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NEWS FROM THE HERBARIA | |
New publication
| The Tucker/Ryan Revised Catalog of Lichens, Lichenicoles, and Allied Fungi in California has been issued as number 84 of Constancea. It can now be seen at ucjeps.berkeley.edu/constancea/84/ |
Museum Preparator positions available at the Herbaria
| Click here for details. |
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Graduate student Danica Harbaugh presented the keynote address to an international conference on sandalwood research. The conference was held 28 November to 1 December 2005 in Nadi on the island of Fiji. Participants were invited from Pacific island countries and territories with additional representatives from Australia, Indonesia, Timor Leste, and the United States. The conference dealt with sandalwood research, development, and extension work in Pacific island countries and territories. Danica's dissertation research focuses on reconstructing the phylogeny of the genus Santalum (Santalaceae) which includes the sandalwoods (commonly known for their use in the essential oil industry). She is interested in determining the evolutionary relationships of the taxa as well as in elucidating dispersal patterns of the genus throughout its distribution (Australia, India, Indonesia and the Pacific Islands). In addition, she is working on a taxonomic revision of Santalum and a monograph of the genus. Conference details: papgren.blogspot.com/2005/10/regional-sandalwood-workshop-spc-land.html |
photo by Scott Hein, Save Mount Diablo |
Mike Park, a graduate student in the Jepson Herbarium, has rediscovered a population of
Eriogonum truncatum on Mount Diablo.
Read about it in an article by Robert Sanders
Listen on NPR Search Google |
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Chris Meacham, funded by a grant from the Lawrence R. Heckard Fund of the Jepson Herbarium, has produced a new version of MEKAEDIT, the program by which keys are constructed in MEKA. The new version takes advantage of Windows features to make key-building easier and more flexible. It also includes a converter so that MEKA keys may be displayed on the Web. MEKAEDIT, bundled with MEKA and keys to >150 genera of California Asteraceae, can be freely downloaded and distributed. |
| During the BSA banquet at the Botany 2004 conference in Snowbird, UT, Danica Harbaugh was awarded the Lawrence Memorial Award, which commemorates the achievements of the founding director, Dr. George H.M. Lawrence, of the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University. The annual award of $2000 is given to a doctoral candidate for travel as part of dissertation research in systematic botany or horticulture. Danica used the funding to conduct fieldwork in Australia in August-September 2004, as part of her dissertation on the phylogeny and taxonomy of the sandalwoods (Santalum, Santalaceae). |
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Native plant enthusiasts are now able to make personalized queries and create customized lists of plants that may grow well and suit particular needs in their gardens. The database contains information on plant name, climatic zone, environmental conditions, life-form, flower color, and many more characters. Possible database queries include:
What plants will grow well in a particular climate zone?
What plants will grow well in a particular climate zone if they have moderate summer water?
What plants will grow well in my shady back yard and sunny front yard?
Do cultivars exist for a particular species?
You may access the horticultural database through the Online Interchange (http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/interchange.html) or directly at: http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/interchange/hort_form.html
The Jepson Herbarium gratefully acknowledges the Elvenia J. Slosson Endowment Fund for support of this project.
Since the Physcomitrella plants in culture are mostly from the British Isles and Japan, Mishler wanted to collect samples this fall of plants from California for comparative purposes. The old specimens in the herbarium collections came from the dried margins of local reservoirs, which is where Mishler and other UC bryologists are looking. Just last week Research Botanist Dan Norris found it from San Pablo Reservoir! The new collections will now be cultured and put in the pipeline for genetic analysis, and also used to help clarify the difficult species-level taxonomy.
In addition to systematics, results from the sequencing study will provide essential data for studies of evolution, ecology, physiology, and functional genomics -- showing the synergism that can come from collaborations involving systematics and molecular biolgists; natural history museums and genome centers.
URL for JGI press release:
http://www.jgi.doe.gov/News/news_8_24_04.html
URL for UC Berkeley press release:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/08/24_genome.shtml
Other links:
Washington University
David Perlman article in San Francisco Chronicle
