May 18, 1915 (& 2017): 111 (& 9) years ago today

This fern specimen of rock polypody (Polypodium virginianum) was collected at Roaring Run, Apollo, southwestern Pennsylvania by Otto and Grace Jennings on May 8, 1915 AND by me, Bonnie Isaac, and Cierra Snyder 102 years later!

Roaring Run is a must visit place! Now the site of a nice trails to trails bike/hiking trail, among other trails.  Among the most Trillium I've ever seen in one location is here!  Land is stewarded and made accessible to the public by the Roaring Run Watershed Association.

Otto and Grace Jennings were at the site in 1915 during a field trip with the Botanical Society of Western Pennsylvania, which is one of the oldest botanical clubs in North America and remains active today. They even still go to Roaring Run for field trips every so many years!

You can read more about that field trip here!  It's a fun read. 

We also have some notes from Jennings from their 1915 visit to the site, including locations of American chestnut. I hope to go back and recreate those notes one of these days. It's been on my to do list every spring for the past five years! Soon.

We (re)collected at this site in 2017 as part of a larger, long term collecting plan for the Carnegie Museum. We've identified sites across the region with historic collections, with the goal of returning and (re)collecting. We try to go at the same calendar date, to enable comparisons (is it blooming at the same time?) and in the same locations as much as possible.  This approach will allow for us and future researchers to make strong comparisons across time.  What species were seen in 1915 that weren't in 2017?  What species were NOT seen in 1915, that are common today?  (cough* knotweed *cough cough)

This collection resulted in some comparisons on exhibit at the museum as part of the We Are Nature exhibition that opened in fall 2017, showing impacts of climate change on plants by highlighting visual differences in plant phenology over time with paired herbarium speicmens collected on same calendar date, same location, but decades apart.