The Garden Club of America Summer Scholarship in Field Botany
School: PhD candidate in Environmental Science, Yale University

Carbon Sequestration and Impacts on Vegetation and Soils from Enhanced Silicate Weathering

Zacharias’s research will facilitate a better understanding of the terrestrial environmental response to enhanced silicate weathering. An application of crushed basalt will be applied to a small dairy farm in northern Vermont this summer, and the impacts will be monitored over subsequent years. Rapid field scale trials will evaluate where sequestered carbon becomes stored, possible fertilization effects to vegetation, and elemental tracing. Vegetation will be monitored for species composition, root growth, hay yield, and leaf nutrient/elemental quality within the application site and several control zones.

The Garden Club of America Summer Scholarship in Field Botany
School: Master’s student, Museum Studies with a focus in Botany and Botanical Collections, The University of New Mexico

Uncovering Over 140 Years of Herbarium Specimen Data to Examine the Impacts of Climate Change on Alpine Plant Phenology in the Southern Rocky Mountains

Berkowitz’s project will investigate the long-term effects of climate change on alpine plant phenology at three Colorado peaks in the Southern Rocky Mountains: Mount Evans, Pikes Peak, and Greenhorn Mountain. Using 140 years of historical herbarium records and observational data combined with new collections, phenological patterns will be analyzed alongside climate data to better understand the effects of climate change on vulnerable alpine habitats.

The Garden Club of America Summer Scholarship in Field Botany
School: Master’s student, Plant Biology and Conservation, Northwestern University and Chicago Botanic Garden

Examining Floral Color Polymorphism in Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja coccinea)

The Garden Club of America Summer Scholarship in Field Botany

The Garden Club of America Summer Scholarship in Field Botany

An Understanding of Restoring Plant Diversity in Eastern Coastal Plain Forests

Smith’s research will study how the presence of deer is affecting the College Woods at William & Mary. A field study will test the impact of deer exclosures on understory vascular plant richness and diversity while incorporating biotic and abiotic factors that could be affected by the presence or absence of deer. Smith’s results could foster local awareness to the problem and encourage appropriate management to mitigate the damage of overabundant deer populations.

The Garden Club of America Summer Scholarship in Field Botany

A Floristic Inventory of the Silver Peak Range with Examinations into Edaphic Restrictions of Rare Plants

The Garden Club of America Summer Scholarship in Field Botany
School: Master’s Student, Biology, The Citadel

Vascular Flora of Two Conserved Tracts on the Black River, South Carolina

At two sites owned by the Butler Conservation Fund, on the Black River near the town of Andrews in rural South Carolina, Dailey has conducted baseline surveys and produced species checklists and essays on ecology available to the public. She is preparing her botanical studies for publication, including two surveys of vascular flora and notable collections of threatened plants. Over the summer, she will make new collections of additional species, and review over 800 specimens at The Citadel Herbarium.

The Garden Club of America Summer Scholarship in Field Botany
School: Master’s Student, Biological Sciences, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Modeling the Community Assembly of the Vertic Clay Endemic Annual Plant Species of the San Joaquin Desert

Fryer is studying a suite of annual wildflowers from California’s San Joaquin Desert and their adaptations to extremely harsh, high in clay (“vertic”), sodic soils. The group of annuals she is working with are endemic

to these vertic clay soils; about half her study species are rare and found only in a small area within the San Joaquin Desert. She will use a combination of field and greenhouse studies to determine the nature of this novel form of edaphic (soil) endemism and how the combination of soil chemistry, texture, and competition from an invasive annual grass shape the community, causing the vibrant, patchwork-like patterns of color these species create during the San Joaquin Desert’s famed superblooms.

The Garden Club of America Summer Scholarship in Field Botany

Plant and Pollinator Communities of Shale Barren
 

Sarah N. Brown is a master’s student in biology and botany at James Madison University. This summer she will be working at a shale barren site in West Virginia conducting flower inventories and pollinator surveys to investigate the complex network of interactions between the plant and pollinator communities. Found only among the central Appalachian Mountains, shale barrens are a globally rare ecosystem whose natural history
is not well studied. Her goal is to provide context for this rare ecosystem and contribute to efforts to protect it.

The Garden Club of America Summer Scholarship in Field Botany

Ecology of Cross-kingdom Interactions between Plants, Pollinators, and the Diverse Microbiota that Inhabit Flowers

Valerie Martin is a masters student in biology and ecology at Utah State University. She studies the role of nectar-inhabiting microorganisms in pollination mutualisms at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory to investigate the impacts of illegitimate visitation on the floral microbiome of Corydalis caseana subsp. brandegii (Fumariaceae), their consequences for floral phenotype, and the nectar-foraging decisions of white shouldered bumblebees (Bombus appositus), the primary floral visitor of this plant species. This species is notoriously robbed by another bumblebee, Bombus occidentalis, raising the question of the role of nectar microbiota in affecting floral larceny. Insights gained from this research will contribute to the rapidly growing body of knowledge on cross-kingdom interactions between plants, pollinators, and microbiota, which may have consequences for plant fitness.