Announcing: Engler Medal in Silver

The Engler Medal in Silver awarded to Dr Terry Pennington and Ms Rosemary Wise

The Engler Medal in Silver is awarded for an outstanding monograph or other work in systematic botany, mycology or phycology and honors the legacy of Adolf Engler (1844-1930). The 2020 Medal, for a work published in 2017-2018, has been awarded to Terence D. Pennington and Rosemary Wise for The Genus Sloanea (Elaeocarpaceae) in America. Published by David Hunt, Milbourne Port. 447 pp. (2017). Thanks to Fabian Michelangeli (NY) and the other members of the Engler Medal in Silver award committee for their hard work in making this selection.

This monograph comprehensively treats an important genus of 127 species of trees in the Americas. It contains descriptions, regional keys, maps, and a wealth of other information, benefiting from over 50 years of field and herbarium work by Terry Pennington. A very important component of the monograph are the beautiful and very taxonomically informative illustrations by Rosemary Wise. The monograph can be obtained from NHBS.com.

Terry Pennington has had a long and productive career studying Neotropical forests, mostly in Mexico and Peru, but also anywhere in between, working for the Food and Agriculture Organization and The New York Botanical Garden. Since 1999 he has been an Honorary Research Fellow at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Rosemary Wise has been a prolific botanical artist documenting a wide variety of plant groups for several researchers for over 50 years. She is a recipient of the Jill Smythies medal from the Linnean Society of London for published botanical illustrations and the Sibthorp medal from the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford for “Lifetime Services to Botany.” Terry and Rosemary have collaborated since the 1960s when she did the illustrations for his dissertation, and that has not stopped since, with works in Sapotaceae, Meliaceae, Inga (Fabaceae), Trees of Peru and many others.