
Section Navigation
Science Seminar Videos
A Bolete Story: 50 years of Macrofungi (March 12, 2021)
Roy E. Halling
Join mushroom expert Roy Halling on a virtual exploration of macrofungal biodiversity and the highlights of his career as a mycologist at The New York Botanical Garden.
Roy became fascinated with the study of fungi (the porcini family specifically) in the early 1970s while an undergraduate in California. Fungi are nature’s organic recyclers, fundamental to nutrient cycling in all ecosystems. However, relative to plants and animals, their biology is poorly understood. It was obvious that more exploration, description, and documentation of the world’s macrofungi was needed. Through surveys and global collaborations in the New World tropics, southern South America, Southeast Asia, and Australia, Dr. Halling uncovered new genera (including a bolete truffle), described more than 80 new species of fungi, and characterized new distribution patterns and biases toward Old World species concepts.

Plant Diversity in Brazil: Studying Sedge Evolution and the Atlantic Coastal Forest (January 29, 2021)
Wm. Wayt Thomas
The Atlantic Coastal Forest of Brazil is one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.
The region has a high percentage of species that are found nowhere else in the world, as well as devastating rates of deforestation. Critically endangered, with less than five percent of the original forest remaining, it includes some of the most diverse forests on Earth. For 37 years, NYBG scientist and current Curator Emeritus Dr. William Wayt Thomas has led research to discover and conserve the plants of this highly threatened region. An expert on the Sedge family (Cyperaceae), Dr. Thomas has also led investigations into the complex evolutionary history of beak-sedges (Rhynchospora) worldwide. His most recent studies of the genus have included phylogenetic analyses and a revision of section Pleurostachys, a group that is most diverse in Brazil’s Atlantic Coastal Forest. Join Dr. Thomas for a fascinating perspective on his long-term taxonomic and floristic research in Brazil, and learn how his collaborations with Brazilian scientists and community members have advanced understanding and preservation of its forests’ unique diversity.

Darwin’s Passion for Plants (January 22, 2021)
Robbin C. Moran
After On the Origin of Species was first published in 1859, Charles Darwin wrote six books completely dedicated to plants. This online talk briefly describes what each book contains and how they were relevant to Darwin’s studies of evolution.
Did you know that Darwin was the first person to demonstrate that some plants attract, trap, and digest insects? NYBG Curator Emeritus Robbin Moran, Ph.D., who has studied Darwin’s life and work for decades, discusses the ways in which plants played a crucial role in the great scientist’s revolutionary theory of evolution.

39 years of palm research at NYBG: A retrospective (January 15, 2021)
Andrew Henderson
Join palm expert Andrew Henderson on a virtual journey through the highlights of his career as a field biologist and botanical science researcher at NYBG.
Beginning in 1982 as a graduate student, and throughout many years as a curator in NYBG’s Institute of Systematic Botany, Andrew’s global research program has led numerous expeditions throughout the Amazon rainforest and Southeastern Asia. Learn about the process by which Andrew has investigated the systematics and ecology of this biodiverse and economically important plant family, and the critical importance of this research for the conservation and sustainable use of palm trees world-wide.

Herbaria: Collectively Saving Plant and Fungal Biodiversity (January 8, 2021)
Barbara M. Thiers
For nearly six centuries, scientists have been documenting the plants and fungi of the world through herbaria, and the basic preparation of specimens that are housed in an herbarium has changed relatively little over time.
But the invention of this simple technology was a key innovation in transforming the study of these organisms from a minor subdiscipline of medicine into an independent scientific endeavor. In this webinar based on her newly published book, Herbarium: The Quest to Preserve and Classify the World’s Plants, Dr. Barbara Thiers discusses the intricate history of herbaria and how these biological collections have allowed scientists to characterize and understand plant and fungi diversity on a global scale.
The collectors and curators responsible for the approximately 3300 herbaria we have today (holding an estimated 393 million specimens) are diverse in national heritage, education and social status. The geographic, taxonomic, and temporal breadth of their legacy allows us to understand the diversity of the world’s vegetation in the past and present, and to predict its future. Herbaria still serve their original function – to document the occurrence of plants and fungi and provide a reference for their identification and characterization. However, recent technological advances that facilitate the study of life at both the molecular level and on a global scale can be applied to herbarium specimens to help address some of the most critical problems we face today. New ways of sharing information allow herbaria to demonstrate the importance of plants and healthy ecosystems to an audience far beyond the scientific community.

