Rewriting Botany's Family Tree

ALBION, Mich. – It doesn't take a research scientist to see that orchids and asparagus are about as similar as, say, papayas and cabbages -- or does it?  Mark Chase, '73, one of the world's foremost experts on orchid genetics, visited Albion yesterday to discuss how his research, along with that of other botanical geneticists, is causing a major shift in the field of botany and taxonomy.

The orchid/asparagus to papaya/cabbage analogy is indeed correct -- but not in the way the average person, or the expert botanist of yesterday might think.  As it turns out, genetically orchids are in the asparagus family, and papayas likewise are -- genetically, if not gastronomically -- cabbages.

Chase and other researchers have also discovered many plants that look, live and behave very similarly are unrelated.  Water lilies and lotus plants, for example, share similar habitats and physically resemble each other, but are completely unrelated genetically. 

Chase himself recently told a British orchid society that two species of beloved British wild orchids were not, in fact, orchids, and were being reclassified into other families.  "I thought they'd be up in arms about it," says Chase, "But it turns out that these really dedicated amateurs, who've spent years growing these things from seed, knew that these 'orchids' were different than other orchids, because they had to be grown under different conditions -- in some ways, they were also ahead of the old taxonomy, which relied so much on plant morphology [how plants look and are constructed]."

The implications for science's new understandings into plant genetics goes far beyond a simple renaming exercise, Chase notes.  "Plants do everything that other living organisms do; it just that compared to animals, their structures are much more simple and so it's harder to see what parts are responsible for what actions," he says.  "We have had a lot less information to work with, to know how they do all the things they do.  But knowing plants are the same or different genetically can help us better understand and manage things like habitat conservation, agricultural production and diversity."

A Fellow of the Royal Society of London, one of the world's most prestigious scientific honors, Chase is director of the Molecular Systematics Section, Jodrell Laboratory at England's famed Kew Gardens. Chase was a pioneer in the use of DNA to unravel the relationships of flowering plant families, and from 1991-2001, he was recognized by a leading research organization as one of the 15 most cited authors in agriculture, plant, and animal sciences.