all Arnold Arboretum stories

Over the river, through the woods

jake — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:43:32 -0400

For close to 30 Hyde Park preschool children, a recent trip to the Arnold Arboretum, the majestic 265-acre botanical garden run by Harvard University in Jamaica Plain, meant a journey to a world alive with natural wonders and surprises.

In a grove of horse chestnut and buckeye trees flooded with late afternoon sunlight and autumn’s shades of ginger and honey, the eager 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds filed off a bus and paired with volunteer guides from the arboretum. Together they explored their colorful environment, examining the leaves on the trees, inspecting their trunks, and carefully studying the fallen chestnuts that littered the ground.

Popular causes not necessarily best

jake — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:48:00 -0400

Conservation policies favoring keystone animal species are insufficient to conserve the world’s biodiversity because many of these target animals don’t live in the world’s most biodiverse spots: lowland tropical forests under pressure from agriculture, logging, and other human activities.

Forests, reefs, mountaintop illuminate tropical biology

404132862 — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:30:43 -0400

Morning came in the middle of the night in the hikers’ hut partway up the side of Borneo’s towering Mount Kinabalu.

At 2 a.m., after just a few hours’ sleep, the Harvard Summer School students slowly roused themselves, creating a chorus of rustling sleeping bags, zippers, and boots on the wooden floor.

They’d been on the go for weeks, traveling across the island to sample its natural wonders, and they’d be on the go for a few weeks more. But where they’d been and where they’d be didn’t matter that morning. It was time to hike. The sun was coming and the peak was still hours away.

Saving plants that may save us

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:11:19 -0400

One particular discovery highlights the importance of facilities like the Harvard Herbaria and Arnold Arboretum in storing and preserving the important information found in plants. An extract of a small tree in the Bornean forest called Calophyllum stopped AIDS, but when researchers rushed back to the site where it had been collected, the tree had already been cut down. Researchers took samples from Calophyllum trees nearby, but extracts made from those trees proved ineffective against the AIDS virus. To solve the mystery, researchers called on the Harvard Herbaria, which had a preserved sample from the original tree. Once they knew what they were looking for, scientists found living specimens of the right Calophyllum variety in the Singapore Botanic Garden.