2015-16 Botany Society Activities Are Coming to a Close

This season’s Botany Society activities are coming to a close, so it is time to report on the year’s activities and to thank all those who have made it possible.

This year, the Botany Society volunteers stepped up and made the 2016 Botany Certification Curriculum happen. Course Director Judy Ramirez, who left the valley at the end of October, left good records and handouts for the course.  The volunteers put them to good use, and taught the 13-week curriculum, organizing and leading 6 field trips and giving 16 lectures.  Three students completed the curriculum, another four students are on-going and yet another eight “repeaters” participated.  The sessions were enjoyable as well as educational.

Those who led field trips were:  Kathy Bussey, Pat Flanagan (special guest lecturer and leader), Kate Harper (twice), Laura Webb, Larry Hendrickson (Sr. Park Aide), Myrl Beck (guest leader “borrowed” from Paleontology) and Paul Larson.  We were so fortunate to hold field trips in the places in the Park with the best flowers at peak times!

Those who presented lectures on desert plant adaptations, plant morphology and characteristics of plant families were: Arie Korporaal (two), Kathy Bussey, Pat Matthews, Kate Harper (two), Larry Hendrickson (two), Marilyn Dickson, Joanne Ingwall, Birgit Knorr (three) and Don Rideout.  Add on a tour of the Herbarium with a demonstration of how to mount plant specimens (by Larry Hendrickson, Mary Jo Churchwell and Ruth Ehly), a lecture on pollination ecology (by Birgit Knorr) and post-public lecture discussions of the talks given by Travis Huxman, Kate Barrows, Don Fosket, Daniel Winkler and LuAnn Thompson, and the year was complete.

And let’s not forget to thank Pat Matthews and Vern Konen for their work as invasive weed warriors, Diana Lindsay for her work as director of the Public Lecturer’s Program, Mike Strandberg and Joanne Ingwall for leading Botany Study Group, Don and Shiela Rideout for preparing the Newsletter, and each of the steering Committee members who lead the organization – Julie Taylor, Joanne Ingwall, Marilyn Dickson, Arie Korporaal, Kathy Bussey, Kate Harper, Don Rideout.

Many thanks to all who made this season’s Botany activities such a success!

--reported by Joanne Ingwall and Laura Webb