Solving bamboo's enduring puzzles

Lynn Clark loves solving puzzles, especially jigsaw puzzles. She's been working on one for more than 50 years called bamboo. 

The Iowa State botanist is one of the world's leading experts in identifying and classifying bamboo. The largest and most complex member of the grass family is notoriously tricky to study, in part because of its long growth cycle. Many types of bamboo sprout new shoots for decades before their once-in-a-lifetime flowering.

"Grasses are already challenging because their flowers are so small, but bamboos are a whole other order of magnitude more difficult because of this problem," Clark said. "It's like a jigsaw puzzle, but the pieces are the species at different stages. You need to put them together to get a complete picture."

In 45 years as a doctoral student and then professor at Iowa State, the search for pieces of the puzzle has led Clark to identify about 180 new species of bamboo, so many she can't recall the exact number off the top of her head. That accounts for about 10% of the roughly 1,700 known bamboo species.

Beyond bamboo, she also studies the evolutionary history of the grass family and has an international reputation for identifying and classifying grasses of all types. As one colleague -– Elizabeth Kellogg, principal investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center near St. Louis –- recently wrote: "Lynn is, quite simply, the best grass taxonomist in the world."

To recognize Clark's renown as a researcher –- and her service as an instructor, advisor and administrator –- she was selected earlier this year to be a distinguished professor.

"It was not an award I ever thought I'd get," she said. "Part of it is, I just like what I do so much that it's not like it's a job."

A passion for field work

Clark's path to bamboo was set early when at age 16 she began volunteering at the U.S. National Herbarium in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, across the street from where her father worked in the FBI crime lab. A researcher there specialized in the versatile grass, as did Richard Pohl, the Iowa State botanist Clark studied under while earning her doctorate. 

Bamboo comes in many forms, from towering tree-like giants to shrubs. Clark's specific focus has been Chusquea, a woody bamboo from mountainous regions of Latin America. For most of her career, she's taken two or three field expeditions per year. She's hiked steep mountains, scaled ravines and traversed an infamous Bolivian mountain pass known as the "Death Road." She's traveled by burros, boats and even a helicopter. 

"It's like a jigsaw puzzle, but the pieces are the species at different stages. You need to put them together to get a complete picture." 

-- Lynn Clark, Distinguished Professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology

"I just love being in the field. You've got to do whatever it takes to get to where you need to go, and you never know what you're going to see," she said. 

On campus, she began taking on leadership roles shortly after joining the faculty in 1986. She's been the director of the Ada Hayden Herbarium, Iowa State's plant specimen collection, since 1989. She led the biological and premedical illustration program for 13 years until 2021, when she began a three-year stint as interim chair of the ecology, evolution and organismal biology department. 

Administrative work has been a good fit for the detail-oriented nature of a taxonomist, Clark said. And the problem-solving skills acquired navigating the mountains of Colombia and Brazil came in handy as a department chair. 

"Stuff's going to happen, and you can't lose your head. You have to be able to deal with it. There's almost always a way to figure something out," she said. 

An 'ambassador' for ISU

Jonathan Wendel, also a Distinguished Professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology, has long been Clark's next-door office neighbor. As a department leader, she was an open-minded but steady hand with a kind manner and a sense of humor, he said. 

As a scientist, Wendel said, Clark is meticulous, devoted and, above all, curious. He noted that she's been at the forefront of integrating classical botanical methods with data unlocked by technological advances, organizing an international group of scholars called the Bamboo Phylogeny Group to update and improve classification systems.

"She's a great ambassador for Iowa State University and a real credit to the institution. This is long overdue recognition," Wendel said. 

Establishing reliable and genomics-informed systems to correctly classify plants is more than just semantics, Clark said. It's the foundation of leveraging the rich databases produced by ever-improving analytical tools. 

"If plants aren't named correctly, you're going to miss out on a lot," she said.