BotanyBetsabé Castro-Escobar
2020 The Garden Club of America Fellowship in Tropical Botany
On the Trail of the Calabash Trees: Ethnobotany, Domestication, Evolution, and Geography of Crescentia
Betsabé D. Castro Escobar, a second- year Tropical Botany Scholar, is a PhD candidate in the integrative biology program at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research lies at the intersection of ethnobotany, ecology, and evolution. She is passionate about preserving traditional plant knowledge and is fascinated by the interactions of people and plants in the tropical Americas. She is working with the Crescentieae “tribe” in the botanical family Bignoniaceae and is particularly interested in a group known as the calabash trees (genus Crescentia), which have been important plants for many cultural groups in the Americas—from Mexico to the Amazon to the Caribbean Basin. Tracing evolutionary responses that might be a result of these plant- human relationships could reveal insights about these plants’ evolution as well as their variation, along with furthering our understanding about their phytogeography, domestication, and versatile uses.
The Garden Club of America Fellowship in Tropical Botany
To promote the preservation of tropical forests by enlarging the body of botanists with field experience.
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