Botany at the California Academy of Sciences

This domestic carrot, Daucus carota sativus, was brought in by one of our volunteers. Did you know at any given time we have more than 60 volunteers on the roster? That is equivalent to 3.5 full time employees. We are very grateful for the time our volunteers spend in Botany and for the neat specimens they bring in from time to time.

We recently received a gift of a number of herbarium specimens from The San Mateo Jr. Museum. Among them, above pictures, is a plant from a remote area at the base of the Turtle Mountains, north of the ghost town of Rice, San Bernardino Co. It was collected in 1964. Does anyone have an idea what it is?

We have been databasing Melastomes! In total we have databased over 11,300 records for the Melastomataceae family in Specify (http://specifysoftware.org/)! We could not do this without the help of our volunteers and Dr. Frank Almeda's team of researchers. You can see our work in our virtual herbarium or collections portal http://collections.calacademy.org/bot/.

35mm slide scanning training is happening today in Botany at CAS. Here is a slide image from 1996 taken by Frank Almeda in Prados, Brazil. This is an image of Macairea radula (Melastomatacea).

We love our native plants in Botany at the California Academy of Sciences

Today's History Lesson. This woman in the fancy hat is Alice Eastwood, famous Botanist. In the days following the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, Alice Eastwood sacrificed life and limb to save the botanical collections at the California Academy of Sciences. It is thanks to her that we have original CAS botanical collections previous to 1906. To find out more about famous CAS botanists visit our History page here: http://research.calacademy.org/botany/collections/history

One of our friends wrote in today to ask if we could identify the plant in the picture below. We have a few hundred California Wildflowers identified on our web site here: http://research.calacademy.org/redirect This plant is called Clarkia unguiculata (Onagraceae) and this picture was taken by Larry Cooperman, avid hiker, along the Castle Rock trail adjunct to Mt. Diablo out of Walnut Creek. We will be adding this to our California Wildflowers guide.

Although we don't have a mycologist on staff we often get questions about mushrooms. For instance, this one showing up in the park is aptly named because it stinks! Clathrus pusillus a kind of stinkhorn mushroom

Tired of saying "Why don't you Google that?" Well, how about saying "Why don't you iNat that?" instead. Check out this very cool site for collaborating with nature enthusiasts. When you find an organism and you want to know more about it, just say, "Why don't you iNat that?" http://www.inaturalist.org/