Summer “away” meeting of the New England Botanical Club (www.rhodora.org) with the New York Flora Association in the Hudson River Valley will take place Saturday and Sunday, June 4 and 5. Field trips, accommodations, and activities will be at Black Rock Forest in Cornwall, NY. Explore the habitat diversity throughout the 3,838-acre forest, with field trips on Saturday and Sunday, and a speaker on Saturday. Visit the website for more information.
Come celebrate New England Botanical Club’s 120th anniversary at this historic free research conference, to be held at Smith College in Northampton Friday – Sunday, June 5 – 7.
Botanical societies and practicing scientists enliven and advance plant science. Academic biologists and citizen-scientists generate important new discoveries about the flora. They also inspire a new generation of students who continue to expand scientific knowledge and work to conserve plants and ecosystems.
Meetings, field trips, and conferences are vital ways to infuse all botanists with new energy and visions for the future. Botanists of northeastern North America will showcase their activities and research. Botanical societies will brainstorm on opportunities for future research and collaboration.
The weekend kicks off Friday with a reception at the Smith College Greenhouses from 5 – 7. Registration begins Saturday at 8, followed by a morning session with talks by botanical researchers and exhibit tables on display by botanical societies. The keynote speaker will follow the buffet lunch. Editor in Chief of the American Journal of Botany Dr. Pamela Diggle (pictured) will address the conference. She is also Past President of the Botanical Society of America. An afternoon session follows the speech. Sunday at 9, at the MacLeish Field Station, there will be a brainstorm meeting: ensuring the future of botanical societies. Then at 11:30, take a botanical foray of the 240 acre field station (bag lunch provided.) The weekend is co-sponsored by Smith College Department of Biological Sciences. Register at www.rhodora.org.
The New England Botanical Club (NEBC), founded in 1895, is a non-profit organization that promotes the study of plants of North America, especially the flora of New England and adjacent areas. The Club publishes the journal Rhodora, holds monthly meetings during the academic year (usually at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts), maintains an herbarium of more than 253,000 sheets, has a small library, and annually grants a graduate student research award and Fernald publication award.
The New England Botanical Club will hold its October meeting beginning at 6:45 on Friday, October 3 in the Haller Lecture Hall, Room 102, found inside the door to the Harvard Museum of Natural History entrance at 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge. The speaker will be Dr. David S. Barrington, Professor of Plant Biology, Director of the Pringle Herbarium at University of Vermont, speaking on A Biogreographic Perspective on the Fern Genus Polystichum. The meeting is open to the public. For more information you may email neystersmith@bentley.edu.
 
Elizabeth Farnsworth, Senior Research Ecologist for the New England Wild Flower Society, demonstrates exciting new tools for plant identification. Go Botany is the NEWFS’s new website that teaches botany and plant identification. This resource serves as a field guide to help you identify and learn about 1,200 of the most common native and naturalized plants of New England. Imagine identifying plants in the field with your iPad or smartphone!
This flexible and user-friendly tool helps you identify species based on whichever portions of the plant (leaves, flowers, winter buds, bark, etc.) you are able to observe at any given time of year. Once you identify the plant, you can see a wealth of information about it, including gorgeous color photographs, maps of its geographic range, diagnostic characteristics, and memorable facts. Go Botany is optimized for both desktop and tablet computers, so you can use it anywhere you have a web connection. Dr. Farnsworth is one of New England’s great botanists and Editor-in-Chief of Rhodora.
This talk kicks off The Garden Club of the Back Bay’s 2014-2015 meeting schedule, centered around Technology and the Garden. The event will take place Wednesday, September 17 beginning at 10 am at The College Club, 44 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Club members will receive written notification of the meeting. Guests are welcome – if you are not a GCBB member, please email info@bostonflora.com to register. A suggested $5 contribution is requested for non-members.
The New England Botanical Club will meet on Friday, May 2, at 6:45 at Garden in the Woods in Framingham to hear Bill Brumback, Conservation Director of the New England Wild Flower Society speak on Flora Conservanda 2012: Changes in New England’s Rare Flora. For complete information, visit www.rhodora.org. The meeting is open to the public.
Dr. Pamela Diggle, Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, and the 2015 Future President of the Botanical Society of America, will speak to the New England Botanical Club on Friday, April 4, in the Haller Lecture Hall, Room 102, Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, on the topic of Learned Societies: Past, Present, and Future. The meeting is free and open to the public. For questions, contact neystersmith@bentley.edu.
The February lecture sponsored by the New England Botanical Club will take place Friday, February 7, beginning at 6:45 at Harvard University in the Haller Lecture Hall (Room 102), Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street (door to the right of the Harvard Museum of Natural History entrance,) and will feature Dr. Tristram Seidler, Herbarium Curator at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, speaking on The Role of Seed Banks in Plant Conservation. Dr. Seidler was a post doctoral fellow at Imperial College, England, and his work has been sponsored by the Food and Health Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and the William F. Milton Fund. For more information visit www.rhodora.org.
The New England Botanical Club will present Tom Rawinski, Botanist, USDA Forest Service, Durham, New Hampshire, on Friday, October 4. Tom will speak on Deer, Forests, and People: Understanding and Managing Socioecological Systems, beginning at 6:45 pm at Harvard University, Cambridge, in the Haller Lecture Hall (Room 102), Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge (door to the right of the Harvard Museum of Natural History entrance.) For information on the New England botanical Club, visit www.rhodora.org. Picture below from www.animalliberationfront.com.
Grow Native Massachusetts continues its Evenings with Experts on Wednesday, May 1, from 7 – 8:30 at the Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway in Cambridge, with Elizabeth Farnsworth, Senior Research Ecologist for the New England Wild Flower Society. Imagine identifying plants in the field with your iPad or smartphone! Go Botany is the new definitive on-line Flora of New England for just that. Elizabeth Farnsworth will introduce and demonstrate this richly illustrated interactive key to over 3,500 native and naturalized plants of our region. This tool also includes PlantShare for reporting discoveries, exchanging checklists, and more. This evening will equip you to ID and better understand the many plants you encounter. Dr. Farnsworth is one of New England’s great botanists and Editor-in-Chief of Rhodora.
The New England Botanical Club welcomes Dr. Donald J. Padgett, Department of Biological Sciences, Bridgewater State College, to its March 1 meeting to discuss The Nymph’s Ugly Cousin: Studies in Nuphar. The meeting, which is open to the public, will begin at 6:45 in Haller Lecture Hall, Room 102, Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street in Cambridge. For information, visit www.rhodora.org.
