Three Times a Collection: The Quest for Moonseed

摘要

For members of Arnold Arboretum plant expedition teams, the target taxa list is their guiding document: What are we looking for and where will we find it? Being interested in all things botanical, each collector is also invariably curious about which plants are on the other teams’ target lists. When these species are duplicated on a few different teams’ lists, a friendly competition arises that also unites them over a shared mission. As a first-time collector accompanying Robert Dowell on the Arkansas-Missouri Expedition (ARMOE), I was eager to test my field identification skills and compare expedition stories with the other two domestic teams in 2017. If the others were picking beechnuts in the Carolinas, I wanted to find them in Arkansas. If they were digging up red maple in Illinois, I wanted to find it in Missouri. There were several species targeted by multiple teams, but only one was successfully collected across all three domestic expeditions—Menispermum canadense (Canada moonseed).