Botanical Encounters

This year, on 30 November, it was time for the bi-annual Rencontres Botaniques ('botanical encounters'), a botany conference organised by several of the local botanical societies and held on the Pharmacy Faculty of the University François Rabelais at Grandmont in Tours.

I went along and felt like a dinosaur. A good many of the presenters were young persons talking about how they were using drones, Lidar, analytical software and data mining to survey and monitor sites, and create standards that will inform biodiversity policy, forestry management and the control of invasive species. Young persons doing whizzy things with technology and making people their parents' age feel inadequate is exactly how it should be.

The Pharmacy Faculty at the University François Rabelais, Grandmont, Tours.

My friend Marie-Claude did a poster presentation on lichens.

New species recorded for Indre et Loire this year.

The slide says: There remains much to do...but the future is ours...sometimes skepticism (top left)...sometimes despair (centre right)...but never discouragement (bottom left).

This was my favourite slide. I totally related to it.

Reduce the number of species of herbivores, and you reduce the number of plant species.

This is why biodiversity matters. The diagram is in English because it comes from an earlier relevant study published in English. No attempt was made to translate it in the presentation. It was clearly assumed that everyone present read English, and in any case, had followed the explanation of the processes being researched in French. One of the techniques in the French study involved sedating Roe Deer and combing their pelt to see how many seeds they were transporting. The previous slide had included some blatant Franglais, being headed 'Pool des Plantes'.

Looking at the display about the historic herbarium.

Early career botanists presenting their work.

These two described how they had used analytical software to data mine species lists for some islets in the Loire to automatically generate species assemblage information ie species which you can expect to find growing together. These islets are being very closely monitored for invasive species and natural regeneration as a means of establishing a standard for managing other similar islands and islets in the river. Several of the presentations were about various aspects of this project.

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