Just as tiny violets spread their spring purple blanket across the local landscape, Harvey Ballard's new monograph describes all known types of violets—including some new species—in the Violaceae (violet) family in the northeastern United States and neighboring Canada. It also determines what scientists still need to work on.
Ballard, a professor of environmental and plant biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, specializes in the many different aspects of plant biology, including traditional systematics, phylogenetics, molecular ecology, population genetics and conservation genetics. Ballard also enjoys making violet jelly this time of year. (Check out his recipe for violet jelly.)
Ballard has studied violets for 45 years and has employed many Ohio University students in field, museum, and laboratory research during his 25 years at OHIO. Their laboratory investigations of the violet flora of eastern North America since 2012 have included multiple sources of evidence, including traits, ecology, reproductive biology, common garden observations across seasons, and genetic differences—all filtered through modern species concepts to define better the classification of the various violet genera (groups of species) and species of the region.
“The unifying element of most of our research efforts is the use of comparative molecular evidence to answer questions at the organismal or lineage level,” said Ballard, whose lab often uses markers such as DNA sequencing, microsatellites and genotyping data. to sequence. the laboratory combined with results from field and museum studies.
More to learn about unofficial variants and wild hybrids
Asking how many species of violets there are isn't the only question for Ballard's lab, though they have recently identified about 10 undescribed species and just described two of them in the genus Viola. Although flower color, plant structures, and geographic distribution have been extensively documented for known violets, some mysteries remain. These are referred to in the monograph as variants.
Together with co-editors Misako Nishino and John Kartesz, Ballard's work led to the recognition of 58 native and eight introduced species, one subspecies, one variety and one form, 10 atypical variants and 113 wild hybrids in the region, representing the genera Cubelium, Pombalia and Viola.
“We found anomalous variations in Viola emarginata, Viola palmata, Viola septentrionalis and Viola sororia that currently lack sufficient information for taxonomic decisions, but we present them in our monograph to encourage continued study, collection and documentation,” said Ballard .
“Hopefully a lot of people will use it [the monograph] to get to know the violets of the Northeast and it will help us study and understand the 'variations' out there that we don't have enough scientific evidence to deal with right now,” he said.
“Now to the southeast violets!” said Ballard, who has already published papers on members of the violet family around the world with collaborators, and particularly in Latin America and North America. Specimens collected by Ballard from around the world are stored in the Floyd Bartley Herbarium at Ohio University.
ballard monograph, Taxonomic treatment of the violets (Violaceae) of the northeastern United States and adjacent Canadawas published in late March in the Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society, for which Ballard won the Torrey Botanical Society's Monograph Award.
