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DIS0010.1177/1461445617715177Discourse StudiesMcCarty and Swales

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Discourse Studies
2017, Vol. 19(5) 561­–580
Technological change and © The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1461445617715177
https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445617715177
Herbarium: A textography journals.sagepub.com/home/dis

revisited

Ryan McCarty
University of Michigan, USA

John M Swales
University of Michigan, USA

Abstract
Herbaria principally host and study collections of dried vegetal specimens, and the curators and
researchers employed there are mainly systematic botanists working on plant taxonomy. Twenty
years ago, a textographic investigation of the University of Michigan Herbarium was conducted
as part of a larger study. In this follow-up inquiry, we investigate what sort of changes have – or
have not – occurred over the intervening period. Two of the five original Herbarium informants
are still working there, and mainly through text-based interviews and discourse analysis we
trace their subsequent careers and research outputs. We find that there has been considerable
technological change since the 1990s, such as the growth of molecular studies, the digitization
of specimens, and the use of the web, which has greatly impacted the processes of scholarly
textual production. However, technological effects on the highly distinctive genres of systematic
botany turn out to be more moderate. This genre set, comprising monograph, flora, treatment,
and protologue, remains little known to those who study the more general discourses of the
academic and research worlds.

Keywords
Diachronic perspectives, genre, other floors other voices, systematic botany, textography

Corresponding author:
Ryan McCarty, University of Michigan, 1135 North Quad, Ann Arbor MI 48109, USA.
Email: RyanMcCa@umich.edu
562 Discourse Studies 19(5)

Introduction
An ethnography has long been a serious enterprise, being a matter of prolonged field-
work, participant observation, copious field notes, and documentation of various kinds
(Malinowski, 1922: 1961). It has also become a somewhat conflicted one, as indicated
by the main title of Van Maanan’s (1995) seminal piece, ‘The end of innocence: An eth-
nography of ethnography’. However, more abbreviated and less immersed investigations
are possible, such as using certain ethnographic perspectives or tools for part of the study
(Green and Bloome, 1997). A textography is similarly ‘ethnography lite’ – but with a
twist. In a textography, as the name implies, the focus narrows to the literacy practices of
a set of individuals who usually form part of a community of some sort. Most often, these
are academic groupings because literacy processes and products are central to educa-
tional discourse (see Paltridge et al., 2016, for a recent comprehensive overview). While
textographies may involve reading (e.g. Bazerman, 1985), they are more likely to involve
the processes and products of academic writing (e.g. Al-Afnan, 2016; Li, 2007; Lillis and
Curry, 2010; Paltridge and Starfield, 2016). Textographies also accord well with recent
studies perceiving disciplines as becoming enacted as people acculturated into those
disciplines carry out their regular and regularized social and professional practices
(Trowler, 2012; Tusting and Barton, 2016).
Van Dijk (2008) argues that discourse studies have under-theorized the key concept
of context and suggests that a more promising way forward is to work on the assump-
tion that ‘it is not the social situation that influences (or is influenced by) discourse, but
the way participants define such a situation’ (p. x; original emphasis). And certainly, a
textographic approach is engaged in exploring not only the textual products of key
informants, but also how they perceive those textual products as they reveal something
of the liberties and constraints under which they are operating. This approach thus has
affinities with those of others, such as Smart (2012) and Bhatia (2004, 2012), although
Smart has a close allegiance to Geertzian interpretive ethnography (Geertz, 1983),
while Bhatia (2012) relies heavily on the ways in which genre analysis can illuminate
‘the study of situated linguistic behavior in institutionalized academic or professional
settings’ (p. 241).
In effect, the textographer attempts to produce a nonfictional account that serves as a
presentation of selective contextually embedded discursive practices of a disciplinary
culture in ways that are revealing to those outside that culture. That said, a textography
will inevitably be but one representation out of several that might have been possible,
depending on several factors. Why choose this original impetus for the study, rather than
something else? Why select these particular ‘interviewee-informants’, rather than oth-
ers? Why do the investigators find these textual features particularly ‘salient’? And in the
ultimate writing-up, was the objective to make the strange familiar, or the familiar
strange, or perhaps the strange even more strange?
In the mid-1990s, a textography was conducted in a small building at the University
of Michigan (Swales, 1998a, 1998b). The main focus of interest was the Herbarium situ-
ated on the second floor, along with the central campus Computer Center below it and
the English Language Institute on the top floor. The Herbarium part of the study was
centered on four of the curators who worked there, plus the collections manager and the
‘mounters’ who worked for him, assembling or repairing dried plant specimens on large
McCarty and Swales 563

Photo 1. The Herbarium library.

sheets of strong paper. All five were interviewed more than once, focusing on their
careers, their range of activities, and their writing processes and products. Selected texts
were analyzed, photographs were taken, and several individuals were observed as they
went about their daily activities. The resulting book was described as a ‘textography’,
thus implying that it was something more than a simple discourse analysis, but some-
thing less than a full-blown ethnography.
Soon after the volume was published, the small building was demolished and the
three units went their separate ways, the Herbarium being relocated off campus close to
the Detroit–Chicago expressway and near Ann Arbor’s municipal airport. It is now
housed in what used to be the university’s main warehouse, and at the present time, other
collections are in the process of being moved off central campus to this site. The
University of Michigan Herbarium is large, with collections amounting to some 1.75
million specimens, mainly of plants but also of fungi and lichens. Most of the present site
has a modern look, with glass-fronted offices and banks of cubicles for use by visitors
and students. One exception is the library, which has only changed location, still housing
its original wooden card catalogue and furniture and its splendid collection of older,
leather-bound volumes (Photo 1).
Of the five original main Herbarium informants, only two remain: Rich, the Collections
Manager and an Associate Research Scientist, and Tony, Associate Director, Research
Scientist and Curator of Vascular Plants. Two of the older members have died in the interim,
and the Curator of Fungi took a position elsewhere and has since retired. The last ‘mounter’
has also recently retired, and the Herbarium is currently considering whether to hire another
or to rely on part-time students. Both Rich and Tony would appear today to be in their 60s.
564 Discourse Studies 19(5)

