I am a PhD student here at California Botanic Garden’s Botany program. I have a wide range of research interests that extend from general plant conservation to active restoration, field botany, plant systematics and phylogenetics, and conservation genetics. I received my M.S. at the Chicago Botanic Garden and Northwestern University working with cycads and hybridization within botanic gardens. Cycads are one of the most threatened plant groups in the world, primarily due to human expansion destroying and fragmenting their habitats, but also because of poaching. Recently, an introduced cycad weevil was found at the Huntington Botanic Garden, which my research showed is causing hybridization events within the Dioon genus at this location.

Currently, my dissertation research is focusing on the genus Hesperolinon (Western-flax) in the Linum (flax) family. It is a genus of 13 species, 12 of which are only found in California. Many of these species have a very narrow range because they have adapted to only grow on serpentine soils, which are very low in essential nutrients such as nitrogen, magnesium, and potassium, while also usually having a high concentration of toxic heavy metals. Because of this adaptation many of these species are rare and under threat from human expansion and climate change. The relationships of these species are also not well known and untangling the mystery of these relationships using phylogenetics will help to make management plans to protect these plants.

Photo descriptions left to right: Hesperolinon micranthum (Photo by David Greenberger); Hesperolinon californicum (Photo by Neal Kramer)