IAPT's Council
The current Council and office-bearers were elected in July 2023. IAPT Council terms run for six years
Patrick Herendeen is a botanist and paleobotanist at Chicago Botanic Garden where he serves as Senior Director for Systematics and Evolutionary Biology. His research is focused on the systematics and fossil record of the Leguminosae, and on Cretaceous age fossil plants from Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, China.
His botanical bucket list includes visiting Madagascar to see all the interesting endemic legumes there. It would also be great to go back in time to see what those angiosperm-like cupules in Caytonia really looked like, but without a TARDIS that won’t be possible!
Patrick Herendeen
Past President
Chicago Botanic Garden, USA
Fabián Michelangeli
Vice-President
New York Botanical Garden, USA
Fabián Michelangeli is one of the leading researchers in Melastomataceae and current curator at the NYBG Steere Herbarium,
Karol Marhold
Editor IAPT Chromosome Data
Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
Karol Marhold is senior researcher at the Plant Science and Biodiversity Centre and Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia and Professor of Botany at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. He is currently also Vice-President of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
He works mainly on the taxa of the family Brassicaceae and particularly his pet genus Cardamine, but also on some genera of Compositae and other families. Methodical approaches include karyology, morphometrics, molecular systematics, but also nomenclature.
His botanical bucket list includes collecting Cardamine in China, Siberia, Altai and Russian Far East.
Valéry Malécot is an Associate Professor at Agrocampus Ouest, campus of Angers, where he is adjunct director of the Department of Ecology.
His research interests focuses on systematics of woody cultivated angiosperms (particularly the genera Viburnum, Cytisus and Rosa), basal Santalales (Olacaceae s.l.), and plant nomenclature, as well as on history of science and botany teaching.
Valéry does not have a bucket list but any occasion is good to look a plants and to develop knowledge about their interactions with humans.
Valéry Malécot
Treasurer
Agrocampus Ouest, campus of Angers, France
Warren L. Wagner
Reserve Fund Manager
Smithsonian Institution, USA
Warren Wagner is a research botanist and curator at the Smithsonian Institution. His research focuses on systematics, biogeography, and patterns of evolution of various angiosperm groups, especially of Pacific oceanic islands and the evening primrose family (Onagraceae).
His botanical bucket list includes seeing completion of two among many long-standing projects. The first is the flora of Micronesia, as completing this would bring most of the fragile oceanic pacific into a modern classification of its botanical diversity.
The second is to complete genetic analyses and a monograph of Hawaiian Cyrtandra (the most species-rich genus of the Old World members of the African violet family), which exhibits the most extensive levels of interspecific hybridization of any Hawaiian lineage, yet has diversified into at least 60 species.
Dirk C. Albach
Editor-in-Chief, Taxon
Carl von Ossietzky-University, Oldenburg, Germany
Dirk Albach is professor for plant biodiversity and evolution at the Carl von Ossietzky-University Oldenburg in northwestern Germany. The position is combined with the directorship of the Botanical Garden in Oldenburg. Dirk also chairs the biodiversity and evolution section of the German Botanical Society.
His main interests are questions of hybridization and polyploidy in plant systematics. Methodologically this involves phylogenetics, phylogeography, karyology and morphometrics but also includes aspects as divergent as genomics, ecophysiology, phytochemistry and plant-fungus interactions.
Dirk has been working for a long time on the genus Veronica (Plantaginaceae) but currently also works on Rhododendron, Salicornia and cultivated plants such as kale, yams and apple.
His botanical bucket list includes seeing all species of Veronica in the field, which fortunately coincides with his wish for peace in the Middle East.
Nicholas J. Turland
Rapporteur-général (International Code of Nomenclature)
Botanischer Garten Berlin, Germany
Nicholas (Nick) Turland is a botanist at the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, where he works as head of publishing. He is also deeply involved in the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, serving as Rapporteur-général for the Nomenclature Section of the International Botanical Congress (Shenzhen, 2017 and Madrid, 2024).
He worked for 16 years at the Missouri Botanical Garden on the huge Flora of China project, and has for even longer been fascinated by the Flora of the Mediterranean region, especially Greece and the largest Greek island, Crete, which is his favourite field work destination.
His botanical bucket list includes the World’s Mediterranean climate areas, with Chile still to see, and islands with specialized endemic-rich floras.
Sylvie Andriambololonera
Councillor
Missouri Botanical Garden, USA
Sylvie is botanist researcher, has worked at the Madagascar Program of the Missouri Botanical Garden for 31 years now. Since 2011, she has overseen the Research Unit of this program as dealing with Plant Inventory, Ecology, Systematic and Ethnobotany.
