XX International Botanical Congress
The XX International Botanical Congress was held Madrid, Spain from July 21 – 27, 2024. BRIT staff presented the following posters either physically or virtually: Herbarium Staff, Tiana Rehman and Ashley Bales, gave a recap on XX IBC for the Armchair Botanist Forum. The recording can be viewed below: A few photos from the conference:
Discovery Cart: Herbarium 101
Discovery Carts are a way for FWBG volunteers to interact with guests through a portable, self-curated, themed activity. Spring 2024 Herbarium intern, Molly Harris, curated an herbarium discovery activity to feature in these FWBG Discovery Carts. You can view and download this activity from home!
Eclipse in the Garden: Recapping Community Science Involvement
Last updated 19 April 2024 History of Eclipses Eclipses have captivated humanity for millennia, with records of their observation and prediction stretching back thousands of years. The term ‘eclipse’ originates from the Greek word ekleípō, meaning to forsake a usual place or failing to appear. Among the earliest documented evidence of this fascination are inscriptions […]
2022 Research & Conservation Intern Experiences
Ulysses Oles I am about to start my first semester of grad school. My experience going into the internship was very limited with regards to herbaria. I expected most of my activities to be similar to the skeletal transcriptions I had encountered through citizen science programs online. I learned through this TORCH program that herbarium […]
How to Create a Moist Chamber Culture to View the Biodiversity Growing on Live Tree Bark
You don’t need to be a professional to do this experiment. Our own researchers in the Fungi, Myxomycetes, and Trees Research Program use this same technique to observe and discover new species of fungi, myxomycetes, and more! The short video below will give you an idea of what the procedure entails. For more detailed information, […]
National DNA Day
A Peek Inside Sumner Lab on National DNA Day Lab Volunteer, Jerrod Stone, shares his experience and the latest projects April 26th is National DNA Day! Researchers have been busily prepping the Sumner Lab since its opening in January 2019. As key instruments and materials began to fall into place, everyone was eager to get […]
Researchers Highlight the Importance of Urban Trees with New Species Discoveries
Researchers at FWBG | BRIT Highlight the Importance of Urban Trees with New Species Discoveries The urban environment is much more diverse than some might suspect. We share our space on planet earth and in urban areas with all kinds of animals, plants, and insects. Even in the heart of a concrete downtown area, life […]
Encounters with Plants that BITE!
In late 2018, the BRIT Philecology Herbarium received funds from the National Science Foundation Grant: “Endless Forms most beautiful and most wonderful” to digitize collections of species across 15 plant families that have unique adaptations and morphologies. These plants may live in extreme and highly specific environments that face elevated risks of extinction in the rapidly […]
Will the real four-leaf clover please stand up?!
There are many plant species bearing the iconic clover look in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. The true lucky clover is believed to be the white clover of the legume family – Trifolium repens. Although Trifolium is derived from the Latin words tres (three) and folium (leaf), a unique genetic mutation causes some plants to grow an additional leaflet! A simple Google search […]
(En)TADA! The herbarium holds specimens of the LONGEST legumes in the world
The BRIT Philecology Herbarium is composed of a melting pot of several orphaned collections across the south and southeast. In addition to those large collections, we also receive specimens through active exchange programs with more than one hundred herbaria across the world. Each of our large collections – BRIT/SMU (Southern Methodist University), VDB (Vanderbilt), and NLU […]
