Upcoming Virtual Lectures

Our past lectures can be viewed on YouTube.


Annual Society Lecture and Banquet

Friday, March 22, 2024
Specimen Tales: Stories and Insights from the William & Lynda Steere Herbarium
Dr. Emily Sessa, Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at NYBG
5-8 pm
Register

The lecture will be held in the Mertz Library Reading Room at the New York Botanical Garden, and will be accompanied by a small exhibit containing material from the NYBG archives. The talk is free to attend, but space is limited.

Following the lecture, the banquet will be held in the Library Rotunda. Greek food, including gluten free and vegetarian options, as well as wine and non-alcoholic beverages will be available. The dinner will cost $30/person, and must be paid in advance (unless paying by check).


Spring 2024 Lecture Series

All are held on the second Tuesday of the month, at 6 pm ET on Zoom.

February 13
Emma Fryer – PhD student, ETH Zürich
Anatomy of a Superbloom: Soil, Competition, and Survival in the San Joaquin Desert
Register

Currently working on her PhD at ETH Zürich, Emma Fryer completed her Master’s thesis at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where she worked with a suite of annual wildflowers native to the San Joaquin Desert of California. These annual wildflowers are part of “superblooms” that have recently attracted international attention to an otherwise overlooked and imperiled ecosystem. On the western edge of the San Joaquin Desert, Carrizo Plain National Monument and the Cantua Creek wilderness are two of the last remaining tracts of intact habitat in the region. Both sites host an unusually high number of rare and endangered plant and animal species. Their highly heterogeneous soils and extreme soil chemistry lead to annual wildflowers blooming in stands dominated by a single species, creating a dramatic mosaic effect across the landscape. Emma’s work with this system has focused on the interplay of competition from invasive annual grasses with soil chemistry and environmental heterogeneity to determine how these factors combine to create the mosaic pattern of the blooms that transform California’s arid regions in springs following high-precipitation winters.


March 12
Alfredo Justo, Curator of Botany and Mycology (New Brunswick Museum)
The family Pluteaceae (Basidiomycota, Agaricales) in North America: a decade of molecular studies
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Dr. Alfredo Justo is the Curator of Botany & Mycology at the New Brunswick Museum (Saint John, Canada). He oversees the curation and growth of the NBM Herbarium, which comprises over 100,000 specimens of plants, fungi, lichens, bryophytes, and algae from New Brunswick and neighboring regions. His research focuses on the fungal diversity of Atlantic Canada, while maintaining ongoing global taxonomic research on selected genera of mushrooms. Dr. Justo’s research merges morphology-based and molecular methods to study the origin, evolution, and current status of fungal biodiversity, especially across North America.


March 22 (Annual Banquet and Lecture)
Emily Sessa, Director, William & Lynda Steere Herbarium (the New York Botanical Garden)
Specimen Tales: Stories and Insights from the William & Lynda Steere Herbarium
Register

Emily Sessa, Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at NYBG, will present a lecture entitled “Specimen Tales: Stories and Insights from the William & Lynda Steere Herbarium“. Dr. Emily Sessa is a botanist specializing in the ecology and evolution of ferns and lycophytes. Her research explores the evolutionary history of these plants and how they respond to environmental change. She has been the Patricia K. Holmgren Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium since August 2022, and prior to that was a faculty member at the University of Florida.

The lecture will be held in person the Mertz Library Reading Room at the New York Botanical Garden, and will be accompanied by a small exhibit containing material from the NYBG archives.


April 9
Ashley Hamersma, PhD student (University of Florida)
Creativity at the forefront of understanding: art, science, and ourselves as entangled necessities in a world in transition
Register

Ashley Hamersma is a PhD student at the University of Florida studying fossilized plants. She primarily works with Eocene-Miocene angiosperm fruits and seeds, with emphasis on micro-CT scanning as a medium of non-destructive study. She is also interested in using personal artistic experience in scientific research and outreach. In her art, she seeks to understand and incorporate the places she lives and plants she interacts with.  Her work overall is based on a firm belief that deepening our relationships with plants can enrich our lives and futures, and connect us to hope in a world suffering from climate change and ecological disaster.



See a list of previous speakers and lectures here.