The main impetus for this new study is to explore how the ancient science of system-
atic botany/plant taxonomy has changed – and not changed – over the 20-year period
between 1996 and 2016. Aspects worth considering include the effects of the growth of
the web, digitization, and developments in molecular botany. More precisely, while there
might be some expectation that the processes of taxonomic research have been affected
by these technological developments, it remains an open question whether and in what
way these developments have affected the textual products themselves; in effect, whether
and how the genres that systematic botanists produce have themselves evolved, apart
from now often appearing in electronic format (Miller, 2017).
In fact, the written genres in systematic botany form a highly distinctive set (Devitt,
1991). The highest status genre in the set is the monograph (a taxonomy of all the species
in some order, such as a family). This is followed by a flora, an account of all the vascu-
lar plants found in a particular region, ranging from a single nature reserve up to a whole
country. Then comes a treatment or a description of a selected group of plants or fungi.
Finally, there is the description of a new species, the technical part of which is known as
a protologue (from the Greek for ‘first discourse’). As can be seen, this is a markedly
discipline-specific set, far apart from the standard articles, book chapters, and edited
volumes that the vast majority of academics and students are familiar with. Additionally,
one of our two informants spends a certain amount of time writing for a popular audience
in naturalist and gardening communities. While these popularizations are, predictably,
quite distinct from the scientific genres of systematic botany, they are closely related to
exigencies of the discipline’s academic genres, particularly the flora. In the spirit of tex-
tography, this study presents the ways in which the two main informants go about their
work in and across this genre set.

Rich
Although he currently does almost all of this research and writing outside of his official
duties in the Herbarium, Rich has a CV of about 120 refereed publications, excluding post-
ers, abstracts, and reviews. The 20 most recent of these average around 11 pages in length,
but this average disguises their variability in length. One is 102 pages long with 21 other
authors; a few comprise only 1–3 pages; many have a single coauthor. He reflects that fre-
quently his contribution to many of the pieces with a larger number of authors has been to
do the ‘theoretical work’, that is, mediating between the more traditional approaches of plant
taxonomists and the newer approaches of molecular studies. He explains that the develop-
ment of DNA sampling produces a great deal of data but leaves questions to be answered:

(1) How does it relate to the classification of the family? How might it relate to some of the
morphological characters? That’s the part I’ve usually played in the molecular work is,
somebody has done the molecular work and here’s what it looks like and says, but how
might this relate to broader concepts within the family from a more traditional aspect?

In publications presenting molecular data, these questions are often the ones Rich is
invited to answer. Along with this theoretical work, Rich continues with more traditional
study in nomenclature and taxonomy, working in the familiar genres of the field. As
McCarty and Swales 565

Photo 2. The new Sagina fontinalis lectotype.

collections manager of the Herbarium, the overall archival imperative of the field with
its emphasis on the creation, maintenance, and processing of artifacts is extended into a
broad digitization project, which has meant adding a bar code to the specimen sheet and
photographing it with a special camera setup (see Photo 2 for an example). Rich reports
spending about 85% of his time working on curatorial issues, many related to shifting the
Herbarium collection into digital archives, a project that is viewed by many as an impor-
tant goal for the discipline over the next decade (Rabeler and Macklin, 2006). While such
digitization is a relatively recent venture for the field, one that Rich suggests not all
members are equally comfortable with, it also enables the classical work of Systematic
Botany to continue in ways that are remarkably similar to pre-digital times, as Rich and
Tony’s paper on lectotypification will later show.
Of Rich’s many publications, we have chosen two for illustrative purposes; he was
the first author in both cases. The earlier one contains a protologue and is entitled
566 Discourse Studies 19(5)

‘Pseudostellaria sierrae (Caryophyllaceae), a new species from California’ (Rabeler and

Hartman, 2002). This heads a five-page paper in large format with double columns of
print; it was coauthored by Rich and Ronald Hartman of the Rocky Mountain Herbarium
in Wyoming, with whom he has collaborated on botanical research for many years. The
paper was published in a 2002 issue of Novon, a relatively new journal, the subtitle of
which is A Journal for Botanical Nomenclature. Of the five pages, one comprises a line
drawing of the plant, one half-page is devoted to an electron micrograph of its seed, and
another to a map showing its very restricted distribution in the mountains of north-cen-
tral California.
There is an abstract, followed by nine paragraphs of main text. These, in turn, are fol-
lowed by a short dichotomous key, outlining the differences between P. sierrae and ‘spe-
cies with which it has been confused’, a list of paratypes (specimens cited that are not
types), and then the usual acknowledgments, closing with eight references, all from the
later decades of the 20th century. The opening paragraph provides a rich background to
the technical protologue, which occupies paragraphs 2–4. When asked if the text was a
treatment, Rich demurred, stating that a treatment dealt with several species. This kind
of text seems to have no definite name and can best be described as a ‘contextualized
protologue’, essentially a technical description of a new species (i.e. a protologue)
flanked by various kinds of additional information. Here are the opening three sentences,
plus the beginning of the fourth:

