From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 4, October 2018. Adapted from ASPT News Blog The American Society of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT) has selected Vicki Funk as its 2018 Asa Gray Award recipient. The prestigious award—named after arguably the most influential North American Botanist of the 19th century—recognizes lifetime achievement in... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 4, October 2018. The US National Herbarium typically attracts visiting research scientists interested in examining specimens in their field of study. The herbarium also serves as a destination in education. Undergraduate and graduate students interested in botany, ecology, evolution, molecular biology, and conservation biology... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 4, October 2018. November 11, 2018, is Veteran’s Day and the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day. Armistice Day is commemorated to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany for the end of fighting on the Western Front of... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 4, October 2018. Alex White Alex White is a post-doctoral fellow with a joint appointment in the Department of Botany at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and the Data Science Lab in the Smithsonian Office of Information. White is working with Laurence... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 4, October 2018. Marcelo Pace and Andrew Rozefelds received an award in recognition of their recent paper describing the discovery of the first wood fossil of Vitaceae in the Southern Hemisphere. The Journal of Systematics and Evolution presents awards annually to recognize the papers... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 4, October 2018. In 1995 the Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield (BDG) Program was in need of a new database manager. Judy Skog, then a Professor at George Mason University, recommended one of her students, Tom Hollowell, as a smart and capable person... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 4, October 2018. Stuart Davies, David Kenfack, Lauren Krizel, Mauro Lepore, and Gabriel Arellano traveled to Nové Hrady, Czechia for the 8th Annual ForestGEO Analytical Workshop from 19 July to 3 August. The workshop provided an opportunity to bring global participants together to foster... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 4, October 2018. On 2 September 2018, a devastating fire destroyed the 200-year-old National Museum of Brazil (Museu Nacional) in Rio de Janeiro. The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) has a long history of collaboration with Brazilian scientists and many of them are... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 4, October 2018. By Alex White For many biologists, a core joy of our work is observing the natural world, formulating questions about our observations, and testing our ideas using clever experiments. Days are spent exploring museum cabinets or mountain valleys – few of... Continue reading

The Paleontological Society of Washington 7:00 pm, Wednesday, October 17 National Museum of Natural History, Constitution Ave. entrance From Filter-Feeding Plesiosaurs to Miocene Megalodon (a double-header) Stephen Godfrey Curator of Paleontology, Calvert Marine Museum, Solomons, MD I will first describe the aristonectine elasmosaur Morturneria seymourensis from the upper Maastrichtian of... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2018. At the 2018 Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, “Plants in the Past: Fossils and the Future,” fossilized Zingiberales was among the many plant groups discussed. As part of the Zingiberales program at the Smithsonian spearheaded by Curator John Kress and colleagues, Alice Tangerini... Continue reading

By Lotte Govaerts I recently returned to the lab, after having spent most of my summer in Belgium. I have settled back in, and picked up where I left off back in June. Among other things, I have resumed work on the cataloging project I begun in late 2017. You... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2018. -Adapted from Pensoft Publishers Originally collected 28 years ago in Ecuador, new species Poa laegaardiana has been just described, only to find out its prospects for surviving in its type location seem bleak nowadays. The study was published in the open... Continue reading

Powerful Hurricane Irma altered the marine fauna of Ten Thousand Islands, Florida as it blew through on Sept. 10, 2017. One of the most prominent observations in its aftermath was the appearance of a marine invertebrate species that is not commonly found in this area, Molgula manhattensis. This species was... Continue reading

The Paleontological Society of Washington 7:00 pm, Wednesday, September 19 National Museum of Natural History, Constitution Ave. entrance Amphibians, lizards, and snakes from the Age of Dinosaurs and the end-Cretaceous mass extinction David G. DeMar, Jr. Postdoctoral Research fellow, Paleobiology Dept., Smithsonian Institution. The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction, which famously... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2018. The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) celebrated National Pollinator Week 2018 in June in an effort to raise awareness of the decline of important pollinator populations. On June 23, the Smithsonian Institution hosted Solstice Saturday, a Smithsonian-wide celebration kicking off... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2018. The publication, “Grasses of Chihuahua, Mexico” (Smithson. Contr. Bot. 107: 1−380; 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.5479/si.1938-2812.107), is a culmination of a long and fruitful collaboration between Yolanda Herrera Arrieta (Instituto Politécnico Nacional, CIIDIR, in Durango) and Paul Peterson. Chihuahua is floristically diverse, bordering the... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2018. A recent open-access paper published in the Journal of Systematics and Evolution (a journal co-edited by Botany Department member Jun Wen) discusses the importance of collections based research from the 1700s to 2100 (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jse.12315). In the article, the author, Botany Curator... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2018. Summer interns at the National Museum of Natural History received a tour of the Plant Anatomy and Histology Laboratory. A tour of the Department of Botany’s Plant Anatomy and Histology Lab was presented for National Museum of Natural History interns on... Continue reading

What comes to mind when you think of a jellyfish? Stings? Tentacles? SpongeBob SquarePants with his net? I like all of these answers, but after coming across some scientific studies, I’d add the elements copper, zinc, chromium, arsenic, and iron to the list. Cassiopea are unique in their upside-down lifestyle.... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2018. Based in Lagos, Nigeria, Temitayo Ogunbiyi is a visual artist who creates work that considers and constructs contemporary channels of communication. She is currently working on a series that fuses hairstyles with botanical forms. This will be honed and developed further... Continue reading

The vast world of invertebrates encompasses some truly beautiful and bizarre creatures, animals so exotic-looking that you’d only expect to encounter them in the deep regions of underwater realms. But many would be surprised to know that the National Museum of Natural History houses LIVING jellyfish in the 2nd-story region... Continue reading

Manuela Dal Forno, Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow, Eric Schuettpelz, genome sequencing, to lichen, Basidiomycota, molecular systematics, George Mason University, basidiolichens, Cora¬-Rhizonema, horizontal gene transfer, Dictyonema, Agaricales, Peter Schafran, Isoëtes flaccida, Isoëtaceae, southeastern United States, Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, Botanical Society of Washington, Iraq Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2018. -Adapted from Pensoft Publishers Eight years, more than 500 articles and no less 13,000 pages since its launch, Pensoft's flagship botanical title PhytoKeys, celebrates its 100th issue. Among the open access pioneers in its field, the journal brings more than just... Continue reading

From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2018. The Department of Botany and the United States National Herbarium present the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany to a botanist and scholar of international stature who has contributed significantly to advancing the field of tropical botany. The award... Continue reading