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Plant Talk

Inside The New York Botanical Garden

Former NYBG Botanist Earns Gold

Posted in NYBG in the News, People, Science on December 3 2008, by Plant Talk

George Shakespear is Director of Science Public Relations.

Iain Prance PortraitOne of the pleasures of working at The New York Botanical Garden is meeting scientists from around the world and learning about their fascinating botanical exploration, biodiversity research, and conservation projects. The Garden is a nexus of international plant science, where scientists come to consult the incomparable collections in our herbarium and library, to confer with the Garden’s staff scientists, or, as happened the week before last, to accept a well-deserved award and to share information on current projects.

I attended the presentation by distinguished economic botanist and former Botanical Garden scientist Sir Ghillean (Iain) T. Prance on two current (and very different) projects. In the largest tract of rain forest in northern Argentina, he has been studying the ethnobotany of the Guaraní people, documenting their use of plants. The Guaraní are threatened by the expanding timber extraction industry. One result of his team’s documentation has been the purchase of more than 12,000 acres of land by the World Trust Fund to return ownership to the Guaraní. Sir Prance also talked about his systematic studies of Barringtonia, a genus of flowering plants.

French Guiana, 1981Prance was in New York to receive the Gold Medal of The New York Botanical Garden. The medal, the highest honor conferred by the Botanical Garden and awarded very infrequently, acknowledges contributions made by individuals in the fields of horticulture, plant science, and education. Iain Prance served for more than a quarter century at the Garden, arriving as a post-doctoral researcher and departing as Senior Vice President for Science. In 1988, he returned to his native Great Britain to become Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1988–1999). He was knighted in 1995.

Prance is perhaps the most prominent scientist in botanical exploration of Amazonian Brazil and is vitally interested in the documentation of the use of plants by indigenous peoples in Amazonia. That led him to found in 1981 the Garden’s Institute of Economic Botany, whose programs continue to thrive and grow.

Recent media coverage of Sir Prance includes “A Talk with Iain Prance” on Newsweek magazines’s Lab Notes blog and the Earth Watch column in the Journal News.