(2) Pseudostellaria is a genus of 16 (Bittrich, 1993) to 20 species (Rabelar, pers. compilation), all
but 3 of which are restricted to Asia (Afghanistan and Siberia east to Japan and Korea). Two
additional species from Korea were recently described and effectively, if not validly, published
(Lee, 1998). Pseudostellaria europea Schaeftlein occurs in southeastern Europe, while two
species, P. jamesiana (Torrey) W.A. Weber and R. L. Hartman and this novelty, are known in
western North America. The chief feature distinguishing Pseudostellaria is the presence of …

Rich has been studying Caryophyllaceae (carnations and pinks) for many years; as a
result, he has his own ideas (sentence 1) of how many species there are of Pseudostellaria.
In the next sentence, the authors state that the two Korean species ‘were effectively, if not
validly, published’; this putatively paradoxical statement (at least to outsiders) means
that although the description was adequate, it did not completely follow the elaborate and
somewhat arcane rules for prototypes set out in the International Code of Botanical
Nomenclature (ICBN). At this juncture, Rich commented that ‘there are a series of steps
you have to go through and you can trip yourself up in several ways’. In the third sen-
tence, the authors describe what they have found as a ‘novelty’. We queried Rich about
this term since ‘novelty’ in normal usage often refers to some new, and possibly ephem-
eral, object. When we suggested ‘discovery’ or ‘addition to the flora’ as alternatives, he
said that ‘novelty’ was accepted in botanical research and later added that the ICBN
permitted the use of ‘nomenclatural novelty’.
After the seven-sentence introduction comes the first part of the protologue – a
detailed but abbreviated account of its location and so on:

(3) Pseudostellaria sierrae. Rabeler & R. L. Hartman, sp. nov. TYPE: U.S.A California:
Plumas Co., in litter under Pinus lambertiana, mixed oak-pine-fir forest, 150 ft. S of FS
road 26N49Y … (further location details omitted) … 14 June 1997, R.K. Rabeler 1290 …
McCarty and Swales 567

The ‘sp. nov.’ is the abbreviated Latin for ‘new species’ and is the only indication in
the formal description that this is, indeed, a new species. ‘TYPE’ indicates that this is the
authoritative ‘top dog’ specimen according to ICBN rules. The closing phrase indicates
that this is the 1290th specimen that Rich has deposited in a herbarium.
This is followed by two technical descriptions of the type specimen, the first and
shorter one in Botanical Latin. Here is the first sentence of the Latin paragraph, followed
by a literal translation:

(4) Herbae perennis omnino glabra; radices verticales carnosi rhizomatibus.

Herbs perennial completely hairless; roots vertical fleshy with rhizomes.

Both the Latin and the longer and more detailed English versions are phrasal in the
sense that no finite verbs are used, although they do employ a few active participles and
a larger number of passive ones. Indeed, Stearn (1992), in his widely used manual on
Botanical Latin, somewhat caustically comments, ‘Botanists manage [Latin] verbs best
by avoiding them altogether’ (p. 130). Extract 5 shows the opening ‘sentence’ of the
English description, followed by the beginnings of the other sentences:

(5) Perennial, glabrous herb, 9–27 cm tall, with stems arising singly, at varying intervals along
rhizome. Roots vertical or nearly so … Stems simple or branched, rounded … Leaves
opposite, exstipulate, … Flowers perfect, chasmogamous, regular … Capsule ovoid,
4–4.5 mm long, … Seeds 1. Possibly 2, light brown …. (Our emphases)

This then is a detailed description of P. sierrae that proceeds in an orderly fashion

from the bottom to the top, coinciding interestingly with the stages of emergence from
the roots to the eventual seeds. Much of the highly technical vocabulary is missing from
the above truncated extract, but some indication of its specialized nature is conveyed by
adjectives like ‘exstipulate’ and ‘chasmogamous’.
At this juncture, the paper returns to standard academic prose, and the content of the
next three paragraphs can be grasped from their opening topic sentences:

(6) Pseudostellaria sierrae exhibits two features that make placement within the most recent
infrageneric classification (Mizushima, 1965) problematic. (Paragraph 5)
The paratypes cited below include all other collections we have found. (Paragraph 6)
Pseudostellaria sierrae may be more common than suggested by the few collections cited.
(Paragraph 7)

The following paragraph tells the story of how Rabeler and Hartman, working inde-
pendently, failed to fully identify the most widely distributed collection of this plant.
When we asked him why they did not start their paper with this story, Rich did say that
sometimes botanists do begin with the original motivation for their studies, but for Rich,
if you do so ‘it sounds less scientific’. The final paragraph deals with how collections of
this plant have either been previously misidentified or not identified down to species
level. The main text closes in a confident manner: ‘While all three taxa can be found in
Sierran coniferous forests, they can be easily separated by the characters given in the
568 Discourse Studies 19(5)

following key.’ This new key thus emerges as a practical tool that botanists can confi-
dently use to identify specimens of this rare plant.
The story told in this article is of the identification of ‘a new species’. However, it is
not a new species in the sense that outsiders might typically conceive of it, because the
plant has been known to the scientific world since it was first collected in 1878. Rather,
the situation is akin to that of a group of art experts deciding that a painting long thought
to be by a minor 17th-century Dutch artist can now be newly and safely attributed to, say,
Rembrandt. As Rich said, ‘It is a new species in the sense that it now has a validly-
published name’. When asked how the coauthoring process works, Rich explained that
typically this is done by sending drafts and comments back and forth via email; however,
in this case, he and Ronald Hartman sat side by side in the Rocky Mountain Herbarium
examining sheets of what turned out to be Stellaria sierrae: ‘we just sat there and meas-
ured specimens and recording data’. Presumably, having two sets of expert eyes examin-
ing the material at the same time has helped in the final determination, especially if we
recollect that each failed to get there working independently.
This article is stylistically very varied, ranging from the highly technical, detailed,
dense phrasal descriptions in paragraphs 2–4 to a more personal account, in paragraph 8,
of the two authors coming to grips with recalcitrant material. Throughout, although
under the surface there runs a strong sense of the archival imperatives at work here, a
commitment to the assiduous examination and reexamination of dried plant material that
may be decades old – a sense that will become even more salient when we turn to Rich’s
second paper, one he coauthored with Tony.
The second text we have chosen for illustrative purposes is the latest paper by Rich and
Tony, published in June 2016 in a regional botanical journal (Rabeler and Reznicek, 2016).
It is entitled ‘Lectotypification of the enigmatic Sagina fontinalis (Caryophyllaceae)’, and
the short abstract simply reads,

(7) Examination of the protologue of Sagina fontinalis (Caryophyllaceae) revealed that at

least two gatherings were mentioned, making it necessary to select a lectotype.

