Re: who would like to travel, meet interesting plants, and press them?

On 10/6/2024 8:28 AM, Kestrel Clayton wrote:

On 06-Oct-24 04:18, Burkhard wrote:

Job advert via the Guardian for a botanist willing to travel in Darwin's
footsteps - though my guess is all the remaining contributors to TO are
a bit too long in the tooth for this
>
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/06/wanted-expedition- botanist-to-follow-in-darwins-footsteps-and-look-for-plants?

 Ahem. My teeth remain firmly at a medium length, thank you very much. Unfortunately, I don't know a squill from a spurge, even when the wind is southerly.
 

I took a graduate plant physiology course and it was one of the worst classes that I have ever taken.  The professor had gotten tenure, and then quit science.  He had an NSF or NIH grant, but he gave it back because he no longer wanted to work on it.  The department did not fire him, and he did not even bother to prepare lectures most of the time, and I learned most of the material out of the book.  He remained in the Biology department for several years after I took that class, eventually got another PhD in Architecture and quit.
I did my undergraduate research in a maize genetics lab and did my own crosses every summer, so I know one end of a plant from another, but I never took a plant taxonomy class.  This is a job for a beginning scientist.  They could spend the rest of their lives following up on what they collected, but it should be a person that can identify invasive species from indigenous.
Ron Okimoto