Botany 2016

Each year the Botanical Society of America, with a number of its sister organizations, get together for a 4 day phantasmagorical orgy of botanical science and socializing. As you may guess us botanists are spread rather thinly across the landscape, and since the human bio-medical tail, and its attendant money, wags the biological dog, there just aren't that many of us. So getting together once a year is a big deal. Some of these people are our bestest buddies, colleagues, collaborators, former students, former mentors, and so on. This year the event is in Savannah GA, and you're saying TPP, isn't it a touch hot and humid this time of year. Well, yeah, which is why the botanists get such a good deal here, and other places like NOLA, Mobile, San Antonio, and Stillwater (actually still can't believe this last one), but the meetings are indoors in refrigerated conference centers except when way back they were on university campuses.  
So the Phactors are enroute and stopped for margaritas in Chattanooga, not famous for its drinks, but if you look back a couple of blogs you'll see that some people travel with their own supply.
The next few days will be jam packed with research and teaching talks, and posters, and meetings (don't like them, but you have to do science's business too.), and social events too. Ah, you're jealous. TPP has been to all but a hand full of these annual meetings since 1972. Understand the schedule doesn't leave much time for blogging.  

Botany 2015 - Over and done

Exhausting. Nothing else describes scientific meetings like these. So many things to do in such a short period of time. Skipped the last lecture and some awards to eat dinner with some friends. One of them got two awards. Oops! AoB lecture by Robert Raguso of Cornell was very interesting; he studies how floral scents interact with insect behaviors. And different parts of flowers can have different scents particularly on the scale of insects. Another interesting talk concerned mycoheterotrophic plants, non-green plants that obtain their food from interactions with fungi that interact with other plants. Another talk dealt with a difficult biogeographic pattern to understand, a South American-Australia disjunction unless you look at continental positions about 50 million years ago. Last meeting ended early this morning, but no way to get home until tomorrow and that requires TPP to get up at 3:30 am to deal with air travel constraints at an international level. Edmonton is sounding a bit like the Hotel California.

Conference aftermath

Scientific conferences are almost frantic activity packed into 4 days, a fevered orgy of interaction, a once a year event celebrating the social, personal aspects of our particular science.  At the end you feel a bit of relief and fatigue, however, TPP, a cagey veteran, has learned how to pace himself and not worry overly about what you missed or could not attend.  Last night was the big banquet (reasonably good, but fire the cook that made the gumbo, or fire whoever told them to wimp out), the awards, a presidential address (pretty good, but overly long - hey, there was a social  going on), and a farewell to friends and colleagues for another year.  Along the way you learn a good many things, you make some new contacts and friends, you get some new ideas (these are all creative people), you admire those who distinguish  themselves with hard work, cleverness, and sometimes luck that opens new doors.  Forty percent of the attendees were students, impressive young people, and you are glad when you can help some of them out and even surprised by the rare one who knows who you are.  But TPP isn't saying farewell to New Orleans just yet; he doesn't get here often and some friends have arrived and we'll take a few days just to mess around because conferences don't leave much time for leisure.  Maybe a drive down into Cajun country would be nice. 

