I’m pretty sure we didn’t report on the Smithsonian Botanical Symposium 2010 “Food For Thought: 21st Century Perspectives on Plants and People” when it was held in September last year, which was very remiss of us. Anyway, you can catch up on the website, of course, but if you want the short version you should read the latest issue of The Plant Press, the Smithsonian’s botanical newsletter. Here, to give you a flavour, is how the symposium was advertized:
The Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, hosted by the Departments of Botany and Anthropology, will examine the 21st century transformation of the study of interactions between plants and people. The invited speakers will cover a wide range of topics: from the role molecular biology now has in elucidating crop domestication to the ways in which peoples across myriad ecosystems interact with specific plants and landscapes.
It certainly seems to have lived up to the billing. The Plant Press has a couple of shorter pieces that might also be of interest, on analyzing an ancient Roman medicine and on an historical ethnobotanical collection. I’ll probably blog about those separately later.
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