Dr. Morgan Gostel will share experiences from a recent field trip to South Africa, where he and colleagues traveled more nearly 4,000 miles in November 2023 in search of enigmatic flowering plants in the “ironweed” tribe, Vernonieae (Compositae). This tribe is one of the most species-rich (and complex) groups in the sunflower family, with nearly 1,500 species worldwide.

This trip to South Africa was the first of at least five field trips that Dr. Gostel and his colleagues at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London will carry out to collect species from across the range of Vernonieae in the Eastern Hemisphere. These collections are critical for subsequent analyses that will help botanists understand and classify diversity of these plants.

This is a hybrid meeting. See link below for Zoom option.