Botanical meetings - New Orleans

Well,  TPP is back in New Orleans for the annual botanical meetings, back because we done this here before, so while fond and the memories are rather foggy because that was 40 years ago.  So two of my older colleagues, one seven years my senior, and one thirteen years my senior, and both still active faculty, and myself took our lovely wives out to dinner at NOLA.  Wonderful place, wonderful food.  The blueberry lavender flower sorbet was just magical.  The duck and Andouille sausage gumbo was excellent.  This is New Orleans and the food is wonderful.  The street scene is amazing; lots of costumes of various sorts, if you get my drift.  So for the next few days the blogging may be erratic, but it'll be coming from the botanical meetings, live and direct.  Tomorrow is for field trips, and meetings, and a big social mixer.  Another group is also having a conference here in NO, but they won't get mistaken for botanists, or us for them; they dress pretty fancy, black tie and evening gown type of thing tonight.  Botanists just don't do formal, except for one guy, a past-president, who once came in a tux, and everyone just figured he was weird, or making a joke, or something.  Hawaiian shirts are a more usual fashion statement in the botanical world and khakis.  Of course, after so many years, these people are my friends and it's great fun to see them once each year except what with all the science going on it can be hard to socialize with many of them.  There isn't enough time.  Science is a community, and we interact at many different levels, so socializing is a very important thing to do.  The symposium "Yes, Bobby (Jindal), Evolution is True" symposium is on Monday, and TPP will let you know how it goes. 
TPP sees elsewhere that another blogger is getting paid to report on the protist meetings out west in Vancouver.  TPP has been there twice for meetings and it's a lovely city, and again the meetings were nearly 30 years apart.  It does kind of rub my rhubarb that a science blogger is accepting money to do something that they should do anyways, and even worse that TPP hasn't been offered any such support, which is why food came first.  So now, having driven too far, and eaten too much, it's time to get some sleep because the field trip starts early.

Planning a symposium in Louisiana

Next summer the botanical meetings will be held in New Orleans, and TPP is looking forward to the food and music, oh, and the botany.  Good planning, go to Louisiana in the summer, but probably that's when academic types, especially students, can better afford it with off-season rates.  So some of us been thinking, how about a symposium on evolution titled "Yes, Bobby (Jindal), evolution is real".  It's hard to believe Jindal falls for the "it's just a theory" line; it's easier to believe he that he would play religious conservatives for political reasons, but why not take him to task?  So we can have some fun with this.  Maybe we invite Dr. Donald Aguillard to speak.  He's the superintendent of the St. Mary Parish School District, but if his name sounds familiar it's because he was the lead plaintiff in the Edwards v. Aguillard Supreme Court Case in 1987 that ruled the teaching of creationism in public school science classes is unconstitutional.  Jindal has made news by giving vouchers, public money, to private religious schools who are under no such prohibition.  They can teach all the anti-science stuff they want.  So maybe the botanists get a bit uppity for a change.  If you want to know what botanists think about all this, here's the link to the Botanical Society's statement on evolution, which is pretty good even if TPP was the primary author.

Another fine botanical meeting shot to heck

Well, it's over. Another botanical meeting finished.  The Phactor has attended 30 some odd of them now having started 40 years ago, but missing a few.  Had a last drink with several friends after the banquet and awards ceremony, and now the Phactor needs some sleep before driving home.  Listened to quite a few student talks today, and without question Roxaneh (neat spelling) talking about her palm reproduction was the best, and as if the judges were listening, she won the best student presentation award.  Her major professor, a very good friend, will be most pleased.  Met a few new people that were on my list, but still failed to get time to chat with fast Eddie.  As a fern guy we just don't listen to too many of the same talks, and it can be hard to run into some people as a result.  Although this may be hard to believe, but had dinner with my undergraduate adviser who will be starting his 43d academic year, and the last 10 years have been his most productive in research, so some people do get older and better.  The Phactor helped auction off a bunch of items to raise money for lecture honoring a curmudgeon in our field.  And the day started with an alumni breakfast for botanists who worked or studied at Miami University at one time or another.  Looking around everyone looks  beat.  Meetings are marathons, but great fun in all respects.

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.

Botany and mycology

The Phactor is presently in Snowbird Utah for annual scientific meeting for botanists and those people who study fungi. Copper Canyon is a beautiful place and its hard to believe how close it is to Salt Lake City, but the amount of disturbance and development is considerable. Yesterday was mostly the business of science, meetings and counsels, mixers and our annual reconnections among friends and colleagues. While we may interact electronically during the year, we usually only get to see each other once a year.

Today the science begins although the evening is full of social events. The biggest problem is deciding what talks to listen to among the many sessions scheduled in parallel. For narrow specialists this is not such a problem, but us generalists want to be in many places at once.

Now to try and get my flat-land ankles and calves to loosen up and stop complaining about the ups and downs of a place built on a mountain side. And then of course you have to go see what that flower is. Why there are three species of Castilleja along that ridge, but I could only find two.