The Plant Press

From The Plant Press, Vol. 28, No. 1, January 2025.

Staff Activities

On November 25, Erika Gardner gave a presentation titled, “What is a Type Specimen,” to the Riderwood Senior Living Community Garden Club in Silver Spring, Maryland. The presentation included historical collecting accounts and the continued preservation of specimens, the use of DNA analysis of herbarium specimens to uncover new species to solve cryptic speciation issues, and how botanical illustrators use their skills to highlight characteristics of a plant to distinguish it from other similar species. 

Staff scientists and postdoctoral fellows from ForestGEO, including Stuart Davies, Eugenie Mas, Jose Medina, Krishna Anujan, Helene Muller-Landau, Luca Morreale, and Kelvin Acebron, attended the annual AGU (American Geophysical Union) conference in Washington, DC, on December 9-13. The conference is the “largest gathering of Earth and space scientists,” where individuals connect and share their research. The goal of the conference is to better understand the planet, environment, and how to address climate change. This year’s theme was “What’s Next for Science,” and it was attended by approximately 27,000 registered guests. ForesGEO post-doc Krishna Anujan presented a poster, “Sensitivity of tree growth to precipitation in seasonally dry tropical forests using long-term dendrometer band measurements”.