The current rules of botanical nomenclature insist that an original type specimen be not
only properly described, but also must contain precise information as to when and where it
was collected (i.e. ‘gathered’) and by whom. If that information is not complete, the most
appropriate of the duplicates (isotypes in botanical parlance) must be selected, and this
selection is known as the lectotype. The digitized photograph shows the Michigan speci-
men sheet of the plant displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner, with a scale and color
chart added to the top right corner as part of the digitization process. The specimen is
accompanied by several annotations by various botanists. At the bottom right is placed the
1834 original handwritten label by Robert Peter, the plant’s discoverer. The type-written
paragraph above it is a transcript of Peter’s protologue. Unfortunately, he mentions taking
gatherings (i.e. collections) of the plant in two different places, a month apart, an uncer-
tainty that is no longer acceptable according to the rules of botanical nomenclature.
Here is the first paragraph of the introduction:

(8) Charles W. Short and Robert Peter published A Supplementary Catalogue of the Plants of
Kentucky (Short and Peter, 1836) in which they included a description of Sagina fontinalis
Short & R. Peter. During an examination of Peter collections from the US National
McCarty and Swales 569

Arboretum (NA) that had been borrowed for a study of herbarium materials of Zina
Pitcher, author Reznicek noted pronounced differences between the Peter collection of S.
fontinalis housed at NA and the one included in the type collection at MICH. A consultation
of the protologue revealed two localities, and a type was not specified.

Unlike the P. sierrae piece, this one opens with a short account of how Tony came
across the confusion, and when we queried Rich about the phrase ‘author Reznicek’, he
explained that it was a convention of this particular journal to describe authors in this way.
At this juncture, it may have struck the reader that it is somewhat odd that a plant
which had been collected for more than 180 years should have emerged as enigmatic.
The long second paragraph explains this: first, the plant is very rare, only being found in
certain hill areas of Kentucky and Tennessee; second, over the last 180 years, botanists
have placed it in as many as five different genera. In addition, it turns out that Peter’s
own collection was destroyed in a 1941 fire. The third paragraph then gets to the heart of
the matter: ‘In spite of this nomenclatural attention, typification remains incomplete.’ As
a result, Tony and Rich assembled ‘what we believe to be a comprehensive representa-
tion of extant Short and Peter collections of Sagina fontinalis …’. There follows a
detailed account of how they winnowed their selection down to their chosen isotype:

(9) Of all of these collections, only the April 5 gathering has a label in Peter’s own hand, with
a date, and a locality (“Cliffs of the Kentucky River”) cited in the protologue. We choose
the MICH collection of this locality as lectotype, based on the fact that the MICH set was
sent to Douglass Houghton by Peter in the fall of 1834 (MacFarlane, 2001) and is the
largest set of Peter collections extant.

So, Douglass Houghton, an important pioneering naturalist in Michigan, was sent the
specimen now in the University of Michigan Herbarium, just a few months after Peter had
collected it.
The historical impetus of a paper like this one is also reflected in its citational prac-
tices. Twenty years ago, Tony had explained that systematic botanists tended to be
frugal with their references, citing only those works that are directly relevant to the
project at hand, ruefully adding ‘though that kills us in citation counts and things like
that’ (Swales, 1988a: 108). For example, we have noted that Rich has published a lot
on Caryophyllaceae, and yet there is no reference to any of his previous treatments of
this family. Furthermore, the 16 references have great historical depth, as shown in
Table 1.
When we mentioned to Rich that the literature they had cited went back a long way,
he observed,

(10) we have to. . . . one of the problems that comes up in taxonomy is that you really can’t just
assume that because it is old, you can ignore it. We go back routinely.

We then asked how he and Tony worked together on this study; part of his answer is as
follows:

(11) I put a draft together and then he commented on it, he looked at some specimens, I looked at
others and we put our heads together to figure out that this was something that needs to be done.

Finally we inquired whether he enjoyed working on this paper:

570 Discourse Studies 19(5)

Table 1. References in the lectotypification paper

(Rabeler and Reznicek, 2016).

19th century 20th century 21st century

1836 1962 2001
1840 1973 2005
1894 1978 2014
1894 1980 2016
1980
1981
1983
1983

(12) what’s interesting about this is the type of detail … it’s horribly detailed … but I for some
reason enjoyed that. What some would consider trivial, but trying to get this stuff correct
is important.

