Leafy Kingdom

That Dartmouth is a member of the Ivy League is common knowledge, but did you know that Dartmouth Ivy is a member of the plant kingdom? Ivy clipped years ago from the walls of the Earl of Dartmouth's English manor house is still thriving, along with 2,000-3,000 other plants, in the Murdough Experimental Greenhouse atop the Gilman Life Sciences Laboratory Building.

Under the care of Russell Jamieson and Susan Musty, his assistant, are six rooms of wildly beautiful displays of our green friends. Sights greeting the welcome visitor include stalks of papyrus looming out of a slowly bubbling watertank with some apparently misplaced guppies surreptitiously swimming around; an oleander, poisonous but so scented when it blooms that the whole room can be filled with its fragrance; and a banana plant spreading its great leaves. The greenhouse even has a very young Venus's flytrap, the celebrated insectivorous plant. The initial effect of all those plants is an eerie one to the neophyte greenhouse-goer, perhaps due to those Saturday afternoon matinees of "The Shrub that Ate New York" or perhaps to a remnant of the prehistoric instinct that alerted an ancestor. to be on its pads whenever it came near leaves. As Musty notes, "people fear the unknown."

Overcoming such ignorance is part of the aim of the teaching and research program in this leafy domain. The Mabel and Charles Murdough Experimental Greenhouse, part of the Biology Department, 12 years ago replaced the larger Clement Greenhouse, built in 1928 and torn down to make room for the Kiewit Computation Center. Jamieson and Musty aid the botany curriculum in such ways as "starting" plants for Biology 11 ("Plants and Human Affairs"), and this term clipping ivy and tradescantia, a type of Wandering Jew, for the students to grow themselves. Members of the Biology 5 Life Science class have been conducting experiments to see the effect of hormones on plants.

One room of the greenhouse is filled with Haemanthus, the cells of which are being examined by William T. Jackson, professor of biology and chairman of the greenhouse committee. (Comprised of two faculty members and a graduate student, the committee oversees the teaching and research operations of the facility.) Special cells in the developing fruit of the Haemanthus are uniquely cell-wall-free, more like an animal than plant cell, Professor Jackson says, and are thus "highly suited for studies of chromosome movement," the subject of his experiments.

The temperature and humidity of the plant chambers are, of course rigidly controlled. Fluorescent and incandescent lights are used to get the full spectrum of light. Care of the plants requires about two hours per day spent watering and another three or four hours in checking for symptoms of disease such as chlorosis, a yellowing condition, or necrosis, the death of cells. Some must also be fertilized once a week with a mixture of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus plus trace elements, all lacking in Hanover water, to prevent deficiencies. A native insect population is battled by a continuous spray program as a preventive measure. The greenhouse staff is working toward a collection representing all families in the plant kingdom and continues the program of labeling the numerous plants not already designated.

As to stories about plant sensitivity to music, pleasant monologues, and pain when clipped, Musty comments that she is aware of experiments claiming that plants "gave out vibrations" on the presence of hostility. Jackson, however, notes that "scientific evidence is lacking. We are trying to combat mysticism."

A plant purchased by the greenhouse may cost up to $5 a bulb', according to Jamieson, who will retire in July after 15 years of service. Most of them, however, cost nothing, since they were "picked up by professors in their travels and sent back," as in the case of the Dartmouth Ivy many years ago.

As for that ivy - Jamieson mentions that it has larger leaves than the commoner Boston Ivy. Is this perhaps a providential acknowledgement of the natural superiority of Dartmouth over anything Bostonian? If it is, it could cause vibrations in the league.