Flora Green Pollack (April 24, 1919 – May 15, 1997) was an American mycologist employed at different times by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC). She is best known for her work enhancing fungal preservation protocols, describing coelomycetous fungal species, compiling literature on plant-associated fungi, and developing an extensive reference on the nomenclature of the leaf spot genus Cercospora.
Early Life and Career (1919–1961)
Pollack was born Flora Green on April 24, 1919, in the United States to Sarah and Lawrence Green. She graduated with a degree in botany from Brooklyn College in New York and took on her first professional mycological role within the USDA Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine (BEPQ) in the 1940s. During this period, she met Seymour Pollack, who worked in the same Washington, D.C., office for the Treasury Department, and married him in late 1944. Some of her earliest work includes descriptions of Elsinoë growing on camphor, Dendryphium obstipum on imported taro root, and Bartalinia nolinae (now Alpakesa) on dead beargrass from Arizona. Due to her growing family (ultimately three children), Pollack left her post and did not resume scientific activities for over a decade.
American Type Culture Collection (1961–1967)
Pollack returned to her career in the spring of 1961 by taking a position at the ATCC, shortly after the organization had purchased permanent facilities in Rockville, Maryland. During this period, she worked on fungal preservation. Standard practice at the time generally dictated that isolates be kept both as dried or frozen material and as live cultures perpetuated through serial transfer. Pollack and colleague Roger Goos emphasized the importance of keeping inactive versions of original isolates to avoid the emergence of mutants in over-transferred strains.
Pollack developed a method for preparing dried reference cultures in which cultures growing in agar-filled petri plates were processed in a drying device with formaldehyde, allowed to dry with the lid removed, and then placed in 2.5% glycerol agar until the solution hardened. This produced a disc that remained supple, unbroken, and more amenable to laboratory use than existing methods.
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (1967–1979)
In 1967, Pollack left the ATCC to resume plant inspection work for the USDA. Due to administrative restructuring, she joined the Plant Quarantine Division of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), which was later absorbed by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) upon its creation in 1970. She was the sole active plant quarantine pathologist for the entirety of her appointment.
Pollack continued to publish new species descriptions and commentaries on organisms encountered during her inspection duties, including Arthrinium japonicum, Colletogloeum fouquieriae, Platypella angustispora, Cercospora uromycestri, Deightoniella argemonensis, and Mycocentrospora verrucosa. She expressed particular interest in coelomycetes, fungi that generate asexual spores within specialized conidiomata. Several of her publications concern fungi found on mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus), including descriptions of Carmarosporellum cercocarpi and resolution of taxonomic confusion between Sphaceloma cercocarpi and Gloeosporium cercocarpi.
Pollack's description of Monosporascus cannonballus is perhaps her most well-known contribution to plant pathology. This fungus has since been implicated in causing an economically significant canopy collapse disease in melons. Pollack and F. A. Uecker provided an extensive description of the pathogen and published a second paper in 1975 examining its ascocarp development and meiosis.
Retirement (1979–1997)
Pollack resigned from the USDA for the second and final time in 1979 due to illness. During her retirement, she made one final major contribution: the 1987 Annotated Compilation of Cercospora Names, which disentangled a complicated network of taxonomic and nomenclatural changes in an important fungal genus with hundreds of members producing leaf spot on a wide variety of plants. The work remains one of Pollack's most extensively cited publications.
In her final years, Pollack moved to Florida, where she pursued personal interests including gardening, bookbinding, singing, and rescuing animals with the Nature Conservancy. She died in Naples, Florida, on May 15, 1997, at the age of 78.
Legacy
Pollack's work in fungal preservation, plant quarantine, and fungal taxonomy contributed significantly to the fields of mycology and plant pathology. Her extensive catalog of literature compiled to assist with fungal identification provided successors with a vast array of material for a definitive guide and later a USDA database on important papers in the field. A biographical tribute, "Flora G. Pollack, 1919–1997," by Amy Y. Rossman and Mary E. Palm, was published in Mycologia in January 2000.
