Boston Flora

Tag: Aaron Ellison

  • Saturday, October 20, 10:00 am – How Does Nature Say Goodbye? Loss, Renewal, and Action in a Disappearing Hemlock Forest

    On Saturday, October 20 from 10 – 4 visit the Harvard Forest Fisher Museum for a free presentation entitled How Does Nature Say Goodbye? – Loss, Renewal, and Action in a Disappearing Hemlock Forest. A morning program beginning at 10:00 am will include presentations on the science and policy of invasive insects, a poetry reading, and a short film screening. The program will be followed by family-friendly guided tours of the field-based Hemlock Hospice art exhibit, which will close its year-long run in November 2018.

    Hemlock Hospice is an art-science collaboration between David Buckley Borden, 2016-2017 artist and designer-in-residence at the Harvard Forest, and Harvard Forest Senior Ecologist Aaron Ellison. It features innovative art installed in the Fisher Museum and along a new interpretative walking trail, focused on eastern hemlock, a foundation tree in eastern forests that is slowly vanishing from North America as it is weakened and killed by a small insect, the hemlock woolly adelgid.

    Hemlock Hospice blends science, art, and design in respecting hemlock and its ecological role as a foundation forest species; promoting an understanding of the adelgid; and encouraging empathetic conversations among all the sustainers of and caregivers for our forests—ecologists and artists, foresters and journalists, naturalists and citizens—while fostering social cohesion around ecological issues.

    Hemlock Hospice is more than an art-science collaboration; it is also an educational initiative. Associated public workshops and print and social media are available to promote reflection, critical thinking, and creativity among scientists, artists, educators, humanists, and the general public. A diverse group of media partners will bring the concepts to a broad range of people in and outside the arts and sciences.

    For directions and more information visit http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/hemlock-hospice

    Image result for hemlock hospice david buckley borden & aaron ellison

  • Saturday, October 13 – Things Fall Apart: Land-Use History, Non-Native Insects, Climate Change, and the Decline of a Forest

    The October New England Botanical Club meeting will take place Saturday, October 13 at the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts. The featured speaker is Dr. Aaron Ellison, Senior Research Fellow in Ecology at the Harvard Forest. From late morning to mid-afternoon, there will be a tree coring and dendroecology workshop with Dr. Neil Pederson, and filed trips to sites of botanical interest around Petersham. In the late afternoon and evening, you will enjoy a tour of the Hemlock Hospice installation with Dr. Ellison at 4 pm, followed by a potluck dinner with NEBC members and guests (6 pm), and a 7 pm presentation from Dr. Ellison in the Fisher Museum at the Harvard Forest. For more information visit www.rhodora.org. Image courtesy of The Harvard Crimson.

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  • Saturday, October 7 – Saturday, November 18 – Hemlock Hospice

    Hemlock Hospice, and art/science installation and exhibition by David Buckley Borden (Artist-in-Residence), Aaron Ellison (Senior Ecologist), and Salua Rivero (intern) opens at the Harvard Forest Saturday, October 7 from noon – 4 pm. The address is 324 North Main Street in Petersham. David Buckley Borden is a Cambridge-based interdisciplinary artist and designer known for his creative practice of making ecological issues culturally relevant to the general public by means of accessible art and design. David is a 2016/2017 Bullard Fellow in Forest Research at Harvard University where he explores the question, “How can art and design foster cultural cohesion around environmental issues and help inform ecology-minded decision making?”

    David studied landscape architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and worked with Sasaki Associates and Ground, Inc. before focusing his practice at the intersection of landscape, creativity, and cultural event. David’s work now manifests in a variety of forms, ranging from landscape installations in the woods to data-driven cartography in the gallery. David’s place-based projects highlight both pressing environmental issues and everyday phenomena and have recently earned him residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Teton Art Lab, Trifecta Hibernaculum, and MASS MoCA. Learn more about David and his work at his website http://davidbuckleyborden.com/.

  • Tuesday, May 20, 6:00 pm – Hemlock: A Forest Giant on the Edge

    For millennia, eastern hemlock trees have held irreplaceable cultural value and created unique forest habitat across New England. Today, eastern hemlocks are disappearing from our forests, falling by the tens of thousands as prey to an exotic insect foe.

    In the new book Hemlock: A Forest Giant on the Edge, eight Harvard Forest researchers reflect on eastern hemlock’s irreplaceable value to human culture, ecosystems, and scientific research.

    This free panel discussion, to be held Tuesday, May 20 beginning at 6 pm at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, 24 Oxford Street in Cambridge, featuring two of the book’s authors, Harvard Forest director David R. Foster and ecologist Aaron Ellison (recent speaker at The Garden Club of the Back Bay February meeting,) will explain connections between eastern hemlock’s modern decline and the larger challenges facing nature and society in an era of habitat fragmentation, native species loss, and global climate change.

  • Wednesday, February 26, 11:00 am – The Ants of New England

    Aaron Ellison , Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard University Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts, will speak at The Garden Club of the Back Bay’s February meeting about his new guide book A Field Guide to the Ants of New England. Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus of Harvard University, has said “This ground-breaking field guide not only contributes to our basic knowledge of ants, but places the ants of New England within reach of those interested in the natural history of the region.” Sean Menke of Lake Forest College said “This goes beyond any ant book that has come before it and puts it in line with the popular and best bird books on the market – readable and easy to use by non-experts.”