Tony
Tony, like Rich, works on projects that range from curatorial to administrative to research
to service. Since the first interviews 20 years ago, he has added over 70 publications to
his CV, both in peer-reviewed research journals and in popular articles. He has also
added a third current research interest: ‘Conservation of the Great Lakes region flora,
with a focus on conservation strategies for the endemic and disjunct flora.’ Reflecting on
his interest in this area, Tony admits that he is ‘not sure it’s a strong research focus, but
it’s a strong service focus’, linked strongly to his work with The Nature Conservancy,
local parks committees, and rare plant advisories for Ohio and Michigan. However, his
interest in conservation is also aligned with a career-long focus on talking to local groups
of naturalists and gardeners, talks which have turned increasingly toward conservancy
and sustainability.
Tony further suggests that his interests in conservation are related to his strong interest
in Michigan plants, with a large part of his recent curatorial work spent on developing and
maintaining The Michigan Flora Online (MFO) (Reznicek et al., 2011), a large online
volume first made available to the public in 2011. Drawing from the three-volume flora of
Tony’s late colleague Ed Voss (1972, 1985, 1996) and the one-volume condensation Tony
and Voss completed in 2012, the database contains taxonomies and descriptions written by
Voss, by Tony himself, and by Beverly Walters, the Vascular Plants Collections Manager at
the Herbarium. Tony’s time devoted to this database is spent not only managing and updat-
ing taxonomic or descriptive aspects of entries, but also responding to the network of users
that has grown up around the database. These include individuals emailing about gaps or
errors they might have found, photographers interested in sharing images, and collectors
interested in sharing their ‘special things’ that are not yet accounted for in the database.
When asked if this kind of networking was not always part of the work of managing a large
collection, Tony responded that the publication of The MFO mainly led to an increase in
the scale of correspondence with other collectors and aficionados, with the one exception
being the ongoing experience of having typos and small glitches pointed out.
McCarty and Swales 571

The development of this network of users-as-collaborators is perhaps somewhat

unsurprising, given Tony’s long-standing dialogues with plant aficionados and amateur
botanists, but it is also possibly due to the broader audiences of flora in general. Of the
main genres in the discipline, a flora has always been the most ‘popular’ since a number
of people outside the small world of professional botanists are interested in knowing
about the plants in their own areas. One marker of this mixed audience is Voss’ inclusion
of an extensive glossary of technical botanical descriptions in his volumes, a practice that
is continued in the online version. Another is the explanatory materials preceding the
descriptions of families, which appear to be aimed at nonspecialist audiences. In The
MFO, this introduction begins as follows:

(13) This series of keys is intended to lead one to the family, or sometimes directly to the genus
or species, of an unknown plant. Therefore, the keys are based on the most reliable and
easily observed characters for that purpose; only rarely (and incidentally) do they reflect
the natural relationships and classification of the families.

Such an explanation of the purpose of an introductory key, along with a basic discus-
sion of taxonomy, might seem to be a feature of the accessible and public online flora,
distinct from that of a more traditional disciplinary example. Voss’ flora includes a simi-
lar section though, titled ‘Plant Identification and the Use of Keys’, beginning,

(14) Even a minimal understanding of plant taxonomy and geography makes clear that plant
identification is not an exercise that takes place in a vacuum […] Determining the names
of plants is often necessary for the botanist and for scientists in related fields; and it is
often the source of much pleasure for many others who find study of the flora an agreeable
hobby. (pp. 30–31)

The explanatory nature of this excerpt suggests the inclusion of the nonspecialist
reader as well as the botanist and scientist, who are, in this case, positioned as objects
being discussed rather than members of the audience.
Other features of The MFO that might seem to be formal innovations are, on closer
examination, similar in both form and function to Voss’ print flora. Like in Voss, the
introductory key to The MFO is written to lead readers to the family of an unknown
plant by offering descriptions of ‘the most reliable and easily observed characters for
that purpose’. In Voss, the introductory keys are accompanied by a page number lead-
ing to families and, eventually, to species. In the online version, a hyperlink navigates
the reader from initial key to the next level of identification. The effect, though, is
nearly identical in terms of the reader’s movement through the text. At the level of the
descriptions themselves, the absence of finite verbs, common to technical descriptions
in systematic botany, is maintained in the key – often carried over directly from Voss
– as is the tendency to omit articles in reference to the plant as a whole, though not for
parts of the plant or other nouns. A characteristic example illustrates these stylistic
features:

(15) Plants with at least some leaves (or stem if plant apparently leafless) above the water (but
not free floating) or plants strictly terrestrial.
572 Discourse Studies 19(5)

The tendency to omit the article before plant is reinforced by the second use in the
parenthetical, as well as the third plants that is part of the larger descriptive noun group
‘plants strictly terrestrial’, functioning rather like the excerpt as a whole. Similarly, in
this longer description,

(16) Plants herbaceous, the perennial parts, if any, below or on the surface of the ground (to
which the stems die back each year), not producing woody stems which survive the winter
well above ground [hence, without aerial evergreen leaves (although there may be basal
winter-green leaves)]

the presence of articles for constituent parts of the plant – ‘the perennial parts’ or ‘the
stems’ – is characteristic of this and of many other genres in the discipline. However, the
use of verbs in the parentheticals is, unlike in technical protologues, more akin to that
found in standard written English, perhaps due to the explanatory function of parentheti-
cals in descriptions.
Selecting from one of the introductory keys leads to one of more specific keys, which
continue the process of narrowing down the range of possible plants. The emphasis on
individual morphological features often leaves new descriptions looking like more spe-
cific versions of the introductory key, including more precise measurements, for exam-
ple: ‘Plant a prostrate shrub; leaves less than 7 mm long; fruit a dark several-seeded berry
(the seeds enclosed).’ However, these more specific keys can also differ quite markedly
from introductory keys, especially if the distinguishing features are fairly straightfor-
ward. For instance, another key description simply reads

(17) Calyx lobes 4; stamens 8; buds scurfy-pubescent,

again with the emphasis on quantifying features and the – at least to us perhaps – obscure
adjectives of the field, which the authors explain in a glossary section of the database.
Levels of specificity are similarly increased in instances like