Her bucket list includes the taxonomic revision of the genus Bremeria (Mussaendeae Tribe of Rubiaceae) to complete and the taxonomic assessment of the Sapindaceae family as many genera should be revised. The flora of this family is not yet treated.
As a Red List Authority Coordinator of the Madagascar Plant Specialist Group for the Species Survival Commission of IUCN, she is playing an important role in coordinating the Red List assessment among botanical institutions.
James Stephen Boatwright
Councillor
University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Stephen is a professor at the University of the Western Cape. His research spans across several Angiosperm families, but focuses especially on Asphodelaceae, Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Thymelaeaceae. This includes studies of phylogenetics, taxonomy, nomenclature and conservation genetics. He regularly supervises postgraduate students and interns, and teaches undergraduate courses on plant diversity, taxonomy and biogeography. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the South African Journal of Botany, and also serves on the editorial boards of the Biodiversity Data Journal, Phytokeys and Phytotaxa.
“bucket list”? Having been successful in our bid to host the first International Botanical Congress in Africa in 2029, if I had a botanical bucket list at the top would be ensuring that we host a fantastic conference in Cape Town, South Africa!
Morgan Gostel
Councillor
Botanical Research Institute of Texas, USA
Morgan Gostel is a Research Botanist at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, based at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden and also serves as Director of the Global Genome Initiative for Gardens (GGI-Gardens), an international partnership of botanic gardens established by Vicki Funk and aimed at encouraging and supporting the role that gardens play in collections-based research and conservation. His research focuses on the diversity and evolution of the hyper-diverse daisy family, Compositae, especially in Africa and Madagascar, and he continues to work on smaller side projects in Burseraceae.
Morgan’s botanical bucket list includes visiting the world’s botanic gardens with the “big three”: large native plant collections, herbaria, and active research programs. Specific genera on his bucket list include Dendrosenecio, Hesperomannia, and Nicolletia.
Elvira Hörandl
Councillor
Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany
Elvira Hörandl is Professor for Systematics, Biodiversity and Evolution of Plants at the University of Göttingen, and Director of the Göttingen Herbarium (GOET) with about 800,000 specimens.
Her research is focused on the evolution of apomixis, polyploid complexes, and hybridization in angiosperms. She has done long-standing systematic work on the genera Ranunculus and Salix, with a focus on species-level and genus-level classification. She is further interested in evolutionary theory around the paradox of sex in eukaryotes.
Major field collections were done in the European Alps and other major mountain systems.
Laura Lagomarsino
Councillor
Louisiana State University, USA
Laura is an Associate Professor and Herbarium Director at Louisiana State University. Her clade-based research focuses on the origin and diversification of Neotropical flora, especially in the Andean mountains, using various species-rich radiations as model systems (many of these hummingbird pollinated!). She is also a taxonomist of Neotropical Campanulaceae and is just beginning to dabble in Rubiaceae.
Her botanical bucket list includes visiting the top of a tepui and botanizing the Atacama desert during a superbloom.
Blanca León
Councillor
Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru
Blanca is a research botanist at the Museo de Historia Natural and curates the lycophytes and ferns of the USM herbarium. She teaches Plant Nomenclature and Pteridophyte Systematics to graduate and undergraduate students of San Marcos National University. She also works as a Plant Taxonomist Specialist for the USDA-ARS-NPGS projects on Crop Wild Relatives and Economic plants.
Her research goals deal with fern taxonomy, ecology, and conservation. She is developing an update of Peru’s fern flora that will facilitate recognizing gaps in the understanding of the diversity and biogeography of this tropical flora. She continues collaborating with others on the taxonomy of neotropical Polypodiaceae.
Her botanical bucket list includes completing the update of ferns of Peru with all data available online, including images of collections at USM, and traveling to Brazil to see the Atlantic Forest.
Tiina Särkinen
Councillor
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Scotland
Tiina Särkinen is a botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Scotland. She works on taxonomy and systematics of the economically important Solanaceae. What excites her about botanical research is finding ways in which we can use herbarium collections to answer big science questions. Her publications have established the first taxonomically verified checklist of the Amazon lowland rainforests, updated phylogenetic frameworks for Solanum and Solanaceae, island-like evolution in Andean plant lineages, and better ways of extracting DNA from herbarium material to unlock the treasure chests in our natural history collections. Tiina is currently describing new genera of epiphytic Solanaceae (yes they do exist!), and building a global species-level multi-access key to Solanum.
Tiina’s botanical bucket list is about learning more about plant diversity & morphology – it seems there is no end to the wonders you find in plants. Just when you thought you know a group, something new is discovered that stretches our understanding!