    The meeting will take place at 11 am (members note: the meeting starts one hour later than usual) at The College Club of Boston, 44 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. Members will receive written notice of the meeting. Free for Garden Club of the Back Bay members, $5 donation requested from nonmembers. An optional lunch will follow the meeting at a separate charge. If you are not a GCBB member but wish to attend, email info@bostonflora.com.

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  • Thursday, November 29, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – The Ants of New England

    Ecologist Aaron Ellison (of the Harvard Forest in Petersham, MA) and co-authors have just completed the new Field Guide to the Ants of New England (Yale University  Press), the first user-friendly regional guide devoted to the diversity, ecology, natural history and beauty of the “little things that run the world.” Lavishly illustrated with more than 500 line drawings and 300 photographs, Ellison’s guide introduces amateur and professional naturalists alike to more than 140 ant species found in the northeast U.S. and eastern Canada. On Thursday, November 29, beginning at 6 pm at the Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, hear a free lecture by the author followed by a book signing. Free event parking in the 52 Oxford Street garage.  For more information call 617-495-3045, or visit www.hmnh.harvard.edu.

  • Saturday, July 14, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm – Ants and Plants of Barton Woods

    Two authors of the new Field Guide to the Ants of New England (Aaron Ellison, Senior Ecologist, Harvard Forest; and Elizabeth Farnsworth, Senior Research Ecologist, New England Wild Flower Society) lead this day of discovering ants in a botanically rich forest in Tiverton, Rhode Island. Along this moderate, 1.7 mile walk with gentle hills, visit a variety of habitats, including floodplain, pond-shore, boulder fields, and diverse oak uplands with several unusual plant species. Aaron and Elizabeth are fun and it should prove a great day. Saturday, July 14, 10 am to 3 pm (Rain date, Sunday, July 15, 10 am to 3 pm). Call the New England Wild Flower Society registrar to pre-register at 508-877-7630, ext 3303. Spaces are still available.

  • Saturday, July 7, 11:00 am – The Ants of Athol

    Honestly, if someone sends us an announcement with great alliteration, nothing will keep us from posting!  The Ants of Athol is a program of the Athol Bird & Nature Club, featuring Aaron Ellison, Ph.D., who will introduce you to some of the local ants at the Allen E. Rich Environmental Park and Cass Meadow. Dr. Ellison is a senior research fellow at Harvard Forest, and is the lead author of the new book A Field Guide to the Ants of New England, copies of which may be available for purchase.  Meet on Saturday, July 7 at 11 am at the park, near 50 Main Street in Athol.  Rain date will be Sunday, July 8.  For more information, contact the speaker at aellison@fas.harvard.edu.

  • Monday, October 3, 7:00 pm – The Little Shop of Horrors, With a Twist

    The Coolidge Corner Theatre kicks off a new season of its popular Science on Screen series on Monday, October 3 with a special showing of B-movie maestro Roger Corman’s 1960 horticultural cult classic The Little Shop of Horrors paired with a pre-screening talk on carnivorous plants by Aaron Ellison, Senior Research Fellow in Ecology at Harvard Forest. The program begins at 7:00 pm.

    The Little Shop of Horrors tells the tale of a hapless plant-shop clerk who breeds a new species of plant named Audrey Junior that not only talks, but also needs a special kind of food to survive: humans. Famous for having the shortest shooting schedule on record – two days and a night – this hilarious black comedy helped establish director Corman as an underground legend. Starring Jonathan Haze, Mel Welles, and Jackie Joseph, the film also features an iconic cameo by a young Jack Nicholson as a gleefully masochistic dental patient (possibly not a stretch theatrically.)

    Unlike Audrey Junior, carnivorous plants in nature don’t actually devour people – or bellow “Feed Me!” But because these plants grow in habitats where soil nutrients are in short supply, they must rely on animal prey for sustenance. They catch their dinner using a variety of strategies, from snapping their leaves shut on unsuspecting insects to snagging snacks with sticky tentacles to sucking in their prey like a vacuum cleaner.

    Before the film, Dr. Ellison sheds light on the curious world of carnivorous plants and on how these fabulously complex plants can further our understanding of how a complete, functioning natural ecosystem works.

    At Harvard Forest, Harvard University’s 3,500-acre outdoor classroom and ecological research laboratory in Petersham, Mass., Dr. Ellison studies the evolutionary ecology of carnivorous plants, food web dynamics and community ecology of wetlands and forests, and other phenomena. He has received the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Faculty Fellow award for excellence in research and teaching.

    Science on Screen is co-presented by The Museum of Science, Boston and made possible by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Tickets are $9.75 general admission, $7.75 for students, seniors, and Museum of Science members, and free for Coolidge Corner Theatre members. For more information and to purchase tickets online, visit www.coolidge.org/science. Tickets are also available at the Coolidge Corner Theatre box office, located at 290 Harvard Street in Brookline. Phone: 617/734-2500.