Edith A. Roberts

Edith Adelaide Roberts (April 28, 1881 – March 7, 1977) was an American botanist, plant physiologist, and pioneer of plant ecology. She was elected in 1925 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Quotes

1. The region is a mountain range of trap rock. 2. The climax forest of the region is of the beech-maple-hemlock type. 3. The successions may be classified as: I. Xerarch successions: (I) trap slope successions; (2) trap cliff successions; (3) talus successions. II. Hydrarch successions: (I) ravine successions; (2) brook successions. 4. The terms initial and repetitive seem to be better than primary and secondary in conveying the idea of often-repeated successions such as are found in a frequently deforested area. 5. The east-facing and the south-facing trap slopes have the same successions. Castanea dentata seems to present a temporary climax. 6. The trap cliff doubtless presents an initial succession in which the east and north cliffs have similar first stages, but the second stage on the east is Pinus strobus and Pinus resinosa, while on the north it is Tsuga canadensis. 7. The combination of weathered rock with glacial drift on the north talus slope affords a better opportunity for the climax formation than does rock alone on the talus east of Mount Tom. 8. Repeated deforestation has prevented all but a small area from reaching the climax.
- (November 1914) "The plant successions of the Holyoke Range". Botanical Gazette 58 (5): 432–444. DOI:10.1086/331432.

1. The initial formation of the root hair is indicated by a general swelling of the outer wall of the epidermal cell. 2. The swelling is produced if the physical resistance of the wall is overbalanced by the higher osmotic pressure which is maintained on the inside of the wall. 3. Further swelling followed by growth takes place at the less resistant portion of the wall. 4. This region bears no relation to the position of the nucleus. 5. The wall of the root hair is composed of two parts, an inner membrane of cellulose and an outer membrane of calcium pectate. 6. The presence of this membrane, together with the fact that the soil particles are held to it by a pectin mucilage, accounts for the high efficiency of the root hair as an absorbing organ.
- (December 1916) "The Epidermal Cells of Roots". Botanical Gazette 62 (6). DOI:10.1086/331960. (printing of Ph.D. dissertation)

The idea of an out-of-door laboratory was conceived in response to the need, in the study of ecology, of bringing together the observations made in experimental ecology carried out in a glass laboratory and observations made in the open. This required a laboratory with situations which would make available the plant associations of the surrounding territory and their transitions, and in which further studies could be made upon the plant members and the environmental factors. Such an out-of-door laboratory affords a place in which the results of the in-door laboratory can be checked, by experiment, against those prevailing under natural conditions. …
President Henry Noble MacCrakcen and the Board of Trustees of Vassar Colllege accepted this idea and granted to the Department of Botany,in 1920, the use of some four acres of land for this project.
… It has since become popularly known to the students as the Dutchess County Ecological Laboratory.
- (April 1933) "The development of an out-of-door botanical laboratory for experimental ecology". Ecology 14, (2): 163–223.

The students, working with a biology professor, Meg Ronsheim, were resurrecting a native plant garden that was cultivated by botany professors and students in the 1920s, long before native species became a rage, and then forgotten for decades. The garden was the life’s passion of Edith A. Roberts, a professor of plant science who, after being hired by Vassar in 1919, set out to document every species of plant in Dutchess County. Over the next three decades, she and colleagues transformed the four-acre plot into what would be called the Dutchess County Outdoor Ecological Laboratory.
Dr. Roberts, a farmer’s daughter from New Hampshire who earned a doctorate in botany from the University of Chicago, was in the forefront of a group of women who blazed trails in academia, just as the suffrage movement won them the right to vote.
- Lisa W. Foderaro, (July 25, 2013) "Vassar Revives Garden Nurtured by Early Promoter of Native Plants". The New York Times.

The word “ecology” may seem to have rather suddenly intruded upon the world’s consciousness circa 1970, but at Vassar, Edith Adelaide Roberts, professor of plant science, was popularizing the term—and studying the interrelationship between organisms and their environment—half a century earlier.
In addition, it was Roberts who proved (along with fellow Plant Science faculty member Mildred Southwick, in a 1948 paper presented to the Electron Microscope Society of America) that young green and yellow plants are the original source of vitamin A. “This being so,” the New York Times reported, “fish livers can no longer be regarded as the main source of vitamin A.” Later generations who have been spared doses of cod liver oil, preferring instead to get this vital nutrient from carrots or spinach, have reason to be grateful to Roberts.
- Lance Ringel, (Fall 2012) "Edith Roberts: A Haven for Native Plants". Vassar, the Alumnae/i Quarterly 108 (3).