Serpentine and other rock outcrops are home to many rare and endemic species of plants here in California and around the world. These rock outcrops have provided model settings for botanical explorations and the study of plant biology. Study topics range from diversity and ecology to physiology and evolution a s well as the development of green technologies such as phytoremediation an d agromining.
Join us at this talk, which will highlight plant-soil relations of rock outcrops both locally and globally and note important discoveries in e cology, physiology, genetics and biotechnology from the study of rock outcr op plants. The threats faced by these geobotanical wonders and the urgent n eed for their conservation will also be discussed.
Nishi Rajakaruna < /span>fell in lo ve with plants at a young age during a visit to Sinharaja Rainforest, a low land tropical rainforest in Sri Lanka. He received a BA in human ecology fr om College of the Atlantic (Maine) and conducted his post-undergraduate practic al training in plant ecophysiology at Harvard University. His research on t he evolutionary ecology of the Lasthenia californica complex earned him a MS and a P hD in botany from the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Nishi conducted post-doctoral research in plant ecology at Stanford University. His researc h examines how plant diversity, ecology, and evolution are influenced by se rpentine and other “unusual” soils, including those with heavy metals. He t aught botany at College of the Atlantic and San José State University for 12 years and spent a year as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Sri Lanka and In dia. He is currently an associate professor in plant biology at California Polytechnic State University where he teaches general botany, biogeography and ethnobotany.