The Plant Press

From The Plant Press, Vol. 28, No. 2, July 2025.

Departures

At the close of 2024, we bid a fond farewell, though not entirely, to Leslie Brothers, a now retired member of the Botany Department. Her journey to the halls of the Department began at the University of Maryland, where she completed a B.S. in Zoology with a side interest in computer programming. Her broad interest in ecology, evolution, and the behavioral aspects of natural history eventually led her to explore various roles within the field.

Brothers’ path to the Smithsonian began in an unexpected way. While working at a bike shop in Maryland, colleagues tipped her off about jobs at the National Museum of Natural History and in September 1985 she landed a temporary job in the Entomology Department. Computers were just beginning to be used in research and collection inventories, and she was introduced to a variety of early generations of software like SELGEM (a computer system for collection management) and WordPerfect. It was there she also learned about general museum practices, biological systematics (particularly typification), collection inventories, and becoming the WordPerfect guru for the older staff members. Her compatibility with computers became an asset later in her career. 

During those early years she also volunteered her Saturdays at the Invertebrate Exhibit at the National Zoo, finding great satisfaction working with living collections and feeding the curious animals on display to the delight of the watching public. 

After three years, she transitioned in early 1989 to a permanent position in the Botany Department working for Laurence Skog as a Museum Technician, using her databasing and report creation skills in dBase and Microsoft Access to support Skog's work. She also began photographing the many mounted specimens coming through his office as well as his live specimens in the Botany Research Greenhouse, which was located where the museum's East Court is now. One of her other tasks was caring for Skog’s living material in the greenhouse. 

In 1995, Brothers took on the role of helping to manage the greenhouse, now at the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center (MSC) campus in Suitland, Maryland. Over the next two decades, she thrived in this "jack-of-all-trades" role, coordinating with Greenhouse Manager Mike Bordelon on plant care and greenhouse maintenance, as well as managing the collections data and the safety program. Brothers became the computer support person for the greenhouse and managed the greenhouse collections database in Axiell/KEmu. She also continued her passion for botanical photography and created the popular “Plant of the Week” feature on Botany’s public website, hand coding its earliest iterations in HTML. Her photography extended to documenting the greenhouse collections and being the photographer at Department events such as the Smithsonian Botanical Symposiums.

In 2017, Brothers shifted roles again joining the Core Collections Management team in Botany. Here, she took on a variety of tasks including tracking loans, which she humorously referred to as "botanical accounting." One of her significant side projects involved organizing and relocating the extensive diatom collection at MSC. Researching legacy materials, whether loans or old collections, provided much satisfaction, and she says she is deeply grateful to the many colleagues who came before her and took the time to document the status of the collections, helping her manage their movement and preservation.

Though retired now, Brothers continues to volunteer in Botany cataloging her vast collection of plant images and contributing in various ways. Ending her career in a field she loves as a volunteer, much like her early volunteer days at the Smithsonian, is a wonderful way to close the chapter on such a long and impactful career. It’s clear that her contributions to the Smithsonian, both in terms of practical work and knowledge sharing, have been invaluable.

-Barrett Brooks