PLANT SCIENCE BULLETIN

SPRING 2006 VOLUME 52 NUMBER 1
The Botanical Society of America: The Society for ALL Plant Biologists

Table of Contents

It's Finally Here - - Our 100th Anniversary Year! Botanical Society of America, 1906-2006........................................................2

C.J.A. - The Last Mycologist Who Was BSA President...........................................................2

Truman State University's Solar Clock Garden.....................................................................11

News from the Society

Looking to the Future- Conserving the Past..........................................................15

100 Years of Service to the Plant Sciences - What is the BSA Doing in "Looking to the Future?"...........17

BSA Plant Science Mentors Making a Difference..................................................20

The Financial Well Being of the Botanical Society of America............................21

Announcements

In Memoriam:

Grady L. Webster, 1927-2005...................................................................22

Guanghua Zhu, 1964-2005.......................................................................23

Tom O'Neil, 1923-2005..............................................................................24

Personalia

Mark Bierner is New Director at Boyce Thompson Arboretum..........25

Russell Chapman Named New Executive Director for Scripps Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Center.........26

Letters to the Editor.....................................................................................................27

Botanical Society of America's "Statement on Evolution."...................................27

Positions Available

Graduate Fellowships in Ecological Genomics at Kansas State University...29

Special Opportunities

Botany References Available....................................................................................30

Symposia, Conferences, Meetings

The Fifth International Symbiosis Society Congress...........................................30

Forensic Botany...........................................................................................................30

Books Reviewed.........................................................................................................................30

BSA Contact Information...........................................................................................................38

Books Received..........................................................................................................................39

Botany 2006.................................................................................................................................40

ISSN 0032-0919

Published quarterly by Botanical Society of America, Inc., 4475 Castleman Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299. The yearly subscription rate of $15 is included in the membership dues of the Botanical Society of America, Inc. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis,MO and additional mailing office.

Address Editorial Matters (only) to:
Marsh Sundberg, Editor
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E-mail: psb@botany.org

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:
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Editorial Committee for Volume 52

It's Finally Here - - Our 100^th Anniversary Year!

Botanical Society of America 1906-2006

- - and we almost have our timing right. Our featured Past-President in this issue is Constantine Alexopoulos and to my surprise he was born almost exactly100 years ago this month (March, 1906)! Meredith Blackwell and many of her fellow "Dr. Alex" students have collected a series of anecdotes and stories that put a real personality behind the author of my old Mycology textbook! That textbook is a classic, and it sounds like Dr. Alex was too! I hope you enjoy reading about him as much as I did.

And then, to help all of us keep better track of time so we're not late getting to the BSA Centennial Meeting in Chico this JULY, Steve Carroll, has provided directions for constructing a solar clock that you and your students can install on your campus. It may not be portable or have an alarm, but the Swiss would be jealous of the (plant) movements this clock employs!

Have a GREAT 2006 - - the Editor.

C.J.A. The Last Mycologist Who Was BSA President

At the American Institute of Biological Sciences meeting in San Diego in 1995 I learned that earlier strong ties that had existed between botanists and mycologists were severed. BSA members wondered who was the John S. Karling, who had made a generous bequest to the BSA (and also MSA)? That incident has been rectified by a short Karling biography and the notice of the Karling Award that was established with the gift on the BSA web site. I recalled this incident after I discovered that C. J. Alexopoulos was the last person to have served as president both of the BSA (1963) and of the MSA (1958-1959), marking a lost connection. Also gone is the Department of Botany at the University of Texas and the diverse group of botanists who had written all the textbooks I used there as a student in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Plant Biology/Botany graduate program link on the Texas web site leads to "The page cannot be found." Mycology, however, is still present at Texas in Paul Szaniszlo's lab in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology. As I recall that is where it was (as the Department of Microbiology) before Jim Maniotis, and then Dr. Alex, inhabited the Department of Botany. Dr. Alex was happy at Texas, commenting on the luxury of walking out on a December day without a top coat, having lunch with Harold Bold, having lunch and coffee with his students, and with Mrs. Alex, taking advantage of the musical programs available on the campus certainly not the music of the Austin scene that was becoming so popular nationally around him.

One item on the Texas web site was a happy discovery:

Dr. Alexopoulos was a lucid, enthusiastic and inspiring teacher of both undergraduate and graduate students. During his career he supervised nine M. A. students and twenty-eight Ph. D. students, eighteen of the latter at The University of Texas. He was greatly respected and beloved by his graduate students who demonstrated their loyalty clearly and to an unusual degree.

— Harold Bold, Jerry J. Brand, and R. Malcolm Brown

The quote is from the memorial resolution, prepared by a committee made up of Dr. Alex's good friend and former BSA president [see below], as well as two younger faculty members, one a graduate student in Dr. Alex's time (who involved him in an air-borne spore project that was the beginning of my own association with Dr. Alex), and the committee designed a cogent resolution <http://www.utexas.edu/faculty/council/pages/memorials.html>! Today his students are mostly mycologists; one, a lawyer; many retired or nearing retirement; several untimely dead; none resides in a botany department, although one mycological grandchild comes close as the member of a Department of Botany and Plant Pathology. Most of the students followed him as academics, six followed him as MSA president, and one, as IMA president —but not one has been a BSA president. All of the students remain loyal "to an unusual degree," but it is only the later Texas students that could be contacted easily, making this piece very Texacentric. The Texas students, however, were linked to earlier students from the University of Illinois, Kent State University, Michigan State University, and University of Iowa, because we saw their photographs on Dr. Alex's office wall daily a rogue's gallery he referred to with great affection (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Dr. Alex was the mycological great, great grandson of A. H. de Bary, a notable lineage.

In addition to the memorial resolution that appears on the University of Texas web site, two biographies were published soon after Dr.Alex's death (Brodie, 1987; Blackwell, 1988). The Brodie biography was published in Mycologia at a time when society notables oftenmade a last appearance on the first page of an issue of that journal. The other biography in the journal of the British Mycological Society memorialized the society's Honorary Member. His last, slightly updated CV is posted at <http://lsb380.plbio.lsu.edu/LabPersonnel/cja.html>. He name was given to the MSA Alexopoulos Prize "awarded annually to an outstanding mycologist early in their [sic] career. The nominees will be evaluated primarily on the basis of quality, originality, and quantity of their published work." His students established the prize at the time of his retirement from teaching at Texas, and over the years some students continue to contribute to the gift. In fact one year the fund mysteriously swelled, and I learned later that Henry Aldrich (Ph.D. Texas (1966) contributed the excess profits he had had to accept as a principal of the "non-profit corporation" of organizers of the Second International Mycological Congress at Tampa. There also is an MSA student travel award named for Dr. Alex, again mostly with contributions from former students.

Almost 20 years after his death (15 May 1986) in the month of the ninety-ninth anniversary of his birth (17 March 1906), the assignment is to bring Dr. Alex to life for a new generation of botanists. His students remember him vividly with true affection. Below you will find a collection of anecdotes, excerpts from Christmas letters and notes "from the desk of C.J. Alexopoulos notes," being his usual form of written daily communication with the students in his lab some kept more than 35 years.

John E. Peterson (Ph.D. Michigan State University, 1957) was Dr. Alex's first Ph.D. student, although he did not finish first; that honor was won by Sung Huang Sun, who was the first illustrator of his textbook, Introductory Mycology. Former Dean and Professor, Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas, wrote a tribute to Dr. Alex that appeared with a photograph in "Life of the Mind, the Newsletter of the Emporia State University Honors Program," No. 54, December, 1985 "The original of the picture you see on the reverse side of this page hangs on the wall directly above my desk. I see it whenever I raise my eyes. It has hung above whatever desk I have worked at for a good many years. It is a picture of one of my teachers my main teacher, I would say."

Anecdotes recalled November—December 2005:

Dr. Alex seemed formidable on first meeting, but once one got past that he was warm and generous. Several of us remember our first meetings with him. I met him when I was desperate for a job; he needed someone to look for slime molds in air samples in the project with Malcolm Brown. He had one applicant for the job, a reject from the zoology department, and I was reluctantly hired. I was addressed formally as "Mrs. Blackwell," and I remember the happy day about a month later when he finally called me by my given name. I had joined the club.

