* Special Presentation *

Dennis Wm. Stevenson
Vice President for Laboratory Research
Editor, Botanical Review
New York Botanical Garden

Topic: From Fieldwork to Neurobiology. A botanical journey with cycads.

Abstract:
Cycads with their 280 million year history are an important and irreplaceable group within plant biodiversity that have retained seemingly unchanged features during this time as well as having developed important, unique features that have application to today’s medicine and conservation strategies. This presentation represents our current state of knowledge developed over the past half century in the field, botanical gardens, and herbaria, concerning the evolution, chemistry, pollination biology, anatomy, karyology, ethnobotany, and molecular biological aspects, among other topics, of the cycads. It demonstrates the utility of past trends of botanical research, where the future may lie and how increasing knowledge of their biology can address contemporary issues in biology.