The Wild Plants of New York State

In David Werier's recently published book, Catalogue of the Vascular Plants of New York State, he presents an annotated list of all the vascular plants that occur outside of cultivation in the state of New York. Essentially this means that any plant, other than bryophytes, that can be found growing in the wild are included in the book. This base line information is critical for understanding the biodiversity of the state as well as the conservation of that biodiversity. In this presentation David will explore previous efforts to catalogue the states flora and take you behind the scenes to see how he accomplished the task. In doing so you will get introduced to some of the common, rare, and obscure plants that occur in New York and, via a comparison with previous efforts, get a sense of how our flora, or at least our understanding of our flora, has changed.