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Each year the Native Plant Society of Texas recognizes individuals and organizations that support and advance its mission, at an awards banquet during its annual meeting. These prestigious awards are bestowed for excellence in writing and communication, for conservation and public service, and for lifetime achievement in the conservation of native plants. This year our banquet will be on the evening of October 5 at South Shore Harbour Resort and Convention Center in League City. Tickets to the event are available for purchase.
Michael Eason is the recipient of the Carroll Abbott Award, given in honor of the founder of our Society. His book Wildflowers of Texas demonstrates the spirit of writing in the popular vein on Texas native plants. It describes and illustrates more than 1,100 commonly encountered species, organized by flower color.
Drs. Brian Chapman and Eric Bolen are recognized with the Donovan Stewart Correll Award for scientific writing in the field of native flora of Texas for their book The Natural History of Texas. These two veteran ecologists have written a new and sweeping exploration of the natural history of Texas. Each ecoregion’s biological diversity and geological variation are explored in the past and present. Fascinating stories are presented of how biologists and naturalists have over time defined these ecological areas.
Lan Shen was strongly recommended by her peers for her work in public service in conservation of native plant seeds and promotion of their use. She receives the Nancy Benedict Award for this service. Lan leads multi-institutional seed collecting trips. These trips are often the ‘ah-ha’ moment for folks just getting connected to the beauty and vulnerability of the prairie, and they often become prairie champions from that point on. These trips also allow people from different groups to bond socially as part of a bigger movement. The seeds have been used in highly prominent pocket prairies like MD Anderson Prairie, Buffalo Bayou Park’s meadows, and the UH Shasta Prairie.
The Marathon Petroleum Corporation is recognized with the Native Star Award for their on-site projects that enhance pollinator and migratory bird habitats. A visit to one of the project sites will be offered as a field trip on the day before the banquet. The Habitat Enhancement, Awareness and Recycle Team (HEART): Butterfly Boulevard and Learning Lanes, located on company property, and the nearby 29th Street Duck Pond and Warbler Woods represent the results of both company and local citizen initiatives, all coordinated by Marathon employees.
Dr. Mark “Merriwether” Vorderbruggen is awarded the Digital Media Award for his website and Facebook page that are outstanding digital publications featuring Texas native plants. Merriwether teaches the safe and proper way to forage for edible and medicinal native plants and how to identify invasive plants. His website is easy to navigate and features his foraging book. His enthusiasm for education extends to nature walks and classes. He and his daughter host a live show on Facebook that features the plants on his website.
The Field Trip Committee at our Williamson County Chapter – Bob Kamper, Kathy Galloway, Sue Wiseman, Belinda Buescher, Kathy McCormack and Vicky Husband – will receive the Mary Jo Laughlin & Eula Whitehouse Award which recognizes visual art that illustrates, interprets or promotes native plants. Member of this committee worked diligently for two years to update and replace older existing signs and install new signs at four locations. The new signs, and the information they provide to the public, fulfill the spirit of this award and the mission of our Society. Details on how they accomplished this are found on our public website.
Paul Cox is recognized posthumously with the Lynn Lowrey Award for horticultural achievement in the field of Texas native plants. Paul was instrumental in developing and popularizing a cultivar of the Desert Willow (Chilopsis lineraris ‘Bubba’). Paul was a longtime employee of the San Antonio Botanical Garden and played a key role in the creation of the Kumamoto-En Garden, a joint project with San Antonio’s sister city, Kumamoto, Japan. He also co-wrote Trees of Texas: A Friendly Guide, which helped many a budding naturalist solve arboreal mysteries.
Marie-Theres Herz will receive the Shirley Lusk Award, which honors a Native Plant Society member in their role as a citizen scientist, for collecting and preserving Texas native plants for public education through her outstanding herbarium vouchers. In collecting, pressing and mounting specimens, Marie-Theres has been a huge asset for the Native Landscape Certification Program (NLCP) in the North Texas area and for our Dallas Chapter. She has created almost 150 botanical vouchers of the native and invasive plants covered in North Texas NLCP classes, taught the classes, organized training classes and led plant walks. Janet Smith said, “As an administrator of the Dallas area NLCP classes, I do a psychological sigh of relief whenever Marie