Steve Bratteng* recalls, "When I first became interested in grad school to study slime molds, I stopped by Dr. Alex's office just to touch base. After a short discussion in which I revealed that my knowledge about slime molds was based entirely on lectures and reading, Alex dropped everything and took me on an impromptu field trip. It was summer in Austin so, of course, the pickings were rather slim, but in 3 stops around town we did find some at a golf course." S.B.

[*Dr. Alex was conservative in many ways, but extremely tolerant of personal freedom; this was evidenced by the fact that he never complained about the tarantulas that Steve kept in the research lab!]

Joanne (Judi) Tontz Ellzey remembers her first meeting with Dr. Alex. "My first year in Austin I was walking down the hall of the building near Dr. Alex's office. I stopped to look at a specimen that was displayed on newspaper. He walked by and asked me to identify the fungus. I did not hesitate —I believe that it was a Daldinia. Dr. Alex became very blustery and asked me if I had read the identification written on the newspaper. I said "No, this fungus grows in my parents' backyard in North Carolina. My mother-in-law has elaborated on this often told story and told friends and relatives that this was a test for acceptance in the Botany Department!" —JTE

Also, the first year that I worked with Dr. Alex, I was standing in a narrow walkway outside of his office door talking with him about my research when one of my contact lenses popped out of my eye and landed on the floor between us. I had to bend down and retrieve it before someone stepped on it. His reaction was "Vanity, vanity!" —JTE

Dr. Alex was a wonderful teacher, lecturing with only an occasional glance at a 3 X 5" note card, urging us on to greater accomplishments with the use of sardonic humor, and holding to the highest standards. We all remember his classes, especially the fact that he was always in the laboratory the entire four hours. Learning was so much fun.

"In a lab in the clas on ascomycetes some students were tittering about the scientific names of some organisms that had been described by Karl Fuckel. The species names were followed by the reference to the author minus the last two letters of his surname. Alex was, or pretended to be, totally oblivious to the reason for the students' amusement." S.B.

"On his exams in general mycology* he occasionally asked for drawings of various things. On one my drawing was perhaps a little less than accurate, prompting a written comment: `What is this? some psychedelic art!!'" S.B.

[* CJA taught an introductory and three advanced (myxomycetes, zygomycetes, and ascomycetes mycology courses) there was no course on basidiomycetes, because he said often confused them with paint splotches.]

"While taking introductory mycology from Dr. Alex, the class had a field trip to collect slime molds near Bastrop, Texas. We were to meet outside the botany building at a certain time and ride over in a van. All of us were milling around the van when Dr. Alex appeared. He had on tan riding pants with knee high brown leather boots, a black beret*, a pair of thick magnifying glasses that flipped down from under the beret, and a huge knife with a 10 inch blade in a scabbard on his belt. Needless to say, the class was in shock about going out in rural Central Texas with him dressed like that. However, we loaded in the van hoping that no one would see us. Things went well until we started home and he announced that he wanted to stop at a little eating place to get some buttermilk pie. The parking lot was filled with pickup trucks the biggest "redneck place" you've ever seen! We bit our tongues and went inside the best pie I've ever had in spite of all the looks we attracted!" C.W.M.

[*His black wool beret was standard cool weather grab.]

Wayne Rosing remembers, "As a Myxomycete class project, Dr. Alex had us check the identifications of myxos in the Creager collection by bringing the specimen, our slide, and our ID to him for his perusal before specimens were placed in the UT Herbarium. I brought him a beat up specimen that both Creager and I had identified as Comatricha typhoides. When Dr. Alex looked at the boxed specimen, he said, `NEVER!' When I said, `It has the spores.' He replied, `If this is C. typhoides, I'll take everyone to coffee.' He looked at my slide and I presume he felt that I'd somehow mixed up slides from different specimens. He made his own slide from the boxed specimen, examined it microscopically and said, `Tell everyone to get their coats, we're going for coffee.' As a young know-it-all, I oft times disagreed with Dr. Alex. But, in the five years I knew him, he was right perhaps 1000 times to the 3 times that I can vividly recall, I was right. I think that he actually liked the fact that I'd disagree with him on occasion (in an agreeable way of course)." —W.C.R.

Wayne also remembers the only impersonation he ever heard Dr. Alex do —Ernst Athern Bessey. "According to Dr. Alex, Bessey's reputation at Michigan State University was legend. He knew everything botanical there was to know. A young colleague was going to test Bessey and had planted some grapefruit seeds in a flat. These had germinated and the junior faculty member was taking them to campus intending to tell Bessey they were weeds that had come up in his Michigan back yard. The flat of seedlings was on the floor of the car behind the driver's seat as the young Ph.D. drove to campus. As luck would have it, Dr. Bessey was walking to campus. His young colleague pulled up to the curb and asked Bessey if he'd like a ride. Bessey then got into the car. Suddenly, his nose began to twitch. It was at this point that Dr. Alex told us that Bessey lisped. When Bessey's young colleague asked him, `What's wrong Dr. Bessey?' Bessey replied, `I thmell grapefruit theedlings.'" —W.C.R.

Ralph Gustafson was one of several students impressed by the buzzer. "Dr. Alex's office was some distance from the two labs where the graduate students had their desks and research space. He installed a buzzer* in each of two the labs and posted list above the buzzer button that all of our names on it and the number of times he would press the button for each of us. We all lived in fear of that system as getting buzzed meant that we were to immediately go to his office to `get the word' about something, usually bad news for the student buzzed. It was not a quiet buzz and all would jump when it went off." R.G.

[*The buzzer code was dependent on the total number of graduate students, and some students were signaled by no fewer that seven buzzes. We always had to remain alert to count the number of buzzes accurately.]

"I got buzzed into Dr. Alex's office one day and found him conversing with a long-haired, bearded fellow. The guy had brought bits and pieces of dried mushroom to Dr. Alex. These were being sold on the street as Psilocybe mexicana. The guy was from a drug-counseling center in Austin. He wanted to know if they were the genuine article. Dr. Alex looked at the debris under his dissecting scope and made a slide or two. He told the fellow that he thought that the mushroom remains were indeed those of P. mexicana but that he wasn't going to tell anyone to eat them. When the fellow left, I heard Dr. Alex swear for the first and last time. He said, `Damn hippies*, I wish they'd leave the fungi alone.' And so it goes…." —W.C.R.

[*Dr. Alex was conservative about certain things! He did, however, coauthor a paper on a species of the genus of hallucinogenic mushrooms that certainly helped to insure correct identification (Jackson, R. E. and C. J. Alexopoulos. 1976. Psilocybe cubensis (Agaricales): A comparison of Mexican and Texas types. Southwestern Naturalist 21:227-233)]

Don Reynolds wrote, "Dr. Alex's European manner was part of his demeanor. One of the "imperial" attributes was to have a call buzzer for the graduate students. The room buzzer* was just under my foot space. It seemed to buzz all day with a signal of from one to several blasts depending who was being summoned. Once I just got tired of it and kicked it off the wall. Within what seemed like a very short while, he was down the hall finding out what was wrong for a quick fix. The Grand Old Man was soon again being served by those he deemed could do his bidding." D.R.R.

[*Again, there goes that buzzer!]

In his second year at Stephen F. Austin State University Charles Mims invited Dr. Alex to come over to give a seminar. "There was no way to fly in to Nacogdoches, so he and Mrs. Alex drove over —about a 5 hour drive. They were very late in arriving, and we were getting worried. When they finally pulled up to my home after dark, he explained that they had had two flat tires on the way over and that various kind people had helped them with the flats —the last man had suggested that they needed to get new tires right away but Alex wanted my advice on the matter. The next morning I looked at the tires and none of the four had any tread left —the worse looking tires I'd ever seen! When I pointed this out to him his response was that he was too busy with his work to worry about getting new tires! The next day I went with him to the tire store to have four new tires installed before they started home." C.W.M.

