Botanical meetings - Day 3

What happened to Day 2?  It vanished into the dozens of conversations with friends and colleagues, multiple sessions of scientific talks, research discussions, mixers, and business meetings.  Events started at 8 AM and continued through an overly long business meeting that ended at about 9 PM.  Can you exist on a diet of snacks, beer, and wine?  Well, yes!  In this case the evening schedule was so daunting that the decision was made to have a larger than usual lunch, and because the food court has some pretty nice items, including Indian with freshly baked tandoori naan.  So while fortified with food, as soon as the lights were dimmed for a talk, the urge to doze off had to be fought, with great difficulty in a couple of them.  And then a young colleague seeks you out because you possess knowledge in a particular subject area that almost everyone else has forgotten, and you are surprised how much of it you still remember from over 25 years ago.  And what's even more surprising is how many older colleagues are still attending these meetings, and are still active botanists.  You see it isn't just a job, or a career, or an expertise, it's an advocation and these people just love what they do, and the students begin to figure out that you've been a professional botanist for more than twice as long as they've been alive.  Now it's Day 3 and a bit of fatigue is setting in. This afternoon the Phactor delivers a research paper on an invasive legume and the impact of several environmental factors have on its growth.  Not much good news here; the invasive legume will "win", prairie diversity will lose.  And at this very moment, other than knowing that nothing critical is happening, the Phactor has lost his custom-made schedule and has no idea what to attend next.  Sounds like more coffee is in order.  Maybe then the next evo-devo presentation will make more sense.  Let's see what has been learned?  Well, the scanty development of diploid endosperm of waterlilies and their relatives may represent an intermediate stage between the female gametophyte of gymnosperms and the full-fledged triploid endosperm of most flowering plants.  A little gnetophyte, Ephedra monosperma (or E. minima) is easy to propogate and grow for research and teaching.  Have to see if it's available from an online nursery.  Time to run.

Botanical meetings - C'est fini.

Another fine set of botanical meetings are shot to heck. Unfortunately this is the only chance many of us get to see each other, spread out across the continent as we are. This year's banquet was a refreshing change from the ordinary; it was really good what with steamer clams, mussels, and chowder. There was other stuff too, but why? Oh, yes, natives of the midwest. Of course we make lots of contacts, initiating collaborations, trading specimens and information, and in general doing the people side of the science business. It will take a couple of days to go through all my notes and respond to all the requests and queries. So, now to hit the road and head back to the midwest. Nothing like a relaxing drive along I-95 to start things out. Ta.

300th Blog - Botanical field trips

Supposedly the first 300 blogs are the hardest, so the 301st should be easy. Just returned from a field trip associated with the Botanical Society of America's annual meeting, and it had a familiar qualities: a bus load of plant fanatics ranging from senior citizens to undergraduate students, generic food box lunches (How is it that they are all identical?), and someone who has the responsibility for getting us back on time. Now if ever botanists surrender to the clock, our professionalism is toast, and no use setting some precident of being on time. No when some little fern requires that a group bushwack through a mucky sphagnum bog, green briar, and poison ivy, why no problem. How fun to hear students tell us that this is their first national botanical meeting. If you tell them you still remember yours, which was in 1972, they look at you in rather disbelief that anything so ancient might still have functional gray cells. Sorry not to include any pictures, but no way to get them out of the camera and into this hotel computer. Sorry not to have a better story to celebrate 300 blogs over the past 2.5 years. This is not a torrid pace, and seldom is there time for more than one internet session a day; too many real things to do. Like visit beach communities and some strange holly forests with lots of ferns and fungi, and lots of plants that we associate with more southerly ranges (holly, mountain laurel, and so on). Now to wash off the dust, get a drink, attend a lecture on evolution and a mixer of several hundred botanists, some of the best people on Earth. What! You don't believe me? Well, just ask them!