-mile hikes in search of, say, a carnivorous sundew.

Last year was a thorny one, full of setbacks for Zarucchi and Yatskievych. The production schedule got far behind as one contributor didn't meet deadlines, another had health problems, one quit, and another died. There seemed to be no way Zarucchi and Yatskievych could wrap up the volume.

By December Yatskievych was holed up in her office with three assistants, all poring over 678 unfinished pages describing the pink, smartweed and leadwort plant groups. Zarucchi zoomed into the room several times a day carrying page proofs, his fluffy knoll of gray hair more tousled with each visit. At the other end of the hallway, project illustrator John Myers fussed over finishing touches for his drawings. "Plants are the coolest thing there is," he says. "Compared to things a human being can construct, plants are so much less 2-D, so much more beautiful, so much more interesting. They kind of make everything we do seem silly."

The crew finished a few days late, and when at last it ended -- for this year, anyway -- Zarucchi was spent. Yatskievych could still manage a feeble smile. Even two days before deadline, she wouldn't entertain the thought of quitting. "Never! Not until they [the Botanical Garden] drag me kicking and screaming out the door!"

"They don't drag you out," mutters a young colleague, Kristin Pierce, without looking up from her notes. "They dry you and press you and put you in the collection."

The taxonomists' Friday ritual begins like this: Roy Gereau slinks into the lobby of the botanical garden's research building and, when the clock strikes five, he announces over the PA system, "Hello, friends. It's five o'clock, and that means it's time for beer." Gereau proceeds to recite the happy news in thirty-three languages, which takes him a full three minutes. "Es la hora de la cerveza"...."Tijd voor bier"...."Iki ture nywa mawa"..."Hora cerevisiae est"....And finally, "It's time for beer."

"Beer curator" Fred Keusenkothen and diehard attendee Ron Liesner unlock the full-size refrigerator brimming with Budweisers. Atop the fridge lies a guestbook describing the history of "Friday Beer at the Garden" (the tradition began in 1970) and its various venues, including boiler rooms and basements.

"You'll have to sign in," Liesner says, setting a beer down in front of a newcomer.

"But only the first time," adds Tom Croat.

"We figure if we signed in every time, y'know, the administration might use it against us!" Liesner laughs.

"Now, you can't write down anything we talk about!" Croat warns.

Occasionally the botanists bad-mouth their own ilk during their happy hour, and no one wants that recorded. But on this evening it's the usual banter: how to wash dirtier-than-dirt clothing in a toilet, the 101 virtues of hippopotamus meat and the delicious pleasure in watching a snobby colleague unknowingly try to eat a monkey's asshole.

As a group, taxonomists are the first to classify themselves as "eccentrics," "kooks" and "crazies." But as in any family, the individual species vary. Croat's a cowboy compared to many of his bearded, scholarly colleagues, and the madcap Ron Liesner is a genius.

"I have 100 ways to spell 'fern,'" he claims one day, marking up a newspaper with his fractured penmanship: "phergn," "phern," "foryn" and so on.

One measure of a taxonomist is the number of plants named for him. At least 60 species begin with Liesner- or Liron- (for his last and first names), the majority of which other collectors identified but honored Liesner for his help in the process. No other living botanist at the Missouri garden -- and probably worldwide, Liesner and his colleagues say -- can claim such an honor.

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