Daniel Atha (born 1962) is an American

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

. In his work as a botanist he has collected plants in all 50 states of the United States, as well as several additional countries. Atha's work was focused on three areas: "

floristics Floristics is the study of plants of geographical regions. It is a branch of phytogeography, which technically makes it a branch of botany, geography, and a subbranch of biogeography. Harvard University has a history of research with early contr ...

—what plants grow in a particular region;

taxonomy image:Hierarchical clustering diagram.png, 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme o ...

—how to tell one plant from another, what to call it and what it's related to; and applied

botany Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

—how plants are used for food, medicine, shelter and other useful purposes." Atha has been known as a prominent regional botanist, and the high-profile botanical projects with which he has been involved (such as the recent Spontaneous Flora of

Central Park Central Park is an urban park between the Upper West Side and Upper East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, and the first landscaped park in the United States. It is the List of parks in New York City, sixth-largest park in the ...

project) have garnered national and international attention.

Career

New York Botanical Garden

Daniel Atha was the Director of Conservation Outreach at

New York Botanical Garden The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is a botanical garden at Bronx Park in the Bronx, New York City. Established in 1891, it is located on a site that contains a landscape with over one million living plants; the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, ...

. Atha was involved in work related to invasive plants in the greater-

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

region, including

Westchester County Westchester County is a county located in the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of New York, bordering the Long Island Sound and the Byram River to its east and the Hudson River on its west. The county is the seventh most populous cou ...

. While employed at the NYBG, Atha collected plant material for Merck, Pfizer, The National Cancer Institute, L’Oreal, Cornell Weill Medical Center and many other organizations. Atha was also the Associate Editor for

Brittonia ''Brittonia'' is a quarterly, peer-reviewed botanical journal, publishing articles on plants, fungi, algae, and lichens. Published since 1931, it is named after the botanist Nathaniel Lord Britton. Since 2007, the journal has been published by Spr ...

. Atha co-developed the curriculum for the course ''Pressing Plants for Art and Science'', as part of the certificate program in Botany offered through the New York Botanical Garden’s Continuing Education Program. He has taught hundreds of students the techniques for collecting and preserving museum-quality herbarium specimens. In 2021, Atha left the New York Botanical Garden due to their vaccination mandate, and also that same year, protested against a state bill that Jeffrey Dinowitz had co-sponsored to add COVID-19 to the required immunizations to attend school, wearing a

yellow badge The yellow badge, also known as the yellow patch, the Jewish badge, or the yellow star (, ), was an accessory that Jews were required to wear in certain non-Jewish societies throughout history. A Jew's ethno-religious identity, which would be d ...

that Jews were ordered to wear during the Nazi regime. Dinowitz said the "display of swastikas and yellow Stars of David ..were repugnant and offensive". In 2022 he researched and wrote a report on the ecological history of Seneca Village for the Central Park Conservancy. Through 2024, he has continued to collect specimens for taxonomic and floristic studies, teach plant collecting techniques and research the genus ''Persicaria'' (Smartweeds) of North America.

New York City EcoFlora

This project, in the prototyping phase through 2017, was designed to engage New York city residents in protecting and preserving

's native plant species. The project aimed to use citizen scientists to gather and organize data related to plants, animals, fungi, and habitats in the region. This data will then be synthesized with existing historic natural history collections and scientific publications. "The New York City EcoFlora will be a real-time, online, ongoing checklist of plants—the first ever to connect plants in the web of life in New York City—that will result in a dynamic resource for conservation planning as well as in New Yorkers that are better informed about the importance of urban ecologies and who can contribute to protecting them."

Flora of Central Park

One of Atha's research projects involved documenting and collecting every naturally occurring plant in

. This project represents a collaboration between The New York Botanical Garden, the

Central Park Conservancy The Central Park Conservancy is an American private, nonprofit park conservancy that manages New York City's Central Park under a contract with the government of New York City and NYC Parks. The conservancy employs most maintenance and opera ...

and the

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolog ...

. The aims of this project are to document the wild flora of

, and to provide an up-to-date botanical inventory "to aid on-going restoration, conservation, education and recreation programs and to document the flora for scientific, ecological and conservation studies." The quote below comes from an interview Atha gave to

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

in 2015

Emerging Invasive: ''Corydalis incisa''

Atha and others at the

and Lower Hudson PRISM (one of eight Partnerships for Regional Invasive Species Management in New York State) coordinated a team of citizen scientists to document and remove

Corydalis incisa ''Corydalis incisa'', incised fumewort, is an annual or biennial herbaceous species of plant in the poppy family. It is also known as purple keman or murasa-kike-man. Some authorities report it in the family Fumariaceae. The wildflower is nati ...

, an emerging

invasive species An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment. Invasive species adversely affect habitats and bioregions, causing ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage. The term can also be used for native spec ...

found along the

Bronx River The Bronx River (), is a river that is approximately long, and flows through southeastern New York (state), New York in the United States and drains an area of . It is named after colonial settler Jonas Bronck. It originally rose in what is no ...

in Westchester County, NY and

Bronx County, NY The Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County, New York, West ...

Art

Atha's parents were artists, and he has been involved in several community projects related to the intersection of botany and art.

