Boston Flora

Tag: Harvard University

  • Saturday, February 12, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm – Hardy Cactus Gardening for New England Gardens

    We normally associate cacti with desert landscapes and Hollywood westerns, but did you know there are many cacti you can grow in southern and central New England? This talk illustrates what will grow here, where to get the plants, and what you need to do to have a successful cactus garden in Massachusetts — all illustrated by the speaker’s USDA Zone 5B cactus garden in Stow, MA. Who says gardening has to be about making sense!

    Stefan Cover works at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology where he studies North American ants. He moonlights as a botanist/gardener with special interest in ornamental woody plants, especially magnolias. He runs the international seed exchange for the Magnolia Society and cultivates many of these lovely trees in his Zone 5B frost-pocket garden in Stow, Mass. $20 for BBG members, $25 for non members. To register, log on to www.berkshirebotanical.org.

  • Saturday, February 19, 1:30 pm – Nature Revisited

    The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Landscape Visions Lectures continue Saturday, February 19, beginning at 1:30 pm in the Kotzen Meeting Center, Lefavour Hall, Simmons College, with Amale Andraos, co-founder of WORKac, NYC, speaking on Nature Revisited.

    Today, in the face of global urbanization, exploding population, and shrinking resources, architecture, cities, and nature are at a crossroads. Moving beyond the binary—white or green, architecture or landscape, urban or rural—we must ask how we can reinvent nature for the twenty-first century. Andraos examines recent projects by WORKac that shed light on the current situation and suggest a new course for the future.

    Based in New York City, WORKac develops architectural and urban projects that engage culture and consciousness, nature and artificiality, surrealism and pragmatism. WORKac is involved in projects at all scales, ranging from a master plan for the new BAM cultural district in Brooklyn, to a single family villa in Inner Mongolia, China. Recent completed projects include the installation ‘Public Farm 1’ at PS1/MoMA and the new headquarters for Diane von Furstenberg. Current work includes the new Kew Gardens Hills Library in Queens, the extension of the Clark Art Institute at Mass MoCA, a new Children’s Museum for the Arts, and the first Edible Schoolyard New York City with Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation.

    Amale Andraos is a visiting professor at Princeton University’s School of Architecture and has taught at numerous institutions including Harvard and Columbia Universities, the University of Pennsylvania, Parsons School of Design, and the American University in Beirut. She was born in Beirut, Lebanon. She has lived in Saudi Arabia, France, Canada and the Netherlands prior to moving to New York in 2002. She currently serves on the Architectural League of New York’s Board of Directors.  Tickets ($15 general public, $12 seniors, $5 members, students free) are available on line at www.gardenermuseum.org.  You will also find directions to the Kotzen Meeting Center on the site.

  • Friday, February 4, 5:30 pm – Hengduan Mountains, China: Characteristics and Biodiversity

    Dr. David Bouford of the Harvard University Herbaria will speak to the New England Botanical Club on Friday, February 4, beginning at 5:30 pm in the Haller Lecture Hall, Room 102, of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, on the topic Hengduan Mountains, China: Characteristics and Biodiversity. Open to the public. For maps and parking information, log on to www.rhodora.org.  Below is a Hengudan Mountains meconopsis.

  • Saturday, February 5, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm – Darwinian Botany

    As a young man, Charles Darwin traveled on the HMS Beagle to the Galapagos archipelago, and later in his life offered to the scientific world the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin was also an expert botanist, and in his writings described pollination mechanisms, heterostyly, and insectivory. Join Darwinian student and botanist Dr. Judith Sumner at Garden in the Woods in Framingham, Massachusetts on Saturday, February 5, from 10 – 3, for this exploration of the life and botanical work of Charles Darwin. Discuss Darwin’s life, his voyage (1831-36) on the HMS Beagle, and his various botanical works. The course includes hands-on demonstrations and observations of plants that fascinated Darwin, as well as a traditional English tea to celebrate the anniversary of his birth on February 12. Co-sponsored by The New England Wild Flower Society and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. $70 for members of either sponsoring organization, $84 for non-members. www.newfs.org.

  • Ned Friedman Appointed Director of Arnold Arboretum

    The Arnold Arboretum is pleased to announce that Dr. William (“Ned”) Friedman has been named as its next director. Ned’s appointment at the Arboretum will officially begin on January 1, 2011, and he will also be a tenured professor of organismic and evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

    Ned currently serves on the faculty of the University of Colorado in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology. An outstanding research scientist and educator, he intends to foster a broadly integrative plant research program at the Arboretum. Ned is also firmly committed to the Arboretum’s role as a public museum, and will strive to strengthen the institution’s partnerships with the City of Boston, local schools, museums, environmental organizations, and community-focused groups. An ardent plant enthusiast, Ned looks forward to faithfully stewarding the Arboretum’s remarkable collections and historic landscape as director.