(18) Calyx 4-lobed or if 5-lobed not split beneath and the lobes ± equal; plant glabrous or
pubescent but not glandular/clammy; fruit a typical capsule. (Our emphases)

Note here the emergence of exclusionary language (not, but not) that becomes com-
mon in description at these levels.
The process of distinguishing between seemingly related plants eventually brings the
reader to the species description, which is more narrative in form. These entries include
plant origins if the species is not native to Michigan, as well as collection history and
areas of the state where the plant is prevalent. As in Voss, the technical language of the
preceding keys is largely left behind in these species-specific descriptions, while the
omission of subjects and the paucity of finite verbs remains. The entry on Aesculus
hippocastanum (horse chestnut) illustrates these tendencies:

(19) A native of the eastern Mediterranean area, long cultivated in Europe and North America,
occasionally seeding in disturbed ground, fencerows, forests, rarely swamps, even
surviving until old enough to fruit. First collected in 1900 in St. Clair Co. Doubtless
McCarty and Swales 573

escaped more often than the few existing collections document. Hardy and often planted
throughout the Lower Peninsula and into the Upper Peninsula.
Often called “chestnut,” especially in Europe, but that name is misleading, because this
species is wholly different from the true chestnut, Castanea of the Fagaceae.
The coarser-looking, obovate leaflets and larger fruit usually suffice to separate this
species from A. glabra at a glance.

The shift toward the inclusion of subjects in the last two sentences, as well as the
inclusion of finite verbs, is common to these entries, as the initial description moves
toward more species-specific notes, which, as Tony puts it, are more ‘experiential’ and
based on the particularities of the individual case.
Tony’s experience of moving between the strictly descriptive and highly formulaic style
of the early lines and the more variable commentaries in the concluding sentences of descrip-
tions illuminates another large aspect of his work over the course of his career: writing and
lecturing for amateur naturalist and gardening audiences. While the range of topics Tony
covers in these cases is fairly broad, more recently he has dedicated a notable amount of time
to the explanation of systematic botanical changes affecting the broader plant-loving com-
munity. Just as Rich has developed a negotiator’s role in some of his writing, contributing
the ‘theoretical work’ that links traditional classification work to molecular studies, the rise
of DNA sampling has impacted some of the work that Tony does when writing for popular
audiences, most notably the need to explain the recent flurry of name changes. While the
pace of change in Herbarium life might remain rather slow overall, Tony notes that the task
of explaining these changes in public forums demands a certain level of alacrity:

(20) I think that for plants and the naming of plants there’s a much more immediate effect of
the science on peoples’ daily activities if they’re gardeners or people interested in natural
history. If you have somebody working in chemistry developing coating for new kitchen
utensils … it would be decades down the road before that is actually a product that people
will then utilize. But when you have a name change it generally shows up very quickly in
the indexes and online and gardeners see it because nursery catalogues pick it up. They
don’t want to buy the same plant again under a new name and botanical gardens pick it up
and they relabel their collections. So there was quite a need to bring to bear why it’s
important to change the names, and really these kinds of name changes cascade almost
immediately through the botanical community, popular and scientific.

So, as Tony explains above, there are very practical effects that considerations of
renaming and reclassification might have on amateur botanists, necessitating statements
like the one that can be found under the ‘Taxonomic and Nomenclatural Changes’ tab in
The MFO database. Unlike the introduction to Voss’ flora, which contains a section on
taxonomy and nomenclatural rules, simply laying out a discussion of how botanists cat-
egorize and name species, this tab in The MFO adds an argumentative element about the
benefits of the current phase of renaming. This tab acknowledges that this renaming

(21) can be a source of frustration to people learning plants. But rather than a frustration,
especially now, this should be seen as a mark of great progress in achieving the goals of
the science of plant systematics.
574 Discourse Studies 19(5)

Throughout, this section of The MFO, functioning rather as an apology for the changes
plant enthusiasts are facing, concludes with the hopeful suggestion that

(22) rather than being a baffling nuisance, these may offer fascinating insights into evolution.
As one example, it has long been known that in addition to plants like Turtlehead (Chelone
glabra), the caterpillars of Baltimore Checkerspot butterflies will sometimes feed on
plantain. In this flora, that is no mystery – they are in the same family! It is yet another
opportunity to learn new and interesting facets about our flora.

Therefore, the goal of such a statement, aimed at naturalists and a plant-loving public
who might be upset about the shifting of names in their favorite garden plants, seems
both to provide a rationale for the changes and to suggest ways in which such findings
might further illuminate the botanical status of species known to general enthusiasts.
In its maintenance of the semi-popular but still deeply disciplinary nature of the flora,
The MFO seems then to be a salient example of the generic stasis that we find amid
technological change. The division of the online space into tabs mirrors the organization
of Voss’ flora. The navigation through initial keys toward specific species descriptions
functions similarly. Indeed, using links in initial keys, leading to families and on to spe-
cies, keeps the reader on the same page, just jumping down to later point in a long chunk
of now unpaginated text. In this sense, The MFO maintains the linear form of the print
flora, substituting linking for numbered page turning. Which is not to say that the tech-
nological developments do not afford some changes, including the use of full-color pho-
tographs instead of more detailed and painstaking line drawings and, perhaps more
significantly, the ongoing revision of names, relationships, and descriptions, making
possible the kinds of broader networks of collaborations mentioned above. Still, the
modifications to the genre are less significant than might be expected or might be seen in
other moves from print to online publication.
In the activity of popular writing about botanical issues, questions about technological
developments have also impelled discussions that acknowledge the new while drawing on
traditional concepts in botany and the figure of the gardener as stable and unchanging. This
is most clearly evident in Tony’s ‘DNA and the Changing Names of Plants … and Making
Sense of the Dicots’ (ellipses in the original), a popular article he wrote at the request of the
editor of Rock Garden Quarterly (Reznicek, 2012). Tony described the article as ‘an intro-
duction to the change of names through modern systematics’, and that exigency is strongly
felt throughout. It begins with concerns similar to those discussed earlier in The MFO
database, noting that rock gardeners might find it ‘somewhat disconcerting to see that there
has been a flood of recent changes to the scientific names of plants’, then moving on to
describe the effects that such changes have had on favorite plants of rock gardeners.
Throughout, Tony negotiates the tension between the disciplinary rationale for name
changes and rock gardeners’ desire for stability, often by appealing to his affinity with
gardeners and nonacademic plant lovers. As Hyland finds common in much popular
writing about science, Tony engages his rock gardening audience while also constructing
his own proximity to the topic, using inclusive first person plural pronouns to group
himself with gardeners, at other times creating an authoritative voice through the use of
exclusive pronouns to associate himself with the academic scientific community respon-
sible for the changing names (Hyland, 2010) (Table 2).
McCarty and Swales 575

