Science Blog
What Gives Leaves Their Fall Color?
As the days get shorter and the nights get cooler, the leaves of our broad-leaf trees are losing their green, and entire forests are turning shades of gold and yellow, orange, red, and purple. This process is one of nature’s most beautiful spectacles, but the changes that create it occur within each tiny leaf cell, where
Nastiest. Mushroom. Ever.
An alarming fungus is popping up quick Called elegant stinkhorn or the devil’s dipstick As distasteful to the nose as it is to the eyes Its odor’s designed to attract pesky flies Insects feed on the slimy stalk And spread its spores around the block A member of family Phallaceae and Mutinus genus
Working for Watersheds
Healthy forests provide good water. That’s one of the reasons our area is known for the purity of its water. It’s also why BBG scientists are working in area watersheds to evaluate and understand the condition of these forests. Paul Harwood and I have been studying the forests of the Catskill High Peaks for the past
Herbarium Course at BBG
Students from across the U.S. and Canada are here for next two weeks to participate in a special course on herbarium techniques offered by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Here they will learn how to properly curate and conserve a scientific collection of preserved plants like the collection of
Herbarium Receives Historic Collection
Another treasure trove of plants has been given to the Garden. Hobart and William Smith University, in the Finger Lakes region of New York, has given its historic herbarium collection to BBG. “The specimens in the Hobart Collection are mostly from the last half of the 19th century. In addition to specimens from western
Global Plant Initiative Reigns in Spain
BBG’s Herbarium contains more than 310,000 preserved plant specimens, and we are working to make the information stored in it accessible to all by posting it on the internet. The Global Plants Initiative, funded by the Mellon Foundation, is an international partnership of museums and gardens with that same goal, and I