It was not only tires, but also Dr. Alex's car engine that was often not in good condition. I once recognized it parked on the side of a road that I also used each morning. I headed for the nearest service station and there he was with his guest, G. W. Martin*, who was visiting as outside committee member for Mary Henney's (Ph.D. Texas, 1966) dissertation defense. Dr. Alex stayed to deal with the car and I had the great privilege of driving Dr. Martin in to the university.

[*George Willard Martin was long retired from the University of Iowa at the time, but was still active and was at the time collaborating with Dr. Alex on the Myxomycetes.]

Whether we were his research assistants or teaching assistants, we worked hard. I remember that I was required to work 20 hours a week on his NSF grant-related research not my own slime mold research. At that time the IRS apparently did not require R.A.s to pay taxes as long as they were paid to pursue their own research. We envied Dr. Bold's R.A.s who not only got more of their thesis work done during the day, but also escaped paying taxes on the meager wages. Ralph and Wayne remember how hard they worked as T.A.s.

Dr. Alex taught graduate introductory mycology every fall term at UT-Austin. He wanted living cultures ready for the labs and he wanted them to be axenic and ready to show whatever they were to show at the lab that day. Timing was essential!

That meant having:

Allomyces male gametangia ready to open and spew forth the male gametes when the students added water to the culture

Mucor and Phycomyces + and strains in the same dish with zygospores where they met in the center of the dish.

Myxomycete swarm cells swimming in the dish at the start of the lab.

Sordaria perithecia ready at the moment that they had mature ascospores.

Pilobolus ready to shoot off their sporangia as soon as the students put the culture under the lights of their dissecting microscopes.

And the list went on and on. He wanted the cultures in his office one hour before the class session so that he could examine them before he used them in the lab. Was there pressure? He was very disappointed when I came in and said so-and-so is not ready or I could not recover it from the culture collection. The T.A. was also responsible for maintaining the culture collection that contained well over 200 cultures of myxomycete mating types and molds.

Don Reynolds, the T.A. before me had developed a calendar with the days indicated as to when one needed to start the cultures so that they would be ready a week or so later for lab. I followed his calendar and modified it to meet the next term's class schedule. Yes, I was probably the one that Dr. Alex alluded to in his memo to the graduate students about using too much agar (see below) because I started at least a dozen plates of each culture to make sure that I had at least one dish with the organism ready to go." R.G.

[Wayne to Ralph as they were discussing Alexopoulos anecdotes "Remember, I followed you as Dr. Alex's T.A. He would always tell me, "Ralph had cultures of Pythium with sporangia releasing a vesicle." When I consulted you, you'd say something like: "Like hell I did." I was the T.A. the semester Dr. Alex went into the hospital with his first brain tumor*. I not only did the labs ALL semester (he wouldn't come downstairs), I had to teach the last 1/3 of the lectures as well since some of Bold's and Delevoryas' grad students were taking the course. The grad school looked the other way while someone with only a B.S. taught a significant part of a graduate-only class. For all my efforts, the department gave me the Bold Teaching Award and a check for $50 - talk about slave labor. I had two botany labs to teach as well. Ralph, thanks for the memories!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]" W.C.R.

[*Dr. Alex had medical tests in fall 1963. The diagnosis of myasthenia gravis, a neuro-muscular disease, was discovered to be incorrect more than ten years later when he suddenly could not find his way home after a day's work actually a benign brain tumor, the "first" brain tumor. There was at least one more to be removed and several spinal tumors as well. A terrible infection caused him to be very slow to recover from the second brain tumor surgery, and a square portion of bone was removed from the front of his skull. After that he had a square depression in the front of his head. Because he had spinal arthritis in the last few years of his life he and was bent over, and the depression could not be missed.]

Soon after a second brain tumor surgery, Dr. Alex wrote to a student, "I am recovering slowly, but I am sure I will be unable to come to Indiana [MSA Fiftieth Anniversary meeting, Bloomington, Indiana, August 1981] for the meetings. I had counted on it but the gods willed otherwise. I guess I should be glad to be alive…."

["From the desk of C. J. Alexopoulos" memo pads were a staple on his desk. He used these memos in the way we use Post-it notes today. These are from the collection of Ralph Gustafson]

October 10, 1969

All mycology graduate students:
I have reason to believe that very few of you make an effort to keep up with current literature in mycology.

I suggest that you set a definite time once a week to visit the Biology Library and read articles related to research or to mycology in general and scan the new issues of all periodicals received. It is imperative that those of you working on physiology or biochemistry of fungi or myxomycetes consult Chemical Abstracts in the Chemistry Library.

Perhaps we should meet weekly to discuss current literature.

C.J.A.

October 21, 1969

All mycologists:

We have been using agar at an extraordinary rapid rate and I am sure that we could drastically reduce our consumption if we followed the following rules:

1. Do not pour large quantities of petri plates at one time to store for use at some future date. The agar dries before you know it and is wasted.

2. Use small petri dishes whenever feasible (most of the time). If a shortage develops let me know and I shall buy more.

3. Reduce the amount of agar used in each dish. We all use much more than is needed. Even if you save 1 or 2ml per dish it will make a big difference in consumption.

I have recently read somewhere that the algal beds of California from which most of our agar comes from are being rapidly depleted and that a considerable jump in price is inevitable in the near future. Our resources are not inexhaustible; neither are our grant funds. PLEASE TAKE THE ABOVE SERIOUSLY, OTHERWISE I SHALL HAVE TO RATION THE AGAR AND THAT WILL SLOW DOWN YOUR RESEARCH.

C.J.A.

November 10, 1969

Please come to my office weekly on the designated hour to discuss progress in your research.

Don -Friday 10:00 a.m.

Ralph -Tuesday 10:00 a.m.

Tim [Tim T. Ellis (Ph.D. Texas, 1975)] -Monday 10:00 a.m.

Wally [Wallace M. LeStourgeon (Ph.D. Texas, 1970)] -Wednesday 10:00 a.m.

If these times conflict with classes please let me know immediately."

C.J.A.

July 17, 1970 (A note from Dr. Alex from the University of Washington where he was teaching for a summer to R.G.)

Nothing seems to be going right here. I have a very dumb class of 35 undergraduates who sleep through my lectures and who after 4 weeks of mycology can't tell a sporangium from a perithecium and don't particularly care.*

Good luck on your German.**

C.J.A.

[*Dr. Alex could never understand why, when given the opportunity to learn, few students took advantage.]

**[Texas required a reading knowledge language exam for the Ph.D.; Dr. Alex sometimes remembered to administer an exam he required in a second language.]

May 10, 1971

I am reporting a grade of A for all of you in research although none of you has made significant progress in your research for this semester. I would be ashamed to do anything less for my majors.

I will expect those of you that are here this summer to devote all of your time to research and make much progress. Those who will be away will be expected to work twice as hard next fall.

Please take this note seriously. I could have talked to you individually about this but I wanted you to have it in writing. C.J.A.

From a letter to Meredith Blackwell from Dr. Alex

10 December 1974
One of the boxes in the UTMC [University of Texas Myxomycete Collection] bears the inscriptions:
UTMC-1405
D. hemisphaericum
See UTMC-1404
L. scintillans
Do you, by any chance, have that box or do you know anything about it? I do not have it filed under either L. alexopouli or L. scintillans. Have a nice holiday.

C.J.A.

[Dr. Alex worked very hard, and continued to do microscope work late into his career. During the time of "myasthenia gravis" he had constant double vision and worked by covering one eye with a hand. We all had ready access to the slime mold collection and his library. All of the sign-out systems he devised failed, and he was never certain if things were borrowed or mislaid on his very messy desk and work benches.]
Meredith's last "from the desk of C. J. Alexopoulos" note mailed in an envelope long after leaving Texas
24 March 1976
Happy birthday and thanks for your card*. I usually do not support the greeting card racket except at Christmas, so this will have to do for now.

C.J.A.

[*Our birthdays were ten days apart, so he always was reminded of mine when he got a card. His birthday was always easy to remember because it was on St. Patrick's Day.]

