Biodiversity Blog
History of UT Botany, Part 4: Billie L. Turner
This is part four of a History of UT Botany series. This piece ran originally for the Department of Integrative Biology History Project on April 12, 2021. Posing in 1970 with Perityle turneri (Asteraceae), one of many species named in Turner's honor. (Photo: Mike Powell) I first met Billie Turner in early 2016. That was when I’d started w...
History of UT Botany, Part 3: Curator Mary Sophie Young
This piece was originally published in January 2017 in the Dept. of Integrative Biology History Project. The third blog in our UT botany history series focuses on Marie Sophie Young. In 1912, Young became the first official curator of the relatively new herbarium at UT, when the university was only 29 years old. She was an early Texas STEM educator...
History of UT Botany, Part 2: the Herbaria
This is an updated post that originally ran on March 13, 2017 in the Integrative Biology History Project Lundell Herbarium 1964 specimen of Hibiscus lasiocarpus Cav. Few landmarks on the UT campus are as iconic as the Tower, visible to thousands daily as part of the Austin skyscape. Yet, not many people realize that eight diffe...
History of UT Botany, Part 1: The Beginnings
Front and back of 1904 photo by HB Buck. (From Dolph Briscoe Center for American History). "Department of Botany U of T, Cooperia drummondii, Rain 'lilly', Campus U of T, April 20, '04. From HB Buck, 400 W. 38th St. Austin, TX." This blog starts off the new series for our Biodiversity Collections, with the focus on botany and what is now c...
The Woods of 214
When you enter room 214 in the Biological Laboratories Building (BIO), the first thing that may strike you is the wood paneling. You may then dismiss the room as a relic from the 1970s when cheap and sometimes synthetic wood paneling was all the rage. (That along with linoleum and an over-abundant use of anything avocado colored.) But BIO 214 has a...
Lichens we consume, lichens we admire
Cladonia parasitica, a lichen found at Stengl Lost Pines (Photo: Liz Bowman) Lichens are beautiful, sometimes otherworldly, in ways that aren’t overlooked by arts and culture. They also have had medicinal and culinary uses for millenia. As explored in What the Heck is a Lichen, our introductory blog, lichens are complex organisms created b...
