Boston Flora

Tag: Elizabeth Farnsworth

  • 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.

  • Tuesday, May 15, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm – Go Botany!

    Elizabeth Farnsworth, Senior Research Ecologist with the New England Wildflower Society, will speak at the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum on Tuesday, May 15, beginning at 6 pm, in a free presentation, although registration is requested at www.my.arboretum.harvard.edu. New England Wild Flower Society’s Go Botany web tool is a fun way to learn about plants in the city and beyond. Elizabeth Farnsworth will guide you through this innovative technology to learn how to identify ore than 1200 of the most common native and naturalized plant species in New England. Bring your laptop computer or tablet and start identifying our fabulous flora! Part of National Urban Biodiversity Week.

  • Tuesday, February 21, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Fabulous Ferns!

    The Wellesley College Friends of Horticulture will sponsor a great day of sketching on Tuesday, February 21, from 10 – 4, at the greenhouses at the Wellesley College Botanic Garden. Go on a fern foray with Elizabeth Farnsworth, illustrator and co-author of the Peterson Field Guide to the Ferns of Northeastern North America. Using the diverse fern collections of the Ferguson Greenhouses, explore fern anatomy, architecture, life cycle, ecology, and microscopic characteristics. See the features to look for when identifying ferns in the wild. There will be plenty of time for sketching ferns and their diagnostic characters, plus question-and-answer time about these amazing plants.  Bring your lunch along with sketchbook and pencils or pens (whichever is your preferred medium for sketching), and colored pencils for recording various anatomical structures.  Snow date will be Wednesday, February 22.  WCFH members $75, non-members $95.  Register on line at www.wellesley.edu/WCFH.

  • Saturday, December 3, 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm – Flora Novae Angliae

    The New England Wild Flower Society hosts a lecture and book signing with Arthur Haines at Garden in the Woods on Saturday, December 3, from 1:30 – 3:30.  Illustrators Elizabeth Farnsworth and Gordon Morrison will also attend. New England Wild Flower Society is thrilled to announce that after nine years of field, herbarium, and literature study Flora Novae Angliae, a Manual for the Identification of Native and Naturalized Higher Vascular Plants of New England, has been published by Yale University Press.

    This 1,008 page book is the definitive publication for the study and identification of the plants of New England. Join the author for a discussion of the underlying philosophies, a look at some of the research and novel finds on which the manual was written, and discussion of the many collaborators (and their exciting finds) who helped make the book possible. The lecture will present fascinating botanical information pertinent to each state in New England.

    This partly illustrated work presents the latest in nomenclatural, taxonomic, and distribution information for New England’s tracheophytes (i.e., higher vascular plants). The manual makes a departure from its predecessors in several respects. First, well-supported information was incorporated into the text, regardless of how unpopular it may have been viewed. Second, many thousands of herbarium specimens were reviewed to verify not only recent collections but the early ones as well. Third, identification keys were written, where possible, with focus on characteristics that do not display substantial phenotypic (i.e., environmental) variation. And fourth, all hybrid plants that could be verified as part of the New England flora were included (rather than just the well-known or named ones). These underlying philosophies have contributed to building a floristic manual with many substantial changes from earlier works covering the region.

    Arthur Haines stated, “The initial view of this manual may be one of greater complexity, but the goal was simply to write a manual that reflected, as accurately as plant taxonomists understood, our best understanding of the species growing on the New England landscape.”  After the lecture, the author will be joined by the two illustrators, Elizabeth Farnsworth and Gordon Morrison, for a book signing in the Garden Shop at Garden in the Woods.  Please RSVP if you plan to attend the December 3 lecture by calling the registrar at 508-877-7630, ext 3303.