Spring was yet another great semester in lab! I am very excited to have welcomed Jesse and Tarika to the lab and report on a very exciting spring semester.

To kick things off, we hosted Sam Bruun-Lund, a master’s student at the University of Copenhagen studying Ficus with Nina Rønsted. Sam worked with us for two weeks and not only brought his expertise to the lab, but also an incredible amount of enthusiasm and fun. He also gave a Biology Department Lab talk on his undergraduate thesis on the systematics of Galanthus, or snowdrops.

Also at the beginning of the semester I gave a seminar at The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel in Philadelphia. After the talk, we were given an exclusive tour of the herbarium and were fortunate to see some of the plants that were collected by Lewis and Clark on their expedition in the early 1800’s!

During the semester we hosted a seminar speaker, Dr. Danielle Edwards who spoke to the department on her work studying the Galapagos tortoises. Dr. Edwards gave an exciting seminar that showed us the utility of using genetics in conserving these threatened creatures.

Well, although everyone was new to the lab, it wasn’t too long before we started to see many successful PCR’s and progress on all projects related to Viburnum and figs. As a testament to this hard work, Alanna, Amanda and Nitya

presented a poster at TCNJ’s Celebration of Student Achievement representing the Clem Lab at the event for the first time!