Some Super-Cool Stuff

For the past ten years or so I’ve worked to try to transfer information about horticulture to people.  It sounds simple, but it actually took a lot of time and effort to figure out the best way to do it, and I’m still not there yet — and probably never will be.  The reason that I mention this is because I appreciate it when another horticulturist, such as my fellow garden professors, work to get information about horticulture out to the public.  So yesterday we had a speaker come to our depoartment to give our annual end of the year lecture — It’s kind of a big deal for us — We usually have a big name person (horticulturally speaking of course) and pay him or her pretty well and have a reception.  It’s nice.  We also hand out scholarships to our undergraduates who earned them and any awards which we have to give.  But anyway, back to the speaker.  This year we had a guy come in who I’d never heard of before besides some strong recommendations from some of my colleagues here in the department.  I also did a cursory check of his website.  I liked what I saw, but I wasn’t blown away.  Sometimes I’m such a dingbat.  Simply put, this guy gave one of the top two or three horticultural (actually I should say botanical — it’s more botany than horticulture) presentations which I have seen.  His name is Roger Hangarter and he is a professor at Indiana University.  In a nutshell he films plant’s moving using time-lapse photography to demonstrate important concepts.  Here is one of his websites:

http://plantsinmotion.bio.indiana.edu/plantmotion/starthere.html

But if you do a google search for him he has a lot of other things on different sites.  He has even created a traveling display for museums called slowlife.  Very, very cool.  There aren’t a lot of people who I’m in awe of — but this guy is one of them.  If you have a garden club or run a master gardener program you NEED to get this guy on your calendar if you can.

4 thoughts on “Some Super-Cool Stuff”

  1. Jeff, I posted a link to his site Feb. 2nd when I wrote about “nyctinasty”. I had stumbled across it a year or so ago. Thanks for the tip on the high quality of his presentation. If he ranks in your “top three” he must be terrific!

  2. Very cool link, Jeff. All I can think about is the old Yogi Bera line, “You can observe a lot just by watching!”

  3. I just discovered this post, and the link — better late than never, though. The website and film clips are really excellent. Thanks!

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