1 year since my goofy Muppet girl, Hettie, followed us home during a cold and rainy evening walk. Thank you cat distribution system :) she's a happy, fluffy, round indoor kitty now

One whole year with Hettie! She followed us home a year ago and never looked back (okay, she looked back once, but came running home after she realized it was cold and she liked free food). Happy Gotcha Day, Hecate :) Day 1 vs. Day 365

Good visit to the Penn State #Herbarium with @botanicalbecks.bsky.social. Checking out Penstemon and dropping some gift specimens. Thanks to Sarah Chamberlain for hosting. #iamabotanist

My really happy, exciting find of the day :) Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillar on Spicebush!

I just think they're beautiful Penstemon seeds under my dissecting scope

Field day with my favorite assistant @writerbynight.bsky.social at Raystown Lake :)

Today's new greenhouse flowers (and cones!) !

Native pollinator appreciation at the garden :)

The unique morphological basis & repeated evolutionary origins of personate flowers in #Penstemon New #AJB research by @trinitydepatie.bsky.social & @carriewessi.bsky.social doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... #botany #plantscience #phylogenomics #evolution #snapdragon

Just want to shoutout a new study from the Wessinger Lab by my colleague @trinitydepatie.bsky.social. bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/.... She investigated the repeated evolution of personate flowers within Penstemon by examining patterns of introgression, topological discordance, and

Fave museum collection greenhouse flowers of the day :)

Stopped by the research greenhouse while tending the museum collection and ugh, I just love these flowers so much

Never have I been more grateful for 80° and slight humidity than after coming back from 110° and the wind is an oven. Got to work in the garden and greenhouse, the harvests are looking nice!

Home and recuperating from Botany 2025! Really amazing conference, I met so many incredible people and had such an awesome time (in spite of the UV index). My second Botany was a really amazing experience and I'm so excited to see everyone next year in Tuscon! (And some of you at SICB in Portland 🙂)

SICBer - Professor @martinebotany.bsky.social is developing a web-based program : "#Plants Are Cool, Too!" — & Chris is on the look-out for plants (and their #researchers) to highlight. Watch episodes: www.youtube.com/user/PlantsA... & www.bucknell.edu/fac-staff/ch... #botany #phylogenetics

Wanna hear about eastern Penstemon funkyness? Stop by poster #102 at 6:15!

Wheels up! On our way to #Botany2025! Rebecca Beneroff @botanicalbecks.bsky.social is a person you should all meet. #plantpeopleFTW

Good day at @nybg.bsky.social #herbarium where @botanicalbecks.bsky.social got to see the holotype of her study species, Penstemon canescens… plus a whole lot of other things that *say* they are P. canescens. 😬 It’s a challenging one! #iamabotanist

Really happy with how mine and @writerbynight.bsky.social's back door is looking :) and our little garden plot at the community garden is getting going too! Some stuff still has to get planted and land in a final destination, but over all, doing good :)

Penstemons are hard. But @botanicalbecks.bsky.social is on the job! @trinitydepatie.bsky.social can we keep you on speed dial? 😀 #iamabotanist #plantpeopleftw #conservation

Good day for rain, iykyk 🚫 👑

Our little gardens looking good :)

Some of my favorite new flowers in the museum greenhouse at Bucknell. I love that I'm able to help as a caretaker of this collection

Had an awesome second field day yesterday looking at Penstemon morphological funkyness on some PA shale barrens around Raystown Lake as part of my Master's thesis! What a cool study system and an awesome environment :)

I've been teaching myself to crochet lil guys to make my brain be quiet, and then I've been placing them in our little free art museum to be adopted. It's been a great way to practice without feeling guilty about just having practice pieces build up. Here's the roster from this week!

When the plants you've been waiting to flower for almost a full year finally do T-T And a clone to boot!!! 🎉🎉🎉

datascience.scholar.bucknell.edu/2025/05/06/2... That's my Rebecca!! @botanicalbecks.bsky.social !!

Putting together my field work kits since my grant money cleared! This is what character development looks like... after losing my green ones twice now...

