Exploring the science of plants, from the field to the lab

Archive: September 2014

NYBG Science Interns: Learning a Field, Making a Contribution

Posted in Learning Experiences on September 25, 2014 by Stevenson Swanson

Stevenson Swanson is The New York Botanical Garden’s Science Media Manager.

Internships may seem like a summer-only opportunity to gain exposure to a field and make a contribution to a project, but that’s not the case at The New York Botanical Garden’s Science Division. We have interns here during all four seasons, performing important work and learning plant science firsthand from our researchers.

NYBG science internships are such a great opportunity that the program has been cited as one of New York City’s coolest internship programs.

One of our volunteer summer interns, Chelsea Fowler, a biology student at the University of Tampa, wrote about her recent experience working in the Garden’s William and Lynda Steere Herbarium on a project that is part of the effort to digitize the Steere Herbarium’s 7.4 million preserved plant specimens. This post is from the iDigBio Web site, a national resource for information about digitized natural history collections. Our thanks to the Florida Museum of Natural History, where the Web site is based, for permission to repost Chelsea’s story.

New Additions to a Prized Mushroom’s Family Tree

Posted in New Plant Discoveries on September 16, 2014 by Roy Halling

Roy E. Halling, Ph.D., is Curator of Mycology in The New York Botanical Garden’s Institute of Systematic Botany. Among his primary research interests is the bolete (or porcini) family of mushrooms, especially those found in Southeast Asia and Australia.

The true porcini mushroom is well-known as a prized edible mushroom. Boletus edulis, as it is known scientifically, has a common name in just about every country where it has been found. Steinpilz, cep, penny bun, king bolete, panza, prawdziwek, and pravi virganj are just a few. Often viewed as “wild crafted,” it can’t be cultivated and grown artificially; it is only found in nature.

Recently, we’ve learned more about the family lineage of this tasty fungus. By analyzing DNA gene sequences, my colleague Dr. Bryn Dentinger at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew identified two relatives that are species new to science. We and four other colleagues have just described these species in Mycologia (July/August 2014).

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