Li Zhang
Councillor
Fairy Lake Botanical Garden, China
Li Zhang is a bryologist, and a research professor and deputy director of Fairy Lake Botanical Garden, Shenzhen, China (SZBG). His research interests cover taxonomy, inventory and phylogeny. He has conducted in-depth research into bryophyte diversity in southern and southwestern China, and published bryophyte inventory and floras of Hong Kong (2003), Macao (2010), Guangdong (2013), and the first field guide of bryophytes in China (2016). He also published several books for general public, including The Miniature Angels in the Plant Kingdom and The Magic and Enchantment of Bryophytes which were favorably received widely.
He was granted the Riclef Grolle Award for Excellence in Bryodiversity Research by the International Association of Bryologists (IAB) in 2021. He is the current Chair of the Bryological Committee, Botanical Society of China.
His botanical bucket lists include the publication of an updated bryoflora of Tibet, China, and conducting more field trips to the remote areas in the Eastern Himalyas.
Mauricio Bonifacino
Secretary-General
Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay
Mauricio Bonifacino is an associate professor at Universidad de la República in Montevideo at the schools of Agronomy and Natural Sciences. He specializes in the systematics of the flowering plant family Compositae. He has conducted fieldwork in Uruguay and also along the Andes, especially in Argentina and Chile. His research interests cover systematics of Compositae, and floristics. He teaches botany, plant biology and plant systematics in Uruguay, and also the OTS tropical plant systematics course in Costa Rica.
Mauricio is a member of The International Compositae Alliance (TICA) and is currently collaborating with researchers across the globe to produce the Global Compositae Checklist, a project started by Vicki Funk.
Mauricio does not have a bucket list but he loves to go into the field collecting and photographing comps and would like to visit Namaqualand and return to Patagonia.
Santiago Madriñán
Councillor
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Botanist and Professor at the University of Los Andes, Colombia.
Lucía Lohmann is a botanist and professor from Brazil, currently the director of University and Jepson Herbaria at the University of California, Berkeley,
Lucía G. Lohmann
President
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Laurence J. Dorr
Editor-in-Chief, Regnum Vegetabile
Smithsonian Institution, USA
Laurence (Larry) Dorr is a Research Scientist and Curator at the Smithsonian Institution where he works in the National Museum of Natural History and the U.S. National Herbarium.
He is interested in the systematics of Malvaceae (especially tropical species) and Ericaceae (Malagasy species), floristics in the northern Andes, and botanical biography and bibliography.
Larry’s botanical bucket list would include a visit to Socotra and an opportunity to research and write a history of botanical exploration in the western Indian Ocean.
Gustavo Hiroaki Shimizu
Social Media Manager
University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil
Gustavo Shimizu is a researcher associated with the University of Campinas, at Campinas/São Paulo, southeastern Brazil. His research focuses mainly on the taxonomy and systematics of Vochysiaceae and Hypericaceae (Vismia) and he aims to increase the interest of new generations of taxonomists in nomenclature. He is also interested in science communication and outreach, coordinating this section in the Botanical Society of Brazil.
His botanical bucket list includes seeing the African species of Vochysiaceae in the field and visiting the tepuis.
Rocío Deanna
IAPT Webmaster
Botanical Museum of Córdoba, Argentina
Rocio Deanna is a Researcher at the Multidisciplinary Institute of Plant Biology from Cordoba (Argentina), an Assistant Professor at the National University of Cordoba, and serves as Associate Curator of the CORD herbarium. She coordinates the ARG Plant Women network, trying to promote the visibility of women botanists from Argentina. Her research focuses on the systematics and evolution of the nightshades (Solanaceae), including biogeography, taxonomy, and paleobotany.
Rocio’s botanical bucket list includes collecting and studying the endemic genus Nothocestrum in Hawaii and all the intriguing small genera of the nightshades, like Oryctes, Calliphysalis, Tubocapsicum, and the isolated Anthocercidae clade from Australia.
Anna is a lapsed systematic botanist, having previously worked on projects including the Australasian Virtual Herbarium and as an editorial assistant with the Flora of Australia. Based at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, her current work focuses largely on nomenclature and nomenclators, in particular the Australian Plant Name Index. In addition to the IAPT Council she is currently serving as a member of the General Committee. Anna has assisted with recording and publishing the proceedings and decisions of the Nomenclature Section of the International Botanical Congress in Melbourne (2011) and Shenzhen (2017) and is looking forward to a similar role in Madrid in 2024.
As a largely data-based person these days, Anna has no particular botanical bucket list but one day would like an opportunity to explore the flora of Tasmania.
Anna Monro
Councillor
Australian National Herbarium, Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research, Canberra, Australia