Boston Flora

Tag: University of North Carolina

  • Thursday, September 14, 6:00 pm – Darwin’s Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory

    James T. Costa, Professor, Department of Biology, Western Carolina University Executive Director, Highlands Biological Station, University of North Carolina, will give a free lecture at Harvard Museum of Natural History’s Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, on Thursday, September 14 at 6 pm, as part of the Evolution Matters Lecture Series, supported by a generous gift from Drs. Herman and Joan Suit. Charles Darwin, iconic evolutionary biologist, was a naturalist with a passion for experiments. Sometimes quirky, always illuminating, Darwin’s experiments were an ever-present part of his home life, taking over his house, garden, and greenhouse, as well as surrounding meadows and woodlands, while often involving family, friends, and neighbors as research assistants. James Costa will discuss this inventive side of Darwin, detailed in his new book, Darwin’s Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory. Following the lecture, visit the museum galleries, where Harvard students and museum educators will demonstrate a selection of Darwin’s experiments. Free parking is available at the 52 Oxford Street Garage.

  • Thursday, March 8, 6:00 pm – A Great Green Cloud: The Rise and Fall of the City Elms

    Decades before Olmsted parks, Yankee villagers planted elm trees on their streets and commons to forge a union of rus and urbe, i.e. the rustic and the urban. The trees brought about “a kind of compromise between town and country,” observed Charles Dickens, as if each had met the other halfway and shaken hands upon it. The result was that lost masterpiece of American urbanism, “Elm Street.” Thomas J. Campanella, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the University of North Carolina, will explore elm culture in the U.S., and how our love affair with this giant nearly brought it to the edge of disappearance, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s New Directions in EcoPlanning Annual Lecture on Thursday, March 8, beginning at 6 pm . Reception to follow, free and open to the public.  Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Free parking available in the 52 Oxford Street garage. Supported by a gift from Michael Dyett (AB ’68, MRP ’72) and Heidi Richardson.