Welcome

The New England Botanical Club (NEBC), founded in 1895, is a non-profit organization that promotes the study of plants of North America, especially the flora of New England and adjacent areas. The Club publishes the journal Rhodora, holds monthly meetings during the academic year (usually at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts), maintains an herbarium of more than 253,000 sheets, has a small library, and annually grants a graduate student research award and Fernald publication award.

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Fernald Award Announced

This year's recipients of the New England Botanical Club's Merritt Lyndon Fernald Award are Jeremy C. Nettleton, Arthur C. Mathieson, Carol Thornber, Christopher D. Neefus, and Charles Yarish for their paper entitled "Introduction of Gracilaria vermiculophylla (Rhodophyta, Gracilariales) to New England, USA: Estimated Arrival Times and Current Distribution" published in Rhodora 115 (961): 28-41 (January 2013).

The study employs herbarium specimens, extensive fieldwork, and molecular analysis to determine the distribution and timing of introduction of an invasive Asiatic red alga. In the Northwest Atlantic, it was first collected in Virginia during 1998; in New England, it was first recorded from Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island in 2007. The work was made more challenging by the fact that this taxon closely resembles a native congener, so the molecular analysis was that much more important. The research highlights the challenges—and the urgency—of early detection of invasive species.

Read more...

 

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Graduate Student Research Awards for 2014 Announced

Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie of Boston University
Eva Dannenberg of Antioch University
Katherine Putney of University of Georgia

You can read their abstracts here.

The New England Botanical Club offers each year up to $2,000 total in support of botanical research to be conducted by graduate students. The awards are made to stimulate and encourage botanical research on the New England flora, and to make possible visits to the New England region by those who would not otherwise be able to do so. It is anticipated that two awards will be given, although the actual number and amount of awards will depend on the proposals received. The awards are given to the graduate student(s) submitting the best research proposal dealing with systematic botany, biosystematics, plant ecology, or plant conservation biology.

 

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NEBC is part of New England Vascular Plant Thematic Collections Network

The New England Thematic Collections Network is a collaborative effort of fifteen New England herbaria to create a digitized database of all New England vascular plants, funded by the NSF. The digital database of more than 1.3 million specimens will provide an incredibly valuable resource for the study of climate change and land-use history. The NEBC is participating in the project, in partnership with Harvard. Chuck Davis is Co-PI for the project. For more information, go to http://herbarium.peabody.yale.edu/NEVP/.

Please follow these herbarium policies:

The HUH staff are getting ready to start the digitization effort, and are placing small barcode labels throughout the collections. These are slips of standard paper, 1/3 of a sheet wide. It is vital that these labels do not get shuffled around before the image capture is completed.

When working in the combined NEBC/HUH New England collections, please take special care to keep the specimens and folders in exactly the order that you found them in, and do not move or shuffle the barcode labels. Contact one of the staff if you have any questions about the collections.

Also, please note that HUH will start compactorizing the third floor of the collection starting before the New Year. This is another project also funded by NSF. Once that effort begins the third floor materials will be unavailable for six months. The very good news is that this will greatly decompress our collections in several areas, and allow for some additional growth. It will also be a much, much nicer space for visitors.