Some conference highlights

After three days of intense talks and scientific discussions I was exhausted! But it was extraordinarily inspiring to see so much exciting and cutting edge research. And it was a real joy to see many so friends and colleagues from across the US and the world.

Some local culinary highlights: (left) beignets, which is fried dough smothered in icing sugar, and chicory coffee, and (right) an oyster po boy, which is made of battered and fried oysters served in bread; the stick of butter was for a baked potato.

Here are some links to some of the talks I enjoyed:

• understanding the ecology of a typically overlooked reproductive stage of ferns, the gametophyte
• how to use plant collections such as herbaria to predict future changes to our floras, in this case Florida
  
• using neuroscience to “teach” software how to identify plants from the patterns of leaf veins.