Ralph recalls the Christmas letters and writes: "After we graduated and moved to our new positions Dr. Alex would send a Christmas Season's Greeting letter with updates of how he was doing and where he and wife Juliet had traveled that year and how they were doing health wise. These continued up to a couple of years before he died. Some quips from some of these letters show he did have a sense of humor and was more political than he showed when we were there in graduate school." Ralph's files produced the quotes from the Christmas letters that are interspersed below:

February 9, 1977 (Ready for retirement and his standard reply to student's questions).

I retire officially on May 31, 1977 but actually when I give my final exam in this course I am teaching this semester, i.e., on May 16, 9-12 a.m. That, if my mathematics are correct, is exactly 96 days from now, it being noon at the time I am writing this. I can hardly wait! I shall still have my office and the small private lab space next to it so that I may come at will and work on my myxos, but the key words here are `at will.' No more: `How much of all this do we have to know" (Standard reply: `You don't have to know anything, so far as I am concerned. You can remain ignorant all your life'!)*

I hope to see all of you in Tampa next August [1977] at IMC² ** C.J.A

*[Dr Alex had added the following hand written statement

"This is why no one has ever called me a "nice " person!"]

[**Many Alexopoulos students went to Tampa and saw Dr. Alex there to open the congress as the first President of the International Mycological Association. The evening of the opening, however, he had a mild heart attack and missed the rest of the meeting.]

But Dr. Alex did go to many meetings where he was always surrounded by his students. He made certain we were introduced to prominent mycologists whose papers we had read in his courses. Judi recalls, "In the last meetings he attended with us we had dinner parties where he would refer to us as the `stars in his crown' —and assure us that the glory days were over for mycologists." —JTE

From a short letter to Meredith —17^th May 1977

I have given my last exam*, and am about to turn in my grades. After that I am a free man.

Best regards,C.J.A.

*[Late in his career Dr. Alex offered a new course that he had always wanted to teach economic botany. He worked hard to prepare for the course and had a huge number of files on all aspects of economically important plants. He was helpful to me and copied all of the materials for me when I did a similar course.]

December 1980 Christmas letter (three years after retiring)

"Speaking of our new [US] president, one of you (was it you, Don [Reynolds]) asked me how I thought science research would fare under the new regime. Since I supported Ron Reagan, I think I'll write him a letter and tell him I support his policy of cutting down government expenses and that he should start with NSF and NIH. After all, who wants taxpayer's money to help investigate the sex life of the myxomycetes or the ultrastructure of sooty molds or the Myxomycetes of Hawaii? (Hawaii went to Carter in November, anyway). As for the desert myxomycetes, they don't belong there at all, so let them be.*

Enough chatter —Happy New Year"

C.J.A.

P.S. Another sad piece of news —We lost our cat** to some horrible disease. Had to have him put away.

*The conservative streak showed as well as acerbic wit.

**At Texas we all knew Melanie, adopted in Ames, Iowa, she lived to be about 18. She was buried under the big fig tree on Calithea Drive. There were cats that preceded Melanie, and this one followed because Melanie was not a "him."

R.G.'s last Christmas letter from Dr. Alex.—November 29, 1983

My body is getting weaker all the time, and I hardly get up from my Lazy Boy chair until bedtime. I pass my time reading whatever I can lay my hands on. Please send me your reprints as your papers get into print. I am always happy to see your work, and so many of you have done so well I am proud to have been your teacher.

Juliet and I wish you all a Very Merry Christmas. May 1984 be a happy Non-Orwelian Year for all of us, but watch out for Big Brother (the I.R.S.)!

C.J.A.

From a letter Dr. Alex wrote to Henry Aldrich*.12 December 1983.

Dear Henry, All the student letters [see immediately above] have been signed and mailed. Just in case we do a 1984 letter or for your own information when the time comes to notify my students of my demise, I want to make a few corrections in your list as follows…. [He noted the death of a first T.A., updated an address for one and a name for another, and noted loosing track of a student.]

C.J.A.

*Henry Aldrich, who defended his thesis at age 24 and spent the rest of his life at the University of Florida, continued to do many small favors for Dr. Alex after he left Texas. In addition to helping with the Christmas letters noted above, Henry kept Dr. Alex
supplied with tangerine marmalade from Stucky's, a gift shoprestaurant chain with a store on a highway near Gainesville.

From a letter to M.B.—10 July 1983 (Sunday noon).—The card with all the signatures and news from the MSA meeting* arrived yesterday afternoon.… This has been a great meeting for our mycological family and I am so happy to still be alive to see so many of you being honored. I have always felt I was primarily a teacher and it gives me the greatest pleasure to see so many of my students doing so well. Keep it up all of you!

C.J.A.

[*Ames, Iowa, June 1983]

Soon after Christmas 1985 I met Henry Aldrich in Lake Charles where he had spent Christmas vacation with family, and we drove to Austin; we packed up Dr. Alex's office and sent all his correspondence to the university archives to be sealed for fifty years. The books and journals were taken to Calithea Drive; the journals were packed away in a storage building on the property. On the first day of packing Mrs. Alex was sent to lunch with friends so we could get the packing done. Early the next morning Billie Turner [UT plant systematist extraordinaire] found Mrs. Alex in the dumpster behind the botany building checking to see what had been thrown away. At his home we added bars around the bath and raised the bed so that Dr. Alex might be able to manage a little longer with only Mrs. Alex's help.

Even at that time she was concerned about finding a simple pine casket required for a Greek Orthodox funeral. Because neither of them had seemed especially religious when I knew them, I was surprised by her insistence about the requirement. The day after Dr. Alex died, a young orthodox priest with an oddly Scots surname came to discuss the funeral. Mrs. Alex was still worried about the casket. He finally set her worry to rest by saying one must be practical and went on to discuss material for the eulogy.

Dr. Alex was committed to us for life. We relied on him for more recommendation letters, general advice, and information on all things mycological. Here George C. Carroll relates an exchange about a negative.

"Although at times a hard taskmaster and a rather formal person, Dr. Alex took great pride in his students' accomplishments and went to considerable lengths to help with publications and give useful advice. As a young assistant professor Dr. Alex provided both to me in generous measure.

I particularly remember an incident in 1972 dealing with an EM negative I needed for a publication. As a graduate student in the cell research institute at the University of Texas I had worked on the fine structure of ascospore development for my Ph.D thesis. Not all of my thesis work was published when I took a job at the University of Oregon, and several years later I found that I needed a good print from a particularly difficult negative to submit for publication. All negatives from the Cell Research Institute EM lab at the University of Texas were considered property of the institution and stayed on site. What to do? I certainly had neither time nor money to travel to Austin from Oregon to get the needed print. So I wrote to Dr. Alex with an improper suggestion could he snitch the negative I needed, send it to me, and then surreptitiously replace it after a short lapse?

Alex replied that he did not think he could visit the negative archive unnoticed and that he, understandably, did not want to damage cordial relations he had established with colleagues in the EM lab over a 10 year period. Instead he asked the powers that were to make a print. The print materialized and Alex kindly sent it on to me. Unfortunately, as expected, it was completely unsatisfactory for publication. I wrote again, explaining my dilemma.

I received a letter on November 3^rd expressing his dismay as follows:

`Dear George,

You are certainly pushing your luck or rather mine. I did not tell Joyce the prints were for you. I let her understand they were for me, something I was publishing. When she brought them I told her they were fine! Now, how do I go back and tell her to redo them? I'll have to think of something but right now my mind is a blank and my pessimism at its zenith. Anyway, this is Friday afternoon and nothing can be done until Monday at the earliest.

I suppose I should not be so chicken and should invade the sanctum sanctorum and snitch the negative for you, but at my age I have lost all desire for adventure and have become ultra-conservative and law-abiding to a disgusting degree. Don't give up; I may think of something.'

