|
|
.
Volunteering at Montgomery
Botanical Center
Volunteers
are an important part of the Montgomery Botanical Center (MBC) team.
Opportunities are as
diverse as the volunteers' interests. Please check our listing
of volunteer opportunities.
People
from many walks of life volunteer at MBC, in areas such as landscaping,
palm horticulture, cycad horticulture, facilities,
the nursery, the archive, and plant records and
documentation, which includes labeling, computer data entry, digital
imaging, surveying, and plant inventory.
Typically,
volunteers work one day a week (Monday through Friday) for a 4-hour
block of time between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Flexible
schedules are available.
Plant societies,
community-minded organized groups, and local high schools,
community colleges, and universities organize and schedule volunteer
work days at MBC. Those volunteer work days are greatly appreciated by
MBC. If your group would be interested in supporting MBC’s work with a
work day, please contact Lee
Anderson, Montgomery Botanical Center superintendent.
.
 |
Volunteers working with Montgomery Botanical's Seedbank
program pollinate
plants, track seed development, collect seeds, and clean and distribute
the seeds. Shown here are three volunteers collecting Macrozamia moorei cycad
seeds.
|
|
Volunteers with the Collections Development
department take digital images on a weekly basis for MBC’s
database of cycad cone development. Shown here are (the late)
volunteer,
Mike Kambour, and former collections recorder, Michael Torres,
recording a
cone full of Encephalartos
ferox seeds.
|
 |
 |
The Collections Development department has a strong
volunteer program, which includes plant data collecting, plant data
entry, downloading digital images into the database, and phenological
studies. Volunteer Bob Hutchinson receives digital images from the
field and links them to MBC’s database so they can be accessed via the
collections database.
|
|
Each year, MBC acknowledges and thanks our
volunteers
during a luncheon. Here is
MBC’s 1999 volunteer team after lunch.
|
 |
 |
Since the Montgomery Archive opened its doors in 1995,
these volunteers have committed their time and energy to ensuring the
long-term preservation of documents associated with the archive
collection. Former executive director, Dr. Terrence Walters (standing),
was MBC’s archivist from 1995 to 2005.
|
|
Master
Gardeners of Miami-Dade County spend one Saturday a month helping out
at
MBC. Lee Anderson, MBC’s superintendent, coordinates this extremely
productive, committed, and hard-working team.
|
 |
Outreach Activities
MBC
also collaborates with many local,
national, and international plant societies, organizations,
institutions, and botanical gardens. Various outreach activities during
the past years are highlighted below.
|
In September 2005, executive director Dr.
Patrick Griffith led a tour for a group of botanists from Adelaide
Botanic Gardens in Australia. Here, Patrick explains MBC's cycad
pollination methods, demonstrated by this specimen of Cycas
simplicipinna.
|
 |
 |
Long, but productive, hours were spent by the International
Palm Society Board Members in MBC’s Nixon Smiley Meeting Room during a
1999 two-day meeting hosted by MBC.
|
|
MBC gives many lectures and tours to various
organizations
throughout the year. Shown here are members of the Central Florida
Chapter of the International Palm Society.
|
 |
 |
MBC is proud to be part of a larger network of
institutions -- the Coalition for Excellence in Tropical Biology
(CETroB). CETroB is a research and education
organization of Miami-based universities, botanical institutions, and
museums that are working with the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Museum of
Natural History. MBC hosted the third working group meeting of CETroB
in its Nixon Smiley Meeting Room.
|
|
The Society for Economic Botany held their
mid-year
Council Meeting at MBC in 1999. Scientists from Hawaii, Texas,
Colorado, South Carolina, and Florida are shown in MBC's Nixon Smiley
Meeting Room discussing the society’s future plans and goals.
|
 |
. |
Members of the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) Cycad
Specialist Group held their meeting at Montgomery Botanical Center in
1999
during the Fifth International Conference on Cycad Biology. MBC was a
co-sponsor for the conference. The Cycad Specialist Group meets every
three years.
|
|
|
