News and Media
Plant Research and Conservation at The New York Botanical Garden: News and Media
NYBG Team uses DNA data to solve 50-year-old botanical mystery
Solving a 50-year-old botanical mystery, an NYBG scientist and his colleagues have identified a new species of tree in the Amazon rain forest based on an analysis of the tree’s DNA, finally placing it on its own branch of the tree of life with a name that means “mystery of Manu,” after the national park in Peru where it was first collected in 1973.
Body of Wonder Podcast: Ethnobotany, The Science of Indigenous Medicine
Plants have provided human beings with nourishment, medicine, fibers, and other resources for millennia. The passing of botanical knowledge through generations not only ensured survival, it shaped how cultures understood their world. Occasionally, this knowledge would be exchanged with neighboring people in the forms of stories, rituals, and daily practices.
National Geographic: Answers to these botanical mysteries could help a climate-stressed world
Whether you’re munching spicy kimchi on a Seoul street corner, tucking into a hearty turnip stew to get through a northern European winter, or enjoying crispy collards in a Southern soul food joint, your meal is anchored by one of just two species: Brassica rapa or Brassica oleracea.
The Graduate Center (CUNY): Lichens return to New York City, and new book reveals their splendor
The CUNY Graduate Center offers an advance preview of Urban Lichens: A Field Guide for Northeastern North America, which will be available from Yale University Press in October.
Atlas Obscura: The deep roots of the vegetable that took over the world
The plant known as Brassica rapa has quite the history, one that, after decades of debate, is finally emerging. The single species, which humans have turned into turnips, bok choy, broccoli rabe (also known as rapini), and other residents of the produce aisle, began up to 6,000 years ago in Central Asia, most likely in the shadow of the Western Himalayas’ sky-piercing peaks.
In Defense of Plants: Evolution of the Seed
Seeds are among the most important biological structures on this planet. Seeds have been instrumental in the diversification of plants, allowing them to spread into new habitats all over the globe. In fact, you and I would not be here if it were not for seeds. For these reasons and more, Dr. Cecilia Zumajo is fascinated by how seeds evolved.
Unraveling Domestication of Brassica rapa
Turnips, bok choy, napa cabbage, mizuna and many other globally important vegetables derive from thousands of years of human selection on a single species, Brassica rapa. Previously, the wild relatives of these crops, their complex domestication history, and their selection into diverse forms has been a mystery.
The Language of Land and Life: Connecting Language and Ecology in Wixárika (hch)
A new grant from the National Science Foundation will support the research of NYBG Ethnobotanist Alex McAlvay, Ph.D. The project is funded through the Dynamic Infrastructure Program, a funding partnership between the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Collections Lens (BRIT): Barbara Thiers on Funding Natural History Collections and the Extended Specimen Network
In the Collection Lens series, BRIT Librarian Brandy Watts highlights collection managers from around the world as collections move into the future.
North Creek Nurseries Special Bulletin: *DROPPED* Carex flacca
When North Creek Nurseries received word from noted NYBG botanist Dr. Robert Naczi that Carex flacca was spreading beyond the garden, we knew we had to do the right thing and eliminate Carex flacca from our gardens and stop selling this plant.
Nature: My 2020 as an ‘alien’ Ph.D. student in New York
As a Colombian student in the joint Ph.D. program between the City University of New York (CUNY) and The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), Cecilia Zumajo is officially an ‘alien’, according to US customs officials and law.
Scott Mori (1941-2020): Friend, mentor, and colleague
This past August, The New York Botanical Garden community was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of our dear friend and treasured colleague, Curator Emeritus Scott A. Mori, Ph.D.
Times of Israel: EcoFlora Can Save Us All
One blogger’s answer to the question of how to deal with wintertime isolation: contribute to the New York City EcoFlora as a citizen scientist! She finds her own participation in the project interesting and productive, and it carries the added benefit that the natural world is devoid of partisanship.
CUNY News: Ph.D. Student Simon Verlynde Is Hooked on Orchids
Ph.D. student Simon Verlynde’s path to NYBG and CUNY has taken many twists and turns, including abandoning a plan to become an airplane mechanic, a stint working in a Paris flower market, and visits to the tropical forests of Madagascar. He eventually got a biology degree, and then a master’s degree in tropical plant biodiversity and environments.
Foodie Pharmacology: Herbaria & the Natural History of Plants with Dr. Barbara Thiers
Dead plants do tell tales. Over the past five hundred years, plant hunters have scoured the Earth, collecting millions of specimens that are now held in vast collections in New York, London and Paris, complemented by smaller collections found in museums and universities across the globe.
In Defense of Plants: Herbaria: Past, Present & Future
This episode takes a deep dive into the past, present, and future of herbaria. In Defense of Plants sits down with Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, Dr. Barbara M. Thiers, to talk about her new book Herbarium: The Quest to Preserve and Classify the World’s Plants.
Plant Talk Blog: Science
From the field to the lab, NYBG’s scientists aren’t just about white coats and microscopes—they’re adventurous and determined globe-trotters who live to discover, understand, and preserve Earth’s biodiversity. The Plant Talk blog exposes the far-reaching work of the Garden’s botanical specialists.
