Boston Flora

Tag: University of Minnesota

  • Tuesday, March 8, 6:30 pm – Early American Kitchen Gardens & Gardeners, Online

    Learn about early America’s kitchen gardens, and those who created and tended them, in a Morven Museum & Garden event presented by Holly Gruntner on March 8 at 6:30 pm.

    As any gardener knows, nothing grows in a garden without skill and effort. According to Holly Gruntner, the same was true in early America as she explores the lives of those who created and tended kitchen gardens of that era.

    This enlightening virtual presentation will be an overview of some of the themes of Ms. Gruntner’s PhD dissertation, Fertile Ground: Kitchen Gardens and Knowledge Production in Early America.

    Holly’s work seeks to understand the intellectual lives and influence of lower-class, enslaved, and bound people living in eastern British North America – and the early United States – by focusing on their kitchen gardens and gardening activities.

    Holly Gruntner received her BA from the University of Minnesota, Morris. After working for three years in Congressional Relations at the Library of Congress, she completed her History MA at William & Mary in 2017. Her MA portfolio explored how botanists in early America relied upon their spouses, children, enslaved people, and servants for crucial scientific labors.

    She is currently a PhD candidate in the History Department at William & Mary, working on a dissertation about kitchen gardens and scientific knowledge in early America, 1650-1830. Her work parses the intellectual and manual garden labors of non-elite people. Her dissertation views even the smallest garden plots as scientific laboratories; units of intense and extensive intellectual work, experiment, and exchange. Discoveries and practices originating with these common gardens and gardeners also transcended households and communities and served as the basis for published and otherwise formalized scientific discourse of the day. $5 for Morven members, $10 for nonmembers. Register through Eventbrite HERE.

  • Native Plant Trust Announces Yard Futures Project

    Native Plant Trust, the nation’s first plant conservation organization and the only one solely focused on New England’s native plants, has partnered with the renowned Woodwell Climate Research Center to share ground-breaking research about how American homeowners in six major metropolitan areas currently shape their yards and what can be done to create spaces that work better for both people and the environment. This research and best practices that come out of the Yard Futures Project are now available to the public in brief articles on the Native Plant Trust website, www.NativePlantTrust.org, which will be regularly updated.

    The Yard Futures Project is a collaboration of scientists affiliated with institutions from across the U.S., including Woodwell Climate Research Center, Duke University, City University of New York, University of Massachusetts, Johns Hopkins University, University of Minnesota, Arizona State University, U.S. Forest Service, University of Utah, University of Delaware, Portland State University, Davidson College, Clark University, Masaryk University, University of Vermont and Virginia Tech. The research focuses on homeowners and their yards in the metropolitan areas of Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Phoenix and includes on-site field studies, extensive surveys, and interviews.

    The project studies the impact of homeowners’ choices and examines not only how homeowners shape their yards, but also importantly why they make particular choices about lawns, gardens, and maintenance regimes. The project measures how yards influence attributes of residential ecosystems such as plant and insect biodiversity, microclimates, soil carbon and the potential for nitrogen runoff.

    The team is publishing most of the project findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals and other professional outlets; the brief articles at www.NativePlantTrust.org present the results in an accessible, engaging way that can immediately be put to use by the public. Christopher Neill, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, is editorial director and lead author for the series.

    “Urban and suburban yards now cover huge areas across the US. And more and more people care deeply about making their yards better habitat for wildlife and better providers of some of the services more natural areas provide, like carbon storage and shade that lowers air temperatures,” said Chris Neill. “This project aims to take what we’ve learned from studying yards across the country and put it in a form that homeowners can both understand and translate into things that they can do in their own yards.”

    The project receives funding from the National Science Foundation’s Macro Systems Biology Program, which is investigating the causes and consequences of large-scale ecological patterns.

  • Tuesday, November 14, 7:30 pm – Limacodidae Caterpillars and the Life of Harrison Dyar

    November’s meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club will be held Tuesday, November 14th, at 7:30 PM in room 101 of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Oxford Street, Cambridge. Marc Epstein, Senior Insect Biosystematist at the California Department of Food and Agriculture, will be discussing Limacodidae Caterpillars and the Life of Harrison Dyar.

    When Marc Epstein began dissertation research on limacodid moths at the University of Minnesota, he soon sensed that Harrison G. Dyar had an “inordinate fondness” for them, although he was known for his work on many families of Lepidoptera, as well as mosquitoes. Epstein will take you on my journey of discovery, including an interview with his son about Dyar’s extensive tunnels beneath Washington, DC, an exploration of his double life, and other unusual attributes of his life. Epstein will also touch on his life in Boston with his mother, Eleonora Rosella Dyar, a well- known medium, his time at MIT and as a member of this club publishing not only his famous paper on geometric growth of caterpillars, known as “Dyar’s Law” in Psyche, but also other papers, including the life histories of over 60 geometrid moths! Dyar spent most of a decade in Boston (1882-1892), interrupted only by summers near Rhinebeck, New York, and extensive western collecting trips.

    A book signing will follow the talk.

    The talk is free and open to the public. The meeting is readily accessible via public transportation. Parking is available in the Oxford Street Garage with advance arrangement,  or (usually but not always) at spaces on nearby streets. Everyone is also welcome to join us for dinner before the talk (beginning at 5:45 PM) at the Cambridge Common, 1667 Mass Ave., Cambridge.

  • Thursday, October 30, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm – Biodiversity and Land Conservation at the Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program

    The overall goal of the Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program (NHESP), part of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, is the protection of the state’s wide range of native biological diversity, particularly the vertebrate and invertebrate animals and native plants that are officially listed as rare in Massachusetts. The talk by Patricia Swain, Ph.D., Natural Community Ecologist on Thursday, October 30, at noon, will focus on conservation through identifying, tracking, managing, and regulating rare species and identifying and mapping NHESP priority natural communities. Land use history, climate change, and other influences on native biodiversity will be part of the discussion.

    Patricia Swain’s job as natural community ecologist for NHESP means working state wide with the rarest and most imperiled natural communities in Massachusetts and the best examples of the more common types. Patricia is currently revising The Classification of Natural Communities of Massachusetts that was first produced in 2001; since then they have been adding new types and adjusting the original descriptions so that a clean version (with illustrations and a key) seems like a useful product. Patricia has been the Natural Community Ecologist for MassWildlife’s Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program since 1987. Before that she was a stay at home mom and part time academic, teaching occasional ecology and biology classes at the local university and technical college. She graduated from Tufts with a Biology major, and obtained her MS and PhD degrees in Ecology from the University of Minnesota.

    Lunch & Learn lectures take place every Thursday from 12:00-1:00pm at the Lincoln Filene Center, Rabb Room on the Medford Campus during the academic year. The Tufts Institute of the Environment generously sponsors lunch. If you are interested in participating in the Lunch & Learn program as a guest lecturer/participant, contact environmentalstudies@tufts.edu. You can’t make it to the talk? No problem! Watch it live here from your computer or smart phone.  Photo by Patricia Swain.

  • Wednesday, April 10, 6:00 pm – Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live

    From the Stone Age diet plan to Paleo workouts, our culture is rife with pseudo-scientific fads based on a time when we supposedly were more “in sync” with nature. Marlene Zuk, professor of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota, dismantles this nostalgia and argues that evolution yields neither perfection nor a final product. The Wednesday, April 10 lecture is part of the Evolution Matters Lecture Series, supported by a generous gift from Drs. Herman and Joan Suit. Free and open to the public. Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Free event parking for evening lectures in the 52 Oxford Street garage.