Associate Director of Research and Conservation Dr. Jennifer Ramp Neale and Research Associate Michelle DePrenger-Levin at work in the conservation genetics lab.

Penstemon penlandii

OUR TRANSFORMATION:

• The Gardens conducted a floristic inventory of the Windy Point area of Pikes Peak for the USDA Pike-San Isabel National Forest. This area was the site of an active alpine laboratory operated by Dr. Frederick Clements and the Carnegie Institute from the turn of the century until the 1940s. We were contracted to do this study as part of the process for listing this area onto the National Register of Historic Places.

• We collected more than 700 new specimens for the Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium in 2009, bringing our holdings to more than 47,000 collections. Volunteer Loraine Yeatts, who helps maintain these collections, celebrated 40 years of service to the herbarium during the year.

• The Gardens was granted the only state permit to collect all federally listed plant species. We collected seed and other plant tissues of several rare and endangered species for seed banking and genetic analysis.

• In collaboration with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program, we conducted a biological inventory of southeastern Colorado, finding 67 new occurrences of rare plants, birds, reptiles and amphibians.

• An ethnobotanical collection was established in 2009, becoming the Gardens’ 12th official collection. It documents the relationship between plants and people, including Colorado native plants used for medicinal and other purposes.

• The Sam Mitchel Endowment was created in 2009 to support scientific use of the newly named fungal herbarium (it is now called the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi, in honor of its volunteer founder, Dr. D.H. “Sam” Mitchel). Much of the endowment

2009 Denver Botanic Gardens Annual Report

was donated in memory of long-time herbarium volunteer Robert Brace. Brace’s wife, Rosa-Lee, received the Gardens’ most prestigious award, the “Peterson,” in 2009 for her contributions of more than 7,000 hours to the fungal herbarium.

• The Gardens’ Conservation Genetics program, supported by the Gladys Cheesman Evans Endowment, was launched in 2009. This new program, which is the first to focus on plants found in the Rocky Mountain region, studies plant DNA to answer questions about plant populations in the wild. It has already attracted more than $148,000 in new research funding from various sources.

• Five important research projects were finished in 2009, including an investigation of the effect of invasive tamarisk on soil and water salinity that revealed tamarisk is elevating soil salinity, but only in areas that don’t receive overbank flooding.

• Ongoing research in collaboration with the University of Denver revealed that several alpine wildflowers in Colorado are responding to climate change with flowering times that are as much as 20 days earlier over the last century. This result was determined through analysis of 100 years of herbarium documentation.

• In 2009, the Gardens monitored six rare species, collected plant tissue from three species for genetic analysis and collected seed from seven species for long-term storage.

CLICK HERE to watch a video about our field research. CLICK HERE to watch a video about the dedication of the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi.

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