Center for Tropical Plant Science & Conservation
Bruce K. HolstInterim Director, Center for Tropical Plant Science & Conservation
Director of Plant Collections & Research Library
Curator of the Herbarium
Senior Editor, SBG Press
B.Sc. 1980, University of California, Davis
Bruce Holst has studied and collected plants of the American tropics for 30 years. He specializes on the floras of Belize and Venezuela and conducts research on the Bromeliaceae and neotropical Myrtaceae families. He was editor for four years of the Gardens' research journal, Selbyana, followed by three years as editor of the Journal of the Bromeliad Society. He is also a senior editor and writer for the Flora of the Venezuelan Guayana, a 20-year long project completed in 2005 to publish nine volumes treating the 10,000 plant species in Venezuela’s Lost World region. He has led or participated in more than 20 international expeditions, most recently to Costa Rica, Brazil, and Venezuela. He has participated in Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program of critical tropical habitats, served in the Peace Corps in Honduras, and is currently collaborating on international floristic and checklist projects in Mexico, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Central America, Venezuela, and Brazil, and is preparing guides to the trees and shrubs of Florida’s southwest coast and the epiphyte families of Central America.
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Jessie B. Cox Chair in Tropical Botany
Associate Editor, Selbyana
Ph.D., University of Michigan
David Benzing is the Jessie B. Cox Chair in Tropical Botany at Selby Botanical Gardens and the Robert S. Danforth Professor of Biology at Oberlin College. His research includes the impact of orchids and bromeliads in tropical forests and the use of epiphytic bromeliads for monitoring air quality. A leading author of books on epiphyte biology, his recent monograph on bromeliads was published by Cambridge University Press. At Oberlin, he taught plant systematics, ecology, evolution, and environmental science. He is a founding member of the Selbyana Editorial Board and currently the Associate Editor. Dr. Benzing has a B.A. in zoology from Miami University and a M.S. in biology and Ph.D. in botany from the University of Michigan.
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Director, Mulford B. Foster Bromeliad Identification Center
Curator of Living Collections
Harry Luther is a leading specialist in the systematics of the Bromeliaceae. Presently, he is engaged in the Bromeliaceae treatments for the Flora of Ecuador (more than 400 spp.) and monographic studies of Aechmea and Tillandsia. He has studied bromeliads in cultivation, in herbaria,and in the field from Florida and Mexico to Peru and Brazil. He has written more than 130 articles that serve both as a definitive introduction of new or revised taxa and as general information for non-scientists.
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Plant Records Keeper & Conservation Project Assistant
As a native of Central Florida, Laurie Birch has maintained a great appreciation for the native plant communities of Florida. After earning a degree from the University of Florida, Laurie began participating in field work throughout North and Central Florida; conducting rare Florida plant surveys and working towards the propagation and restoration of several federally listed endangered plant species, particularly endemic species found within the Atlantic Coastal Ridge and Lake Wales Ridge. Currently, Laurie is conducting botanical inventories for Sarasota County's Environmentally Sensitive Lands Program and is assisting in the propagation of several endangered orchid species found naturally growing within southern Florida with the goal of reintroduction onto protected sites. Along with assisting with local plant conservation projects, Laurie manages all the plant records for MSBG living collections.
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John R. Clark, Ph.D
Director, Gesneriad Research Center
Assistant Editor, Selbyana
Ph.D. 2008, Washington State University
John R. Clark, a former intern at Selby Gardens (2002-2003), is a recent doctoral graduate from Washington State University where he became a specialist in plant molecular systematics (a field of evolutionary biology that utilizes DNA analysis to interpret the relationships between plants). John’s botanical interests center on the plant family Gesneriaceae (African violets and their relatives) and specializes in Old World members of this diverse and fascinating plant family. Over his career, John has gained expertise in various botanical-related endeavors including field-based research, plant tissue culture, herbarium curation, and DNA extraction, amplification and analysis. Since 1997, he has participated in and coordinated numerous expeditions to the tropics including trips to Trinidad, Costa Rica, Samoa, Fiji and Hawaii. He is a leading researcher in comparative methods analysis for ancestral range reconstruction (understanding when, where and how organisms came to their current distributions on the planet). John is also an accomplished scientific illustrator and has completed projects in anatomy, physiology, and taxonomy. For more on John and his research, check out his website at http://johnrobertclark.googlepages.com/
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