Table 2. Inclusive, exclusive, and bridging pronouns (numbers of examples in parentheses).

We Us Our
Inclusive (7) (1) (2)
In North America, we The most interesting thing Even our beloved NARGS
used to have a great is that the plants that most emblem, the shooting star,
many species of Aster of us are familiar with as is no longer Dodecatheon,
dicots but just another group of
Primula
Exclusive (3) (1) (3)
Finally, we now have The second advance The diagram opposite
powerful computers that has allowed us to is a rather complicated
that can quickly perform use the newly available phylogenic tree
these analyses genetic information is summarizing our present
the development of a understanding of the
framework of theory and relationships of the orders
mathematical techniques of seed plants
Bridging (3) (0) (0)
And we presently seem
to be undergoing a
flourish of reassignment
of species to different
genera

For instance, his references to ‘our former asters are now divided’ and ‘our beloved
NARGS emblem’ identify him as a member of the rock gardening community, although
these instances are balanced by statements that ‘we now have the technology to access
the genomes of plants’ and ‘classifications must reflect our best hypotheses’, in which
he clearly is speaking as a systematic botanist. This strict divide is moderated by cases
like the one in which Tony explains what ‘causes the name changes we are seeing
now’, bridging rock gardeners and academics, who are both seeing these changes.
Such affinity between the two groups is also suggested in the ways that language is
structured to create parallel understanding for his audience, with Tony providing links
for readers, frequently in the form of parenthetical descriptions such as ‘Plant system-
atics (the classification of plants)’ and ‘historical relationships (phylogeny)’. Important
transitions are also clearly marked, with introductions to sections of the discussion
taking on a didactic stance: ‘A basic principle of plant science is’ and ‘Now for a bot-
any lesson.’
However, the use of images and captions positions Tony back with the rock gardeners.
The text is 13 pages, with beautiful full-color images of plant life throughout, but these
are more like images to be appreciated by plant lovers than the visuals in academic jour-
nals. The title page and two others feature full-page photographs, while two others con-
tain images of plant life with names and brief notes in captions. Although the photographs
of plants themselves seem distinctly selected for appreciation by the rock gardener audi-
ence, the function of the captions is mainly classificatory, though blended with the voice
of the rock gardener:
576 Discourse Studies 19(5)

(23) Saururus chinensis – not really a rock garden plant but an intriguing species for a wet site
– is from the Piperales in a subgroup with such species as Anemopsis californica.

The interruption of the classification to reflect on ideal garden placements for the
plant provides the text with a reminder of the dual positioning of the author; he is lectur-
ing on classification while alluding to a shared interest in creating aesthetically appealing
spaces. Similarly, other descriptions are reminiscent of the morphological descriptions of
systematic botany: ‘Nelumbo (the lotus – stalked umbrella-like leaves held clear of the
water)’, though lacking the specialized descriptive adjectives of the field derived from
classical languages.
Thus Tony evokes the identity of the rock gardener in these very distinct choices
when discussing classifications of plants, but he also encourages a sense of proximity
with his readers through allusion to even deeper cultural affinities. In effect, these
moments offer what seems to be unquestionable proof of Tony’s membership in the
community of rock gardeners. One notable example is the quip he uses to introduce a
particularly complex case for molecular studies, referring to ‘a plant familiar to rock
gardeners, at least in their dreams! This is the legendary Paris japonica’ (p. 140). A
phrase like this makes it hard to imagine Tony as anything other than a bona fide rock
plant enthusiast. The cultivation of this kind of affiliation with readers mediates the ten-
sion caused by the frustrating processes of renaming, reminding readers that what is at
stake is less the status of old names than the development of knowledge about plants, a
focus that he concludes with, comforting readers with the idea that they can ‘take heart;
no matter that the plant’s name changes, or that it is put into a different family, its culti-
vation requirements stay the same’ (p. 146). This conclusion, like many notes through-
out the text, hybridizes the often starkly divided narratives of nature and science,
providing insights into the technical workings of the discipline itself, while maintaining
the image of individuals in their gardens, experiencing the work of science through a
direct encounter with plants (Myers, 1991).