I must have replied in even more plaintive vein. On December 1 came the following:

`Dear George:

Your letter stirred me into action. First I asked myself the obvious question: Are you a man or a mouse? The reply came loud and clear: I am a mouse! But not so much of a mouse as not to be a skunk at the same time. So I did what any skunk would do, i.e. ask one of my students to get the negative for me. He did. Here it is. He is now responsible to CRI, I to him, and you to me. Let's break the chain as soon as possible by returning the negative to its folder or whatever they keep it in.

Remember, the mouse will worry until the negative has been replaced.

One more thing. In your acknowledge-ments, don't thank me for stealing the negative from CRI. My student should get the credit, but I shall not give you his (her) name!

Best regards,
CJA'

All of this is to say that Alex could be generous and very funny when the occasion demanded. This must have contributed greatly to his success as a teacher. Needless to say the negative got printed and returned in a matter of a week." —GCC

In addition to his students, another person in Dr. Alex's life at Texas was phycologist and department chairperson [chairman in those days], Harold Bold, mentioned earlier as a member of the committee that wrote the memorial resolution. Dr. Bold was instrumental in luring Dr. Alex to Texas, but he always said he took the job because of several offers for Fall 1962, Texas was the only one in which he was not be required to be chairperson. They maintained a close friendship. Dr. Alex once compared himself with Dr. Bold by saying that Harold wanted to be loved by everyone, implying that he himself was not —likely because he was too scrupulously honest.

On August 1, 1966 the two friends went to lunch as they did several days a week; this was the day of the Texas tower sniper, and we assumed a phone call from Mrs. Alex inquiring about Dr. Alex indicated that she knew about the shots fired from a high-powered rifle on the campus. Unfortunately, we inadvertently broke the news to her, and worse yet, we did not know if they had had avoided the shots that hit several people just outside the building. As we looked out windows toward the Union, we saw several injured people, and hoped that Drs. Alex and Bold had not walked to the Union at the wrong time. They later returned from an unusually long off-campus lunch, never even knowing what was happening until they tried to get into the campus.

Along with Dr. Alex came Juliet Catherine Dowdy Alexopoulos. Born in Lincoln, Illinois, on September 1, 1904, Mrs. Alex died at their home in Austin, Texas, on July 20, 2000 at the age of 95. She was an accomplished pianist with a B.S. degree from the University of Kansas and an M.S. from the Eastman School of Music. In fact she and Mrs. Harold Bold, her good friend, had similar musical backgrounds, a basis for their close friendship apart from the association of their husbands. She had joined the music faculty at Kent State in 1936, the year after Dr. Alex had become a faculty member there. They met soon after and were married August 26, 1939. She supported and promoted him fiercely throughout the rest of his life. Periodically, she entertained the graduate students with great hospitality and wonderful food, and we aspired to a beautiful home such as the one she had designed. Their home was filled with thick Turkish (literally) carpets and tasteful artwork, including a Greek icon over five hundred years old. I once was told by a visiting professor that I would be welcome as a postdoc in his lab, but probably would not like it, because I would never be invited to his home that just was not done in his country.

After Dr. Alex died Mrs. Alex bought her first computer to revise for publication a manuscript they had worked on intermittently "Collector's Items, " including a "On the Trail of the Slime Mold," chapters describing various trips the work with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Greece (1946-1947), another year (1954-1955) on a Fullbright Fellowship to Greece, various collecting trips, including one made unforgettable by a robbery under the pseudonym Alex Kosta! One chapter I enjoyed most described his work with the Rubber Development Corporation during World War II, when he traveled far up the Amazon from Manaus to the vicinity of Benjamin Constant in a largely failed attempt to improve harvesting of the native Hevea latex badly needed for tires on military vehicles; importation of rubber from the plantations of southeastern Asia had been cut off by war perhaps reason for certain of his conservative views with parallels in today's world.

Although he was born in Chicago, the Alexopoulos family returned to Greece when Dr. Alex was a young boy, so that his father could do mandatory service in the Greek army. They all returned to Chicago when Dr. Alex was began high school, but his parents and sister returned to Greece some time later. Dr. Alex's parents lived into their 90s and died in Athens not so many years before he did. His only sibling, Theodora ("Dora") Pantos and her husband, a businessman, also lived in Athens where she worked for an international charitable organization. Dora died in Athens September 29, 1993. Her husband had died somewhat earlier. Neither Dora, younger than her brother, nor Dr. Alex had lineal heirs.

Juliet's nephew, Ellis Smith, his daughter Leslie, and Leslie's two daughters are the last of Juliet's close relatives.

Meredith Blackwell (Ph.D. Texas, 1973), Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803

Additional Contributors:

Ralph Gustafson (Ph.D. Texas, 1973), Department of Biology, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC 29733

Wayne C. Rosing (Ph.D. Texas, 1975), Biology Department, Middle Tennessee University, Murfreesboro TN37132

Charles W. Mims (Ph.D. Texas, 1969), Department of Plant Pathology, University of Georgia, Athens GA 30602

Joanne Tontz Ellzey (Ph.D. Texas, 1969), Department of Biological Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, Texas 79968

Steve Bratteng (M.A. Texas, 1968), Teacher, Westwood High School, Austin, Texas 78750

Don R. Reynolds (Ph.D. Texas, 1970), Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 900 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90007

George C. Carroll, (Ph.D. Texas, 1966), Department of Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403

Literature cited

C. J. A. 1906-1986. <http://lsb380.plbio.lsu.edu/LabPersonnel/cja.html>.

Blackwell, M. 1988. C. J. Alexopoulos. A brief history. Transactions of the British Mycological Society 90:153-158.

Brodie, H. J. 1987. Constantine John Alexopoulos, 1907-1986. Mycologia 79: 163-165, frontispiece.

Truman State University's Solar Clock Garden

Students at Truman State University now have less reason to be late for class. In spring 2005, a sundial and floral clock were installed on campus. Now students always know what time it is especially if the sun is shining.

This large project, which occupies approximately 3500 square feet south of Magruder Hall, Truman's newly renovated and expanded science building, includes two main elements, a horizontal sundial constructed of low concrete walls and a floral clock garden planted within the sundial. Together they comprise the Gaber Solar Clock Garden, named for Drs. Ron and Elsie Gaber, local residents who generously provided funding to get this project off and into the ground.

The Sundial

Construction of the sundial was completed last spring. The design emerged from an interdisciplinary class taught by Associate Professor of Physics, Dr. Matt Beaky. He took ideas proposed by student groups and modified these to fit the available site. The sundial's concrete walls were built by Truman's physical plant staff. A 12-foot tall post the gnomon was milled from a red cedar tree that formerly grew on the site but that had to be cut to accommodate construction of the building. The gnomon indicates time by casting its shadow across "hour lines" that radiate across the site. An interesting addition is the presence of three cross walls (see photo). These walls intersect the hour lines and are positioned such that the tip of the gnomon's shadow follows the far arc on the winter solstice (shortest day, longest shadow!); the close arc on the summer solstice (longest day, shortest shadow); and the single straight path on the two equinoxes. These three cross walls, as well as the "local noon" hour marker, were made wider than the others to allow visitors to walk out into the garden.

Looking down on Truman's solar clock garden from across the street; the time is approximately 4 p.m. in late summer. Some plants have gone by and have been removed, making the sundial walls clearly visible, including the winter solstice arc, the summer solstice arc, and the straight equinox path. Image by Courtney Robbins.

Design of the sundial presented numerous challenges, not least of which is the fact that the ground is not level, but slopes slightly from northeast to southwest. This made the calculations of angles and arcs more challenging which is why I'm a botanist and not a physicist!

The Floral Clock

Carl Linnaeus is best remembered for his development of the binomial system of nomenclature, but he also wrote and lectured on many other topics. One of his observations, mentioned in Philisophia Botanica, was the idea that carefully selected plants could be arranged such that the plants' flowers would open and close sequentially through the day. He referred to this type of planting as a horologium florae, or floral clock. Although Linnaeus did not actually plant such a garden, he did recommend a number of plants that could be used.

When I learned of plans for our sundial, I immediately realized that the "cells" formed by its intersecting walls would make wonderful garden beds. I was familiar with Linnaeus's idea for a floral clock, and given the theme of time inherent in a sundial, this seemed a perfect opportunity to attempt a floral clock. And of course, operating under the tenet true at most universities "s/he who suggests, does" responsibility for the gardening project fell to me.