Selected bibliography

This list has been generated with information from Daniel Atha's forme
staff profile page
on the

website. * Atha, D. E. 2008. A new species of Acalypha (Euphorbiaceae: Acalyphoideae: Acalypheae) from Belize and adjacent Mexico and Guatemala. Brittonia 60: 185–189. * Kikodze, D., M. Tavartkiladze, T. Svanidze, D.E. Atha (editor of English text). 2007. Plants of Georgia. Field Guide. Tsignis Sakhelosno, Tbilisi, Georgia. 224 pp. * Bridgewater, S.G.M., D.J. Harris, C. Whitefoord, A.K. Monro, M.G. Penn, D.A. Sutton, B. Sayer, B. Adams, M. Balick, D.E. Atha, J. Solomon, B. Holst. 2006. A preliminary checklist of the vascular plants of the Chiquibul Forest, Belize. Edinb. J. Bot. 63: 269–321. * Atha, D. E., L. Romero & T. Forrest. 2005. Bark volume determination of Bursera simaruba in Belize. Caribbean Journal of Science. 41: 843–848. * Atha, D. E. 2004. Polygonaceae. pp. 308–310 in N. Smith, S. A. Mori, A. Henderson, D. Stevenson and S. Heald (eds), Flowering Plants of the Neotropics. Princeton University Press, Princeton. * Atha, D. E. 2004. Phytolaccaceae. pp. 292–294 in N. Smith, S. A. Mori, A. Henderson, D. Stevenson and S. Heald (eds), Flowering Plants of the Neotropics. Princeton University Press, Princeton. * Balick, M. J., M. H. Nee & D. E. Atha. 2000. Checklist of the vascular plants of Belize, with common names and uses. Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden 85: 1–246. * Ford, L. J., R. J. Hawkins, D. E. Atha. 2009. A Field Guide to the Wildflowers of Mexico's Copper Canyon region. The Donning Company Publishers, Virginia Beach. 160 pp. * Atha, D. E. & W. Carr. 2010. First Report of Persicaria hispida (Polygonaceae) from North America North of Mexico (Texas). J. Bot. Res. Inst. Texas 4(2): 561–564. * Reveal, J. L. & D. E. Atha. (2010). New combinations and typifications in Bistorta, Persicaria, Polygonum and Rumex (Polygonaceae). Brittonia 62: 243–263. * Atha, D. E. , M. H. Nee & R. F. C. Naczi. 2010. Persicaria extremiorientalis (Polygonaceae) is established in the flora of the eastern United States of America. The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society 137: 333–338. * Atha, D. E., J. D. Mitchell, S. K. Pell & F. R. Camacho. 2011. A new species of Comocladia (Anacardiaceae) from Belize and Guatemala. Brittonia 63: 370–374. * Reveal, J. L. & D. E. Atha. 2012. 8. Persicaria (L.) Mill. Smartweed, pp 236–250. in Cronquist et al. (eds), Intermountain Flora. The New York Botanical Garden Press, Bronx, NY. * Atha, D. E. 2012. New Vascular Plant County Records from Central Texas. Phytoneuron 2012-100: 1–3. * Muñoz-Rodríguez, P., J. M. Cardiel & D. E. Atha. 2014. Acalypha subgenus Linostachys (Euphorbiaceae, Acalyphoideae): a global review. Phytotaxa 166 (3): 199–221. * Atha, D. E., J. L. Reveal, K. N. Gandhi. 2014. (2298–2299) Proposals to conserve Persicaria maculosa, nom. cons., against Polygonum vernum and to reject the name Polygonum subg. Dioctus (Polygonaceae). Taxon 63: 689–690. * Atha, D., E. Feliciano, and A. Felber. 2014. New vascular plant county records from Bronx County, New York. Phytoneuron 2014-87: 1–2. * Atha, D, J. A. Schuler, and S. Lumban Tobing. 2014. Corydalis incisa (Fumariaceae) in Bronx and Westchester counties, New York. Phytoneuron 2014-96: 1–6. * Ingo, L., J. Moschny, V. N. Kerimov, M. Khutsishvili, D. E. Atha, R. P. Borris & D. Koomoa. 2015. Juniper extracts induce calcium signalling and apoptosis in neuroblastoma cells. Journal of Pharma and Pharmaeutical Sciences. 1: 1–7. * Lange, I., J. Moschny, K. Tamanyan, M. Khutsishvili, D. E. Atha, R. P. Borris & D. Koomoa. 2016. Scrophularia orientalis extract induces calcium signaling and apoptosis in neuroblastoma cells. International Journal of Oncology 48: 1608–1616. https://dx.doi.org/10.3892/ijo.2016.3373. * Atha, D., R. Alvarez, D. Feeser, M. Feder, Z. Wang, and R. Kelly. 2016. Gamochaeta pensylvanica (Asteraceae) is established in the New York flora. Phytoneuron 2016-22: 1–4. Published 3 March 2016. . * Simon, T., Al-Shaykh, D. Atha and K. Fowle. 2016. Paperwork and the Will of Capital. Hatje Cantz. 200pp. * Atha, D., T. Forrest, R. F. C. Naczi, M. C. Pace, M. Rubin, J. A. Schuler and M. Nee. 2016. The historic and extant vascular flora of the New York Botanical Garden. Brittonia 68: 245–277.

References

External links

* Atha, Daniel
Author page on Harvard University's Index of Botanists
* Atha, Daniel
Author Detail page on the International Plants Names Index
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Atha, Daniel E. 21st-century American botanists 20th-century American botanists 1952 births Living people