Here Today, Gone Forever: Plant extinction now and conservation strategies for tomorrow (Part II) (November 24, 2020)
Plants are essential to all human existence, yet the topic of plant extinction has received little comprehensive study and analysis until recently.
In this two-day, online symposium, a group of international experts in biodiversity, conservation, and extinction presents the state of knowledge, trends, causes, and consequences of the plant extinction crisis. In addition, the presenters discuss strategies for preventing the future decline of biodiversity. Each set of presentations is followed by a Q&A with presenters and the audience.
Part II:
Nokwanda P. Makunga – “Medicinal Plant Use in a Biodiversity Hotspot: A balancing act”
Matthew C. Pace – “Herbaria, Living Collections, and Extinction: Documenting loss, providing reservoirs for the future”
Reed F. Noss – “Towards a Comprehensive Strategy for Preventing Plant Extinctions”
Barney Long – “The Search for Lost Species”

Here Today, Gone Forever: Plant extinction now and conservation strategies for tomorrow (Part I) (November 17, 2020)
Plants are essential to all human existence, yet the topic of plant extinction has received little comprehensive study and analysis until recently.
In this two-day, online symposium, a group of international experts in biodiversity, conservation, and extinction presents the state of knowledge, trends, causes, and consequences of the plant extinction crisis. In addition, the presenters discuss strategies for preventing the future decline of biodiversity. Each set of presentations is followed by a Q&A with presenters and the audience.
Part I:
Thomas E. Lovejoy – “Symposium Welcome and Introduction”
Stuart Pimm – “Plant Extinctions: How many, where, and what can we do to prevent them?”
Maria S. Vorontsova – “Global Knowledge of Plant Extinction: What do we know? And should we trust it?”
Wesley M. Knapp – “Vascular Plant Extinction in the Continental United States and Canada”

Third Annual New York City EcoFlora Conference: Conserving the Rare Plants of New York (November 6, 2020)
Join the foremost practitioners in the conservation of rare plants in New York State and New York City as they present the methods used to monitor and conserve rare species and what the public can do to help.
As we learned during the Second Annual New York City EcoFlora Conference in 2019, The Historical Flora of New York City: Implications for Conservation Action, since 1800 an estimated 500 species of plants have disappeared from the New York City flora. These species can be found outside the City, but are no longer found in the five boroughs. Another 250 species are thought to be rare in the City, known from only one or two populations.

Cycads: From Field Biology to Neurobiology, a Botanical Journey (October 16, 2020)
Dennis Wm. Stevenson
In commemoration of his 40-year scientific career at The New York Botanical Garden, Senior Curator Emeritus Dr. Dennis Wm. Stevenson presents a synopsis of his 50 years of research into varied aspects of cycad biology.
It is a gamut, which follows the many bandwagons of botanical research for the past half-century. His talk includes, but is not limited to, research done in Slice & Dice and Machete Botany (Anatomy and Morphology), Flyspeck Botany (Chromosome Cytology), Blender Botany (Phytochemistry), Spray & Pray Botany (Physiology and Morphogenesis), Pipette Botany (Molecular Systematics and Barcoding), Trekking Botany (Fieldwork), Hard Rock Botany (Paleobotany), and Search for Truth Botany (Phylogenetics). All of these disciplines contribute to and allow for understanding the natural world around us from different aspects and points of view.

NYBG WeDigBio 2020: Virtual Herbarium Tour (October 15, 2020)
Nicole Tarnowsky
Explore ways that scientists study plants during a behind-the-scenes visit to the Steere Herbarium, one of the largest collections of preserved plant specimens documenting plant life around the globe over the past 300 years.
Learn how these collections can be used in conservation work and to study climate change. See wild relatives of crops, invasive species that have taken hold in different regions of the world, and herbarium specimens of plants that are now extinct.

The Brazilian Amazon Under Threat: A Report on the Impacts of Climate Change and Deforestation in the World’s Largest Rain Forest (September 25, 2020)
Benjamin Torke
The Amazon Forest in South America is the largest rain forest on Earth and harbors an estimated 15% of all plant species.
It stabilizes the climate of South America and stores more than 100 trillion tons of carbon, thus helping to mitigate global warming. Despite its biological importance and wealth of ecosystem services, the Amazon Forest faces tremendous threat, including widespread deforestation, unsustainable development, and increasing drought and wildfire. Its biodiversity is still incompletely known, and many large areas within the Amazon remain inaccessible and understudied. Dr. Benjamin Torke will report on his efforts to compile botanical inventories of protected areas in an understudied and threatened part of the Brazilian Amazon, the basin of the Tapajós River, and will discuss some of the challenges that he has encountered along the way. He will also report on concerning trends in climate, wildfire, and deforestation in the region and discuss strategies for avoiding a projected collapse of the ecosystem.
