Dear BSA Economic Botany Section Members

From: David Spooner, Chair (david.spooner@ars.usda.gov)

Re: Web Developments and Planting Science Developments for our section

The Botany 2007 meetings are fast approaching, and our section talks and business meeting will be held on Monday, July 9, with our Economic Botany luncheon on July 10. The purpose of this memo is to bring you up to date on a draft webpage for our Section and on an exciting opportunity for BSA initiative entitled PlantingScience, a learning and research resource, bringing together students, plant scientists, and teachers from across the nation. Please see: http://www.plantingscience.org/

Our Section is developing a website within the BSA site to highlight Economic Botany. Johanna Oosterwyk (jmooster@wisc.edu), a new member of our section and from the University of Wisconsin Department of Horticulture has kindly agreed to develop some initial web content, and will be at our Monday evening Section meeting. This website is not yet “live” but you can preview it at http://www.botany.org/PlantTalkingPoints/ethnobotany.php. This is only meant to be a beginning and I am sure that it can be greatly improved, with your feedback, ideas, images, links to include, and participate in any other way. Please communicate these to Johanna and/or me and at our business meeting.

Regarding PlantingScience, the BSA has just been awarded a grant from the Monsanto Fund to expand this initiative into three additional modules, to include Economic Botany. Those attending the Section meetings the last two years have advanced this idea, and the BSA and the Monsanto Corporation liked our initial ideas.

We will be discussing this idea further at our Monday evening section meeting. Please attend! Planting Science is a wonderful outreach initiative that has many benefits to our section, the BSA, and to individual members, and we look forward to your input.

Sincerely,

David M. Spooner
Chair, Economic Botany Section
Botanical Society of America
www.botany.org
www.BotanyConference.org
www.PlantingScience.org

Mission: The Botanical Society of America exists to promote botany, the field of basic science dealing with the study and inquiry into the form, function, development, diversity, reproduction, evolution, and uses of plants and their interactions within the biosphere.

The objectives of The Society are to: sustain and provide improved formal and informal education about plants; encourage basic plant research; provide expertise, direction, and position statements concerning plants and ecosystems; and foster communication within the professional botanical community, and between botanists and the rest of humankind through publications, meetings, and committees.