    This winter, when you visit the Arboretum while attending one of the many classes and lectures offered, be sure to stop by and say hello to Ned. Photo by Justine Ide/Harvard Gazette.

    Ned Friedman named Director of the Arnold Arboretum

  • Saturday, November 13, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Understanding Botanical and Horticultural Names

    In this workshop on plant nomenclature, taking place Saturday, November 13, from 1 – 4, students will have the opportunity to sort out the confusion associated with plant names.  You will discuss common names, binomial scientific names, and the history of nomenclature since Linnaeus.

    The current rules of nomenclature will be reviewed, and you’ll see why and how plant names sometimes change.

    This program takes place at the New England Wild Flower Society’s Garden in the Woods, 180 Hemenway Road in Framingham, is co-sponsored with the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, and costs $40 for NEWFS or Arboretum members and $48 for non-members.  To register, or for more information, log on to www.newfs.org, or call 617-384-5277.

  • Thursday, November 4, 6:00 pm – Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery” and the Search for the First Flowering Plants

    Charles Darwin was baffled by many big questions in evolutionary biology, and none more so than the mystery of how the planet’s first flowering plants came to be. On Thursday, November 4, beginning at 6 pm, join William (Ned) Friedman, Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Colorado, for an exploration into the evolutionary origin of flowering plants, and how recent advances in the fossil record have shed new light on what they may have looked like, where they “lived,” and how they reproduced. Free and open to the public, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Part of the Asa Gray Bicentennial series.  For more information, log on to www.hmnh.harvard.edu.  Image courtesy of NASA.

  • Thursday, October 28, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm – Conifers for Gardens

    Conifers are usually thought of as plain green blobs used to hide the foundations of homes or occasionally grown as solitary pyramidal accents in an expanse of grass.  This lavishly illustrated talk with conifer enthusiast Dr. Richard L. Bitner will introduce the great diversity of shapes, textures and colors in this plant group and promote integrating conifers in the landscape with other woody and herbaceous plants, rather than isolating them.  Slow-growing selections for small gardens along with the best choices for larger landscapes will be presented as well as suggestions for difficult sites.  The goal is to help the beginning or avid gardener, landscape designer, nursery tradesperson or horticulture student make better plant choices.

    Dr. Bitner is a practicing board-certified anesthesiologist and currently teaches at the Penn State School of Medicine/Hershey Medical Center.  He studied horticulture at Longwood Gardens where he now teaches.  His best selling book, Conifers for Gardens: An Illustrated Encyclopedia was published by Timber Press in 2007 and his Timber Press Pocket Guide to Conifers was issued in June, 2010.  A book on designing with conifers will be published in April, 2011.  This program is offered in collaboration with Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and Wellesley College Friends of Horticulture.  Members of either organization will pay $25, non-members $30.  Log on to www.wellesley.edu/WCFH to register.

  • Thursday, October 21, 6:00 pm – Corresponding Naturalists: Asa Gray, Charles Darwin, and the Making of American Botany

    Asa Gray’s extensive correspondence with naturalists shaped the early years of exploration and botanical research in North America. These letters brought Gray into contact with Charles Darwin, who became a close friend. With the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Gray soon emerged as the key proponent and defender of natural selection in the U.S.  On Thursday, October 21, beginning at 6 pm, Janet Browne, Aramont Professor of the History of Science at Harvard, will discuss their letters , which reflect a warm personal relationship as well as the making of an intellectual revolution. Free and open to the public, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Part of the Asa Gray Bicentennial series.  For more information, log on to www.hmnh.harvard.edu.

  • Tuesday, October 12, 6:00 pm – Honeybee Democracy

    As they face the life-or-death problem of choosing and traveling to a new home every year, honeybees employ a complex decision-making process that includes fact finding, vigorous debate, and consensus building. Thomas Seeley, world-renowned animal behaviorist and Professor of Biology at Cornell, will explore what these incredible insects can teach us about collective wisdom and democracy on Tuesday, October 12, beginning at 6 pm. Free and open to the public. The venue will be the Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Cosponsored with the Cambridge Entomological Club. For more information, log on to www.hmnh.harvard.edu.