Basically done with the semester so that means we had time for garden prep day!!! Complete with the garden center cat protecting the catnip and honey lavender ice cream :)

Big congrats to Rebecca Beneroff @botanicalbecks.bsky.social on scoring her first research grant! She will use funding from the Botanical Society of Western PA's Allison Cusick Student Research Award to begin her MS research this summer. #iamabotanist #letsgoplants

Really nice job presenting at Bucknell's 25th Kalman Symposium by Kaitlin Henry, Dia Zizis, and @botanicalbecks.bsky.social. Three of more than 130 student posters/talks all given on the same day! #PUI #undergradresearch #raybucknell

@writerbynight.bsky.social and I have started working on our plot in our local community garden! Over the past 2 days we've got it about 2/3rds weeded which is nice, I really wanted to get ahead of the weeds and the dang zoysia grass. We have a very unhappy Robin that we covered it up

Ok bird friends, @writerbynight.bsky.social and I found this bird yesterday that we think is a leucistic robin. Location: Central PA. Thoughts?

Some pretty winter aconite(Eranthis hyemalis) for your day :)

Really cute little eastern bluebirds from birding adventures with Zach this morning at Montour Preserve :)

Get yourself an advisor who knows how to help you overcome your fears 😂

Botanist Agnes Arber was born 146 years ago today! Her 1950 book The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form was the culmination of a half century of research into plant morphology and the continuity of processes driving plant development. Here is her story. tinyurl.com/46c9m778 #WomenInSTEM #botany 🧪🌱

Today is a Fossil Friday kinda day featuring this brachiopod in a rock in the Finger Lakes region of NY :)

If I burn out thinking about how overwhelming and futile existence feels in this moment, I’ll accomplish nothing. So instead, here I am focusing on my joy: Here’s a picture of a yellow-bellied sapsucker I saw yesterday while birding with @writerbynight.bsky.social!

A couple of hooded mergansers from a very short and chilly birding adventure with @writerbynight.bsky.social...

Photog friends, I can't use my neckstrap anymore, it's destroying my neck. I need recs. I'm not averse to looking at different neck straps if they're comfy and I was looking at peak design clips but I kinda want something that keeps my camera secured to my person cause of droppage trauma

This is a promise to myself that I'm going to go back to posting art and birds and plants and whatever brings me joy next week. This is a promise that I'm going to highlight joy and do whatever little I can. But right now, today, I'm going to give myself the grace to be overwhelmed and tired.

Chilly but awesome walk :) We also saw some ring neck ducks which was so exciting since I /just/ covered them in class yesterday

Did you know the Cornell Bird Lab lets you take one free course of your choice from their course library? I didn't! was looking for sci-art classes and found they have all kinds of classes from learning specific species to general birding, to art and photography if you need a positive outlet <3

Observational notes page from my first homework birding outing yesterday for ornithology! Had fun with the quick bird doodles to get down a couple of the defining features I saw, definitely want to do full pieces for a couple of these later!

One of the things I repotted the other day! This pot was made for me by @krebulator.bsky.social and is one of my favorite things, and I've been agonizing figuring out what to put in her I'd been propagating this P. xanadu and finally felt like it was ready for an upgrade. I'm super happy with her 💚

Sometimes you just need to repot or do maintenance on all 100-something+ plants in the house to make the brain buzzing quiet. I've been meaning to do this for a couple months though so hey, at least it got done and they're lovely. Far too dark for pictures right now so have a Hettie instead

mvh: An R tool to assemble and organize virtual #herbaria from openly available specimen images New in #AppsPlantSci by @tvasconcelos.bsky.social & @jboyko.bsky.social bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... @r-foundation.bsky.social @gbif.org #botany #biodiversity #iamabotanist

A reprieve, for now Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump administration freeze on federal grants and loans apnews.com/article/dona...

It's done. I've got some gripes about it but that's 2 fully colored mini pieces in a week so pretty happy about that. It's been a good "I want to dissociate or doomscroll so let me do this instead" activity for the past week that's given me the time and space to feel and process. We learn, we grow