Extreme Botany and the Study of Botanical Oddities

An Insight into Our Planet’s Past

Despite their fascinating morphologies, anatomy, and evolutionary history, aquatic plants remain understudied and underrepresented in herbaria. This pattern, some say, is a consequence of botanists preferring not to get their feet wet. In this webinar, Ana will show that practicing “Extreme Aquatic Botany” not only surpasses collection bias of botanical oddities, but also unveils the history of landscape evolution across time and space. Ana will specifically refer to ongoing projects at NYBG using collections in new ways to explore the fossil record, extract large-scale genetic data, and investigate how plants and rivers have evolved through time.