This presentation highlights the places and plants Dr. Darin Penneys (California Academy of Sciences) encountered during several collecting expeditions throughout the Americas and China.
Dr. Penneys also discusses his research on the Princess Flower family (Melastomataceae), including their associations with ants, mites, bees, hummingbirds, and rodents.
Bio
Darin S. Penneys
Darin S. Penneys is the John J. Rose Post-Doctoral Fellow in Botany for California Academy of Sciences.
Darin Penneys collected for four weeks this past August-September and combed the mountains along the southern border of the Yunnan Province, China in search of Melastomataceae. Although there has been much deforestation in that region for the production of rice, rubber, tea, and bananas, the protected areas harbor a tremendous amount of biodiversity. He was able to collect many species, and even some genera, found only in China and all of these will be critical for his investigation into the global phylogenetic relationships within this family.
Branch of biology that deals with plants, including the study of the structure, properties, and biochemical processes of all forms of plant life, as well as plant classification, plant diseases, and the interactions of plants with their physical environment. The science of botany traces back to the ancient Greco-Roman world but received its modern impetus in Europe in the 16th century, mainly through the work of physicians and herbalists, who began to observe plants seriously to identify those useful in medicine. Today the principal branches of botanical study are morphology, physiology, ecology, and systematics (the identification and ranking of all plants). Subdisciplines include bryology (the study of mosses and liverworts), pteridology (the study of ferns and their relatives), paleobotany (the study of fossil plants), and palynology (the study of modern and fossil pollen and spores). See alsoforestry, horticulture.
Guvana (bellucia).
I was in the Santander Valley in Colombia and ate these. You bite into it and it is alive with maggots (fruit fly?), but they are fairly harmless (according to the family doc) and the fruit is quite delicious.
I also ate hormigas culonas just outside of Bucaramanga, they taste like a cross between popcorn and peanuts.
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