Speakers announceed for the 2022 Smithsonian Botanical Symposium

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 2, April 2022.

The Smithsonian’s Department of Botany and the United States Botanic Garden will hold the 19^th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, “Life on the Edge: Exceptional Plants in Exceptional Places,” on 13 May 2022.

Plants live in seemingly inhospitable environments that exhibit extremes of light, temperature, altitude, drought, and substrate. To survive in the driest deserts, on mountaintops, without soil or with toxic soil, numerous adaptations have evolved to enable specialized plants such as succulents, epiphytes, and alpines to exploit these environments. The 19th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium will explore current research on plants in extreme environments, examining their natural history, evolution, and value for human survival, in the face of climate change and increasing pollution. Speakers will include scientists specializing in conservation, ecology, systematics, and genetics whose research explores plant survival in extreme parts of the natural world.

In addition, the 19^th José Cuatrecasas Medal in Tropical Botany will be awarded at the Symposium. This prestigious award is presented annually to an international scholar who has contributed significantly to advancing the field of tropical botany. The award is named in honor of Dr. José Cuatrecasas, a pioneering botanist who spent many years working in the Department of Botany at the Smithsonian and devoted his career to plant exploration in tropical South America.

The Symposium will be a hybrid event serving both in-person and virtual guests. If you wish to attend in-person, the Symposium will be held at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. If you wish to attend virtually, a Zoom link will be provided after you register online. We request all attendees, both in-person and virtual, to register at https://smithsonian.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_l7QFKW9BSZ-ss6uyWW9Erg.

The event is free; there is no registration fee to attend the Symposium.

Tentative schedule (all times are Eastern Daylight Time)

• 1:00 pm – Welcome and presentation of the José Cuatrecases Medal
• 1:15 pm – Jenna Ekwealor (Smithsonian Institution), "The secret lives of desert moss”
• 1:45 pm – Fabian Michelangeli (New York Botanical Garden), “Endemism and adaptations in the flora of the lost world”
• 2:15 pm – Break
• 2:45 pm – Tanisha Williams (Bucknell University), “Protecting the Fynbos: climate change insights from South Africa”
• 3:15 pm – Ben Nyberg (National Tropical Botanical Garden), “A conservation airlift: applications of drone technology in plant conservation”
• 3:45 pm – Break
• 4:15 pm – Jessica Allen (Eastern Washington University), “Urban lichens: symbioses in the built environment”
• 4:45 pm – Panel Discussion
• 5:15 pm – Wrap-up