From Plant Press Vol. 16 no. 4, October 2013
“Congressional Night at the Smithsonian” was held at the National Museum of Natural History on the evening of July 24, 2013. The event was attended by 1,800 Congressional staff and their families, as well as 20 Members of Congress. The event encouraged Congressional staff to meet members of the museum’s research staff, engage in educational activities, and visit the museum’s exhibit halls. The evening also included the successful and dynamic debut of Q?rius – the museum’s new learning center. Sponsorship by Nissan North America, Inc. provided support and refreshments.
Guests had the opportunity to interact with museum staff and learn about their research and collections at 22 different stations. The success of the Congressional Night was in part due to broad participation from across the museum’s research departments. The Department of Botany was represented by two stations. John Kress, Ida Lopez, contractor Masha Kuzmina, and interns Katherine Dymek and Asmaa Muneer hosted a station entitled, “Novel Technologies to Identify Plant Species, from Apps to Labs.” The group demonstrated two current technologies in use for plant identification: 1) Leafsnap, an iPhone and iPad app, which uses an image recognition approach and provides tree species identification within seconds by simply taking a photo of a tree leaf; and 2) plant DNA barcodes, which offers a molecular approach to identifying species.
The second Botany station was entitled, “Saving Paradise: Threatened Plants and How We Can Protect Them,” hosted by Gary Krupnick, Alice Tangerini, and interns Elena Clark and Danielle Norwood. The station highlighted how the Department of Botany is contributing to the targets of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. Some of these are identifying new species, assessing the conservation status of species, caring for living endangered plants in research greenhouses, and educating the public about the importance of threatened plants. Living and dried specimens of endangered and extinct species were showcased and the process of illustrating threatened species was demonstrated.
Krupnick also participated at a station entitled, “The Buzz on Bees,” hosted by the Department of Entomology’s Seán Brady, Nate Erwin (Insect Zoo), and Sam Droege (USGS). The station highlighted the diversity of bees and emphasized their critical roles in providing pollination services in agricultural and ecological settings. The station featured a wide variety of bee specimens from the collection, common plants (potted) that attract native bee pollinators, gear and equipment used to research native bee diversity and evolution, and tools used to manage honey bee colonies.
A large contingency of volunteers from the museum assisted throughout the night. Volunteers from the Department of Botany also included Andrew Clark, Elaine Haug, Melinda Peters, Meghann Toner, and intern Elena Meyer.
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