It’s ‘beyond botany’ for Margery Daughtrey for 50 years

Is your laurel a lost cause? Rhododendron rickety? Beach plums pooped? Margery Daughtrey and her true passion for plant pathology might have the resolutions.

The Crozet, Virginia-raised ornamental horticulture enthusiast moved to Long Island in 1978 to start her role as plant pathologist extension associate at Cornell University’s Long Island Horticulture Research Lab (now the Long Island Horticulture Research and Extension Center).

Almost 50 years later, Ms. Daughtrey is right where her career commenced — now as senior extension associate — thanks to the application crossing her desk during grad school and a trusty pen pal who spoke highly of the island. 

Ms. Daughtrey’s interest in plants began by observing her uncle who was an arborist. She decided to go down the pathology path, studying plant diseases, because she saw the applicability. 

“It gives you an excuse to work on plants with subject matter that’s very practical, that people care about,” Ms. Daughtrey said. “It’s beyond botany in the sense that you get to work on keeping plants healthy.”

After earning her bachelor’s in biology at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., and her master’s in plant pathology from University of Massachusetts Amherst, she jumped right in, making Riverhead her career’s North Star. 

At the time, there were loads of well-known ornamental plant diseases, especially with the increase in non-native plants coming in from other countries, but the ever-evolving industry intrigued Ms. Daughtrey. 

“There are new and interesting and important things [plant diseases] that come along frequently, which gave me fresh material to work on, new things to study and places where I could make a contribution,” she said. 

Plant diagnosis is a large part of her day-to-day, whether that is over Zoom using visual cues to determine disease types, meeting with growers in person or reviewing samples that were delivered to the research center. 

Being on the North Fork, in such a horticulture hub, Ms. Daughtrey finds that local discoveries are indicative of larger scale plant disease. 

“I do think that everything I’ve seen here is relevant to the rest of the state, and often, the rest of the country,” she said. 

Her specialty is greenhouse and nursery pathology. Ms. Daughtrey finds that due to their respective enclosed and isolated settings, discoveries are in abundance considering the likelihood of disease running rampant.  

Ms. Daughtrey works with ornamental plants in about 15 of the 50 greenhouses and nurseries on the North Fork. 

Some of her most notable discoveries include coleus downy mildew in the northern part of the country and dogwood anthracnose on the East Coast.

Her favorite part of her job being just that, “the discovery.”

“There are constant questions about ‘What is this?’ And that’s an intellectual challenge every time you get it,” Ms. Daughtrey said. 

She teaches about her findings to adult commercial horticulture producers at the Sound Avenue center.

Ms. Daughtrey’s love for plants extends to her personal life as well. 

“I do tend to hang out with plant people,” she said. “There are a lot of plant people on Long Island. So, it’s not hard to find a circle of friends that also enjoy gardening.”

With the evolution of plant diseases and new findings every day, her hope for the industry is that additional funding comes in. 

“As new things happen, you have a great deal of interest in solutions but not necessarily as much financial support for getting the solutions,” Ms. Daughtrey said. “There needs to be support-based development, to help get larger quantities of money devoted to research.”