The solar clock garden viewed from the west, taken early in the season. The flowers of Gazania are open in the foreground, and the gardens "cells," or planting beds, are evident. Inclusion of the equinox wall divided each hour into two smaller planting areas. Image by Tim Barcus.

The solar clock garden viewed from the east, taken before planting was complete. The garden slopes slightly from northeast (far right, in photo) to southwest. Image by Tim Barcus.

I quickly recruited then-undergraduate Abbie Smith to work on the project, and we began a search for candidate plants. We started with Linnaeus's list, but realized some of his selections would do poorly in the climate and clay soils of northeast Missouri. Other plants on his list were invasive species that we did not wish to include, while still others were difficult to obtain. We also had a large area to plant, and for any given section, we wished to have at least one species in flower at all times, meaning we needed several species for each time slot. We also quickly learned that although it's easy to find out when during the growing season a plant is in flower a piece of information important to gardeners and farmers it's another thing altogether to find out what time of day a plant's flowers are open.

The author (far left) with his ecology class. The view is across the garden from west to east. The prominent, straight sidewalk is the path followed by the tip of the gnomon's shadow on the two equinoxes. Plants in the foreground include flower-of-an-hour (Hibiscus trionum) `Luyona' and Calendula officinalis `Radio'. Image by Tim Barcus.

And so the search began. We scoured the botanical and gardening literature; we looked in seed and nursery catalogs; and we searched the web. We consulted local gardeners, fellow Master Gardeners, and horticulturists across the country. I even developed a lab for my botany class in order to get them involved. In the end, we uncovered many dozens of candidate species with sometimes contradictory information. Then we moved into the greenhouse…

Fortunately, part of the expansion of Magruder Hall included the addition of a large, new greenhouse, and the solar clock garden project usurped as much bench space as we could in order to start plants from seed. Most of this greenhouse work was done by undergraduates. We began and nurtured many of our candidate plants under glass, in the process rejecting some species that didn't behave as anticipated.

Abbie and I actually started work in the fall of 2003, expecting to plant the following spring. Unfortunately, construction of the sundial was delayed and the project was postponed a year. Finally, last spring, the sundial was completed and the site was turned over to us, though at that point it was nowhere near ready for planting. Although the walls of the sundial were in place, the soil within the cells was hard-packed and difficult to work, reflecting its recent history as a construction site. Pitchforks and shovels especially those wielded by aging Associate Professors of Biology barely penetrated this hardpan. Nonetheless, virtually all dirt work was done by hand. Fortunately, many volunteers stepped forward, including Truman administrators, faculty, staff, and family; community members; and many students. These ranged from Truman students taking classes or doing summer research, to Junior High students on campus for a special program, to some very strong members of Truman's football team.

Piles of rubble and excess soil were removed, and two truckloads of aged horse manure were brought in from Truman's farm and worked into the soil. Then, on Saturday, June 4, 2005, the first specimens were planted. Abbie, having already graduated, drove back to Kirksville for a long weekend of hard labor in order to be on hand for the inaugural planting. Other students who had worked with me during the school year also came back from their summer homes to help with this final push and initial planting. Then, over the next several weeks, we added plants while we completed work on the last few cells. By the time we were done, we had planted more than 30 species in the garden, fewer than planned but not bad for the first (hot, dry!) year, especially given our late start.

Time Will Tell

Of course, the first question people usually ask is, Does the clock garden work? The sundial works extremely well, especially for those willing to adjust for the "precession of time." (Sundial enthusiasts know what this means!)

Overall, the floral clock also "worked," though with some qualifications. Our placement was nearly perfect for some species but a bit off for others; in addition, some species were more consistent in their time of opening than were others.

Among the more reliable plants were the Gazania hybrid cultivars, which were planted in front of the "equinox wall," in the 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. cell. These were among the stars of the garden; not only did they contribute color during nearly the entire growing season, but they consistently opened during their "appointed" time. It wasn't until late summer, perhaps due to cooler temperatures, that these plants began sleeping later in the morning!

Gazania hybrid cultivars. These multi-colored composites opened reliably between 9 and 10 a.m. through most of the summer. Image by Tim Barcus.

We planted two cultivars of blue pimpernel (Anagallis monellii), and we hedged our bets. We planted `Blue Lights' in the 9-10 a.m. section, and that's when it opened; a smaller-flowered cultivar was planted in the 10-11 a.m. section, but it also tended to open before 10:00. We planted the Missouri native rock pink (Talinum calycinum) in the 2-3 p.m. section, and its buds would begin unwrapping "like clockwork" each afternoon, right on cue.

One of the garden favorites was the native passionflower (Passiflora incarnata), which we grew on two trellises in the back of the 11-noon and noon-1 p.m. sections. (Remember, during Daylight Savings Time, the shadow falls along the "local noon" line at 1 p.m., not at noon.) The spectacular flowers of these climbers would usually begin opening around 11:30 or so, and depending on conditions (temperature? humidity?), the length of time required for these flowers to open tended to vary. One day I watched a flower go from closed bud to fully open in less than five minutes. Not only did I watch the petals and corona uncurl and flatten, I watched the stamens flip over and I could hear the parts moving against each other! I got in the habit of going out to the garden to observe and photograph this spectacle and I think students got in the habit of walking on the other side of the street so I wouldn't drag them over to watch this show yet again! Each flower on this plant lasts but a single day, after which it partially closes and fades. We got our plants into the ground late, but they still had sufficient time to set fruit, although not quite enough to fully sweeten.

The late afternoon section of the garden was also popular, for it was here that we planted species whose flowers either opened or secreted nectar late in the day or during the evening. The combined aroma of flowering tobacco (Nicotiana alata `Lime Green' and `Grandiflora'), night phlox (Zaluzianskya capensis `Midnight Candy'), and night-scented stock (Matthiola longipetala) would sometimes stop passersby in their tracks. We also planted the Missouri evening primrose (Oenothera macrocarpa), whose flowers are macro very large indeed. This spring we will add moonflower (Ipomoea alba), evening catchfly (Silene noctiflora), and others.



The solar clock garden at about 9 a.m. The tall plants in front of the vent pipes are okra; those on the far right are passionflowers (Passiflora incarnata). The portulacas in the foreground are just beginning to open. Image by Courtney Robbins.

Two edible species, okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) and a dwarf summer squash (Cucurbita pepo `Zephyr') added another somewhat unusual element to the garden. These each have large flowers that open in the morning and close later the same day, and they provide a nice link between horticulture and economic botany. I got in the habit of placing the day's harvest in a basket next to the sidewalk along with recipes.

Undergraduate biology major Nicole Asal and the author spreading mulch. Mulch was added to suppress weeds, conserve soil moisture, and add organic matter. Image by Tim Barcus.

We had successes, but we also had disappointments. The moss roses, or eleven o'clocks, (Portulaca grandiflora) were nice to look at but were unpredictable in their opening; on sunny days they almost always opened earlier than 11:00. The four o'clocks (Mirabilis nyctaginea and M. jalapa) were similarly unpredictable, sometimes opening early, sometime late but they did add nice color and texture to the afternoon section of the garden. By spending as much time as possible in the garden and taking note of what each species was doing, we can make adjustments this year, especially since many of the plants are annuals and will need to be replanted.

Are We There Yet?

As all gardeners know, a garden is never finished. Because we got a late start last year, we didn't plant the entire bed, which increased the need for weeding. As mentioned above, we also placed some plants in the "wrong" cells, and they must either be moved or planted in different sections this spring. And there are new species to include, new cultivars to try, compost and mulch to add, weeds to pull, and the list goes on…

We have also been busy this winter. Four undergraduates in Dr. Steve Chappell's Design & Layout class developed a descriptive brochure and web site for the clock garden. The brochure will be printed and placed in a box within the garden, much like one sees at state and national parks. And by the time this issue of the Plant Science Bulletin is available, the garden's web site should be active at //solarclockgarden.truman.edu. We have a permanent sign to install, and benches and a table to place behind the garden to encourage visitors to linger and eat lunch. Undergraduate Katrina Brink and I are currently developing garden-based curriculum materials for elementary school teachers and their students to use, and we are seeking additional funding for this outreach effort. In the meantime, biology, art, and other Truman classes as well as Kirksville city residents out for a walk are already taking advantage of this new campus garden as are the bees, dragonflies, birds, squirrels, rabbits, and other wildlife.

