Current Events
December 5, 2025 Hybrid Lecture
Join us for our December meeting, which will feature a lecture by Dr. Eric Doucette titled, “A Maine Botanist’s Trip to Western Newfoundland’s Limestone Barrens.” Visit our Meetings page to learn more and for non-member registration.
Dr. Eric Doucette is the State Botanist for the Maine Natural Areas Program, where he conducts field inventories for rare plants, rare and exemplary natural habitats, and manages Maine’s official list of Threatened and Endangered plants. Prior to working at MNAP, Eric taught botany and ecology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and worked as a consulting botanist for Stantec Consulting. Eric is the president of the Josselyn Botanical Society, was a past NEBS council member, and holds a PhD in plant systematics and a BS in Botany, both from UMaine.
Congratulations to the Fernald Award Recipients
for Rhodora Vol. 125
Dr. Robert Bertin
Brett Trowbridge
Brian Keevan
The Merritt Lyndon Fernald Award Committee is pleased to recognize Dr. Robert Bertin, Brett Trowbridge, and Brian Keevan for their paper “Patterns in the flora of the Wachusett Mountain area, Princeton and Westminster, Massachusetts, U.S.A.”
Congratulations to the 2025 Junior Faculty Award Winner
Dr. Chloe Pak Drummond
Dr. Chloe Pak Drummond, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, for project “Population history, genetic diversity, and future persistence of Large-leaved Sandwort, Moehringia macrophylla (Hook.) Fenzl (Caryophyllaceae), a rare New England plant.”
Congratulations to our 2025 Graduate Student Research Award Winners
Jason Leung
Caroline Witherspoon
Jason Leung of Columbia University for project “Sequencing 19th century herbarium specimens to understand the loss of genetic diversity in a regionally extinct beach plant, Amaranthus pumilus Raf., or seabeach amaranth”
Caroline Witherspoon of SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry for project “Usnea subfloridana as a model for understanding the drivers of the distribution and ecology of imperiled Usnea lichens in the northeastern United States”
Congratulations to the 2025 Les Mehrhoff Botanical Research Award Winners
Ujjal Banik
Eric Hagen
Michael Lew-Smith
Alex Karasoulos
Emmi Kurosawa
Catherine Wessel
& Will Durkin
Ujjal Banik for project “Morphologgy and eco-physiological study of green macroalgae Ulva“
Eric Hagen and Michael Lew-Smith for project “Finding Floerkea: Using herbarium specimens and biogeographic modeling to search for new populations of the recently rediscovered Floerkea proserpinacoides in Vermont”
Alex Karasoulos for project “Targeted surveys for rare vascular plants in the brackish marshes of Massachusetts”
Emmi Kurosawa for project “A survey of 15 introduced populations of critically endangered Aldrovanda vesiculosa in New England, and characterization of ecological requirements for successful cultivation”
Catherine Wessel and Will Durkin for project “Targeted surveys for Aganilis neosctotica: Historic and rare populations in coastal Maine”