The World is still reeling from the 7-1 defeat of home team Brazil plus Dr M’s long awaited new series of botanical “selfies” in which botanists introduce themselves photographically and in their own words…
#2 in the series continues with John Warren, a botanist not entirely new to DrMGoesWild (check his earlier post here):
I am… John Warren, Senior Lecturer in ecology at IBERS, Aberystwyth University
I got into botany… Surely we are all born as botanists, it’s the non-botanists who need to explain how they lost the love of life!
I studied botany… At Newcastle University, then did a PhD on the sex life of Senecio vulgaris (the common old man) before literally sowing wild oats at Liverpool University and being and Cocoa Breeder in the Caribbean………
I have worked with plants… mostly in an agricultural and conservation context, since most land in the UK is not only vegetated, but its managed for agriculture
My research/interest area… I am interested in the origins of botanical diversity and how diversity works, and how this relates to plant breeding systems
The biggest challenge for botany today… making sense of vast amounts of sequence data.
My favourite plant(s) to see/eat/use… All botanists have a special relationship with the plants they have worked on. They become like family. But for me, this has to be a species I have not yet worked on – the squirting cucumber. Who would not want to cross it with a penis gourd and perhaps introduce a gene for wilt resistance?
My botanical superhero… Archibald Menzies
My web presence… http://johnscropblog.wordpress.com/
July 11, 2014