Discussion
Since the 1980s, there has been a large and steady increase in studies investigating the
discourses of different academic disciplines, with a particular emphasis on scholarly and
research articles. Here, two of the foundational volumes have been Bazerman’s (1988)
Shaping Written Knowledge, which deals with the sciences and social sciences, and
Myers’ (1991) Writing Biology. Subsequent significant studies include Henderson et al.
(1993) and McCloskey (1994) for economics, Dressen-Hammouda (2014) for geology,
Banks (1994) and Gross et al. (2002) for science, Kanoksilapatham (2007) for biochem-
istry, McGrath and Kuteeva (2012) for mathematics, and Kwan and Chan (2014) for
information science. In fact, there have been discoursal investigations of practically all
disciplines, many adopting a genre-driven approach and some offering corporist, cross-
cultural, or diachronic perspectives as well. Despite this massive undertaking in recent
decades, systematic botany/plant taxonomy has been little studied by those interested in
research genres, apart from the Herbarium sections in Swales (1998a). The reasons for
this probably lie partly in the fact that graduate students in this area are relatively few,
which in turn is largely due to the rise of exciting and newsworthy genetic and molecular
McCarty and Swales 577

advances and, more speculatively, partly to the limited numbers of English as an addi-
tional language (EAL) speakers with limited English proficiency entering the field. One
unfortunate consequence of this is that the system of genres utilized by plant taxonomists
is, as we have seen, very unusual and highly distinctive, but has remained little known to
those who study academic writing, both from a rhetorical viewpoint and from an applied
linguistic one.
Another aspect of this study is that it is also a limited repeat textography – studying
two of the original curator-researchers and their more recent texts after a two-decade
interlude. During that interlude there have been many technological changes, and it
might be expected that the consequences would be far-reaching. For instance, Bazerman
(2012) comments,

Indeed the affordances of electronic search, rapid communication, and instantaneous access to
wide ranges of information are currently changing genres in numerous social spheres very
rapidly, with further consequences for the social organization of activities, leading to further
genre evolution. (p. 230)

Although the processes of written composition in systematic botany have certainly

been affected (coauthorship via email, fewer visits to herbaria, web-retrieval, and use of
digitized specimens), several key features of the genres themselves have undergone rela-
tively little change, particularly in terms of their textual components. These include the
persistence of phraseology of Greek and Latin origin, a continuing parsimony in cita-
tions, the rejection of the option to omit a paragraph in Latin when introducing a ‘new’
species, and the avoidance of cross references in the protological components.
These findings are somewhat at odds with leading authorities such as Bhatia (2012)
and Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995), who stress the competing tendencies toward stabil-
ity and change in established institutional genres. Furthermore, there has been much
recent discussion about innovative trends in the research article itself (e.g. Bennett, 2012;
Pérez-Llantada, 2012), and yet systematic botany would appear to resist some of this pres-
sure – often applied by journal publishers – for genre evolution. However, in an important
recent chapter, Miller (2017) discusses the regularized nature of ‘institutional genres’ such
as scientific research articles, which, unlike ‘administered genres’ such as environmental
impact statements, are not constrained by rules and strictures. As she says, for these
research genres ‘antecedents can be strong constraints, because they represent the author-
izing tone of the institution’ (p. 24). Botany, in our case, is perhaps particularly aware of
these antecedents, reaching back to its Linnaean heritage in the 18th century.
Of course, not everything is fixed and frozen. Here is one potentially important
change. Twenty years ago, Rich was asked what kind of compensation the Herbarium
received for taking the trouble (assembling, repairing, dispatching, and reintegrating
specimen sheets) as it responded to all the requests for loans. At that time, he replied,

(24) One of the things that the Herbarium really gets out of this loan activity is that a specialist
looks at a specimen and the specialist puts a name on it – now we have a more valuable
specimen because we have got an authority to say what the specimen really is.

Recently, he was asked by email how this annotation ‘rewards system’ now works if
more and more authorities are looking at photographs on the web. He responded,
578 Discourse Studies 19(5)

(25) So far, I have found the folks looking at photos, even when we send them photos they
request, only rarely get back to us with any annotations. I have to admit I still owe some
annotations to others. One of the things that still does not exist is an easy way for someone
examining a digital photo of a specimen online to get annotation back to the specimen
owner easily. I suspect if that hurdle is overcome, we might get more data back.

So, what must have been a somewhat precarious arrangement in an era of the increas-
ing corporatization of universities (Fairclough, 1992) now seems to be breaking down as
those small accretions of knowledge tokens represented by expert nomenclatural annota-
tions (a traditional subgenre) no longer appear to be part of standard practice. Thus the
traditional rationale for herbarium activities, in its structurated recursiveness and sedi-
mentation through time (Giddens, 1984), may need to be reconsidered. However, it is
worth noting that digitization only works on two-dimensional plants, but not on fungi,
which are stored in boxes. In consequence, the Herbarium has been digitizing and bar-
coding only the fungi labels; this has had the result of increasing the loan requests for
fungi, as researchers may want to snip out a small piece for molecular analysis, while
requests for the actual plant material has declined.
The story told in this article has been, in many ways, one of genre conservatism, and
we suspect that articles produced in many other disciplines will show greater genre evo-
lution over the last 20 years. In our own field of discourse studies, for example, changes
brought about by such developments as electronic corpora, the turn to multimodal analy-
sis, and the collapse of the native–nonnative speaker divide have affected both textual
processes and textual products. Further studies of recent generic evolution in disciplinary
discourses would seem warranted, especially if those studies are situated within the
social and disciplinary activities and perceptions of the rhetors as they respond to the
exigencies of the digital era.

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Margaret Luebs and Philip Shaw for insightful comments on an earlier draft. We
also thank Rich Rabeler and Anton Z Reznicek for so willingly making time for us in their busy
schedules. The usual disclaimers apply.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

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Author biographies
Ryan McCarty is a PhD student in the Joint Program in English and Education at the University of
Michigan. He studies the writing practices of multilingual students, the development of discipli-
nary discourses and the ways translation facilitates learning.

John M Swales is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Michigan, where he was
also Director of the English Language Institute. Over a lengthy career, he has authored or coau-
thored 20 books and about 130 articles and book chapters.

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