And how else will this sundial and clock garden be used by students, faculty, and city residents? Only time will tell…

Steven B. Carroll, Division of Science, Truman State University, Kirksville, MO 63501. 660.785.4610. scarroll@truman.edu

News from the Society

Looking to the Future
Conserving the Past

July 28 - August 3, 2006, Chico, California

www.2006.botanyconference.org

Conference Overview

The annual Botany Conference brings together a broad spectrum of researchers, professors, educators and motivated students, all focused on what's new and vibrant in plant biology. Botany 2006 promises to be the most stimulating to date as we celebrate one hundred years of promoting and advancing the rich and diverse fields of plant sciences. This Centennial Celebration brings together our four leading professional societies, namely the Botanical Society of America, the American Bryological and Lichenological Society, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, and the American Fern Society. The meeting will focus on the important achievements of our members and will highlight prominent botanists whose contributions have shaped and advanced the varied fields of plant biology.

An anticipated 1000 participants will present over 700 scientific contributions including papers, posters, special lectures and 15 symposia. A full slate of field trips and scientific workshops and social events will round out the program.

Botany 2006 is being held on the campus of Chico State University, Chico, California Saturday, July 29, will feature the 5th Educational and Outreach Forum. This successful component of the Botany conference is designed to draw educators and researchers involved in the teaching of biology and plant science from kindergarten through college. The day will include a range of engaging interactive sessions, a keynote lecture and a concluding reception that will provide an opportunity for attendees to discuss and network in a social setting. For the first time, teachers will be able to apply for California Continuing Professional Education Credits to participate in Forum activities.

Sunday, July 30th, will be an active day of scientific workshops, and fieldtrips. Sunday evening will open the scientific meeting with the conference-wide Plenary Lecture, followed by an All Society Mixer.

Monday morning, July 31st, kicks off the scientific sessions and symposia. Tuesday afternoon, August 1^st, will feature a conference-wide Poster Session, with an expected 400 posters featuring current research and recent topics. Scientific Sessions will conclude on Wednesday, August 2nd. Participating Societies will also hold social events and meetings throughout the week.

Participating Societies

  American Fern Society (AFS)

  American Society of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT)

  Botanical Society of America (BSA)     

New at Botany 2006

Advertise at the Fair - A new feature that will be incorporated into this year's meeting is a Graduate School-Post-Doc-Job Fair. This event will occur on Sunday, July 29, 2006 prior to the Plenary Talk. As professional members of the BSA, you are invited to represent your department or research program to interact with and recruit quality students and professionals. Stay tuned to the Botany 2006 website for details and information on how you and your institution can become part of this new event.

Increasing Undergraduate Diversity in Botany

The Botanical Society of America (BSA) is pleased to announce the fourth year of a program entitled "Increasing diversity at the annual Botanical Society of America meeting," This program is supported by the National Science Foundation (Undergraduate Mentoring in Environmental Biology (UMEB) Program) and will provide financial and professional assistance for 10 minority (African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Native Americans/Alaskan Natives and persons with disabilities) undergraduate research students to attend the Botany 2006 conference. Through a supportive mentoring network and orientation activities, the students will be integrated into professional and social activities of the Botany 2006 conference (www.botanyconference.org/). If you know of an eligible and deserving undergraduate who would benefit from this experience, or if you would like to serve as a mentor, please contact Karen Renzaglia (renzaglia@plant.siu.edu) or Jeffrey Osborn (josborn@truman.edu). A call for applications and application guidelines are available on the BSA (www.botany.org) and Botany 2006 (www.botanyconference.org) web sites. The deadline for applications is May 15, 2006. This program is an important step towards strengthening the science workforce by utilizing the full range of intellectual talent from diverse ethnic and minority populations. We encourage and welcome your participation.

100 Years of Service to the Plant Sciences - What is the BSA Doing in "Looking to the Future?"

In the late 1990s the Society went through a planning process to ensure a focused approach to the future. The outcome was the report Botany in the Next Millennium (www.botany.org/bsa/millen/). From there the Society began to take up the challenges the document posed. One of its major recommendations was the establishment of a permanent staff to give us the ability to meet our future needs and respond to the remaining recommendations. In late 2002 the BSA set up its home at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Many positive changes have occurred over the past several years with the establishment of the BSA Business Office. You now have a multi-talented staff team of seven dedicated people, who do everything from processing memberships to running professional Botany Conferences, managing (and improving) journal publication processes to acting as a membership support team, and to creating and implementing educational materials and activities with members through website development. We feel we have improved the way the Society operates and how it serves you, the members. In saying this, we also want you to know we are looking for ways to do even more. Please consider it important to let us know how we might better serve you and your colleagues. Take a few moments and send us your comments and ideas when you see something that might be improved.

We'd like you to know that your dues, donations, energy and support are having a direct impact on the BSA and enhancing our ability to deliver on our mission and objectives. Wise decisions by BSA leaders and the generosity of members have put us in a good position to focus on the future. At the same time, the environment for science and scientific societies continues to change. Careful planning and prudent fiscal development will be needed to keep us strong. In essence, we are building on, and adding to, the foundation established over 100 years ago.

Yes, YOUR Society is on the move, and it is due to the many committed members, like yourself, who volunteer their time, talents, and financial support to the many facets of the Society. Your ideas, assistance and continued support are essential.

So what has changed in the last few years? Acting on input from members, here are a few of the things staff have enacted:

·   Reducing or eliminating AJB page charges for BSA members;
·   Reducing or eliminating AJB color images charges for BSA members;
·   Online manuscript submissions;
·   Improving "time to print" for the AJB by two months in 2005;
·   Improving delivery time of the AJB by over 15 days (online & print);
·   Funding of $25,000+ per year to support conference activities and awards;
·   Providing 60+ awards per year to support student development;
·   Keeping membership costs (dues, subscriptions and meeting registration) at reasonable levels;
·   Adding online member services, www.botany.org/newsite/membership/;
·   Instituting almost instantaneous response times for member support from the BSA Business Office;
·   Developing educational activities (we are just getting started!);
            - Scientific Inquiry through Plants (Sip³), www.plantbiology.org;
            - Carnivorous Plants, www.botany.org/carnivorous_plants/;
·   Developing the BSA website, www.botany.org;
            - Adding AJB archive abstracts and full article access online, www.botany.org/ajb/
            - Adding PSB archive online, www.botany.org/plantsciencebulletin/;
            - Developing the BSA online image collection, www.botany.org/plantimages/;
·   Developing the Botany Conference website, www.2006.botanyconference.org;
            - Online conference abstract submission & registration.

And who, you might ask, are the people making things happen and what their roles? This is your staff team.

Johanne Stogran Conference & Meeting Manager

Johanne is the longest-serving BSA staff member. She joined the BSA in 2001 and soon found herself running the show as the only member of staff, working from an office at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

Since the addition of her professional colleagues at the World Headquarters, Johanne has moved to serving the BSA in her area of expertise, conference management. She works to offer you best possible conferences, ones that are vibrant and focused on what's new in botany. This entails selecting sites, managing the conference website, producing the meeting documents, recruiting exhibitors and tending to a myriad of other details.

The meeting annex of the World Headquarters of botany is in Johanne's home in Columbus, Ohio. It is also important to mention her family, the unofficial staff at the meetings, who help ensure that everything happens as it should. As we move forward in the future of botany, plans are in place to meet with a variety of societies and associations that share the same focus. Visit the meeting website often to catch the latest news. Also, any ideas you have to make the meetings more meaningful to you as professionals, please let Johanne know - johanne@botany.org.

