What do we know about the current state of plant diversity? How is it changing? Why is it changing? And why should we care?
That’s a lot of territory to cover in one lecture.
“That’s obviously a lot of territory,” said evolutionary botanist Peter Crane recently by phone.
But the state of plant diversity comes with the territory when you are former director of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, and today dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale. Crane is also a founding board member of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, where he serves alongside executive director Cary Fowler, a native Memphian who was profiled in the Memphis Flyer last year and who was once a student at Rhodes College.
This week, Rhodes welcomes Peter Crane as this year’s Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. Events include meetings with students and tours of the school’s arboretum, Overton Park, the Memphis Botanic Garden, and the Dixon Gallery and Gardens.