Wanda Lovan, Administrations Officer

Wanda joined the team in 2003. She leads the BSA's membership and institutional support services. During the past three years, she has revolutionized BSA business operational and accounting procedures. She represents the "engine room" of Society activities. Timely and efficient membership services and subscription fulfillment to institutions remain her top priority. Her management of the web-based financial and registration processes for the Botany Conference is extremely important.

It is also important to note her leadership role in supporting other plant groups (Solanaceae 2006 conferences as well as providing American Fern Society with membership support). This offers us the opportunity to share our "best administrative practices" and well-developed "administrative tools" with other botanical organizations. Membership or subscription questions, interest in learning more about BSA support, Wanda is the person to contact - wlovan@botany.org.

Claire Hemingway Education Director

Claire joined the team in November of 2004 as Managing Editor for the American Journal of Botany. A large part of her early role, in conjunction with Editor-in-Chief Judy Jernstedt and Production Manager Beth Hazen, was to transition the AJB from Ithaca to St. Louis. She did so on the proviso that, when the BSA was ready, she could move to a role more suited to her passion, education outreach. She is currently leading the Scientific Inquiry through Plants program, which connects BSA scientists as online mentors to students investigating plant biology in classrooms across the nation.

To promote the education objectives of the BSA, Claire will work on many fronts. Over the coming year, look for new and revised materials on the BSA website. Updating the Careers in Botany brochure and developing the Carnivorous Plants webpages (www.botany.org/Carnivorous_Plants/) are priorities. Additional education initiatives are in the planning stages, including a collaborative project with the Northwest Indian College on traditional food plants. If you would like to know more about the BSA's new education efforts (or know how to contribute to them), Claire would love to hear from you - chemingway@botany.org.

Beth Hazen, Production Editor, American Journal of Botany

AJB production time cut in half!!Beth has served the Journal and the BSA since August 2002. Initially, she served as lead copy editor, and in 2004 she also took on the role of Production Editor. She played a big part in the transition of the editorial office from Ithaca to St. Louis and in putting manuscript and image services online. Along with shortening the production schedule and ensuring earlier mailing of the journal, her efforts in the past year have been directed toward training copy editors and helping authors solve problems with figure preparation and online submissions. What is her main advice to authors to facilitate publication of their papers? Read and follow instructions, and respond within the time frames set by AJB.

Beth lives in central New York and manages the production functions from home. In addition to her quest for perfection in print, Beth also has a passion for education. She teaches workshops on writing and editing and encourages members to send in questions on writing, English, and preparing tables and figures. Your questions may be included in a workshop at the BSA annual meeting, on the BSA website, or in an article for the Plant Science Bulletin. What help would you like to receive? Please let her know - bhazen@botany.org.

Amy McPherson, Managing Editor, American Journal of Botany

Amy is the most recent addition to the BSA team, having joined in August 2005 after 16 years as Managing Editor of the Missouri Botanical Garden Press. She has truly hit the ground running. Joining in the efforts of Beth, Claire, and Editor-in-Chief Judy Jernstedt, she has helped to reduce the time from manuscript submission to print in AJB by two months. From her office at the BSA World Headquarters in St. Louis, she is eager to work with reviewers, authors, and editors to reduce the time even further and to encourage authors from all areas of botany to submit their best papers to AJB - amcpherson@botany.org.

Rob Brandt, Manager, Technology Development

Rob joined the Botanical Society staff in 2005 after working on various BSA projects as a consultant since 2003. We were pleased to offer him a permanent position and even happier when he accepted! Projects he is actively working on are the web sites for past, present and future Botany Conferences, the main www.botany.org web site, the Scientific Inquiry through Plants www.plantbiology.org web site, and a membership data application for the BSA. Pending funding availability, future projects include an image management application and redevelopment of all existing projects as products that societies similar to the BSA can use.

Rob works out of the BSA's Western Regional Office in Santa Barbara, CA. Ideas we can use for future web-based development or the improvement of existing items - rbrandt@botany.org.

Bill Dahl, Executive Director

I came to the BSA (and St. Louis) from Christchurch, New Zealand, in late 2002 to open the World Headquarters for the Society. Starting from an office in the "Possum Trading Building" of the Missouri Botanical Garden, with a desk and a phone, it has been a pleasure working to build a dedicated staff team focused on the needs of the BSA and its members. We are a team of seven with varying, yet complementary skills. We continue to operate under the BSA's "3M" concept of improving our delivery to Mission, providing excellent Member service and ensuring Member recognition. My main role is weaving our various efforts together in a manner that best accomplishes our commitment to the 3Ms.

With a century of BSA history as a foundation and an admirable mission to guide us, our roles are clear. We are here to assist you in taking the BSA forward, keeping it relevant and taking the plant sciences to a much broader audience. If I can be of any assistance please contact me - wdahl@botany.org.

We look forward meeting you all at Botany 2006 and the BSA Centennial Celebrations in Chico!

Bill Dahl, BSA Executive Director

BSA Plant Science Mentors Making a Difference

Does fertilizer have an effect on seed germination rate? Is the whole seed needed for germination? Those are some of the questions students around the country are investigating with input from plant science mentors in the Botanical Society of America's education outreach program, Scientific Inquiry through Plants (Sip³). This innovative online scientific learning community provides opportunities for students to communicate with scientists and peers in real time as they experience the adventure of doing science.

"Having scientists comment on our project was cool," said Sean, a Pershing County High School student in Lovelock, Nevada. Sean is one of the many students discovering the excitement and challenges of plant research for the first time. The pilot projects, based on the Wonder of Seeds Inquiry, rolled out in 2005 with student teams in middle school through college designing investigations on seed germination and seedling growth. Some 500 students, 8 teachers, and 40 science mentors have participated thus far.

The BSA's online mentorship program is well on its way to improving education about plants and encouraging basic plant research, both of which have long been central objectives of the Society. "Programs like this have the real potential for improving science literacy. As a long-time BSA member, I see this as one of our best educational outreach initiatives in some time," said Peter Raven, Director, Missouri Botanical Garden, Engelmann Professor of Botany, Washington University in St. Louis, and BSA Past President.

"I really enjoyed seeing the students' comments, and thinking about how to respond in a way that would guide them in conducting a scientific experiment and thinking about what is happening. The amount of time invested was small. Their enthusiasm was neat to see," said Pat Gensel, Professor of Biology, University of North Carolina, BSA Past President, and Scientific Inquiry through Plants mentor.

Online mentoring offers the added convenience of interacting with students without having to leave the office or lab. Several BSA members are reaping benefits twice over by volunteering as plant science mentors and running the inquiry projects with their classes. Beverly Brown, BSA Teaching Section Chair and author of the Wonder of Seeds Inquiry said: "I hear some students say they think plants are boring. If you question students further, you find that most have had very little exposure to plants. This project is an exciting way to introduce students to the fascinating lives of plants. They can't love what they don't know!"

Connecting students, teachers, and experts in the field is the feature that sets Scientific Inquiry through Plants apart from most other web-based education efforts. Mentorship has the potential to make classroom learning more meaningful and to inspire lifelong learning. Encouraging curiosity, motivating, deepening understanding—the positive outcomes are numerous. Online conversations with science mentors and peers help students observe closely, ask testable questions, gather information carefully, evaluate evidence critically, and present data effectively. Teachers across all education levels see building these skills as critical for student success.

Science literacy is a growing concern in the current atmosphere of test-driven K-12 education. Past issues of the Plant Science Bulletin remind us that botanical literacy in particular has a long history of neglect. In a recent survey, around one-third of biology teachers reported they did not feel qualified in plant biology. With leaders committed to improving science education, BSA has forged strong partnerships among K-12 teachers, science education researchers, and other societies to address these significant needs.

Scientific Inquiry through Plants provides teachers and students with the resources and support to improve their understanding of plant biology and to enhance the quality of their experiences with scientific inquiry. This participatory science program incorporates the latest learning theory in curriculum design and professional development activities. Current research shows that student-centered, inquiry-based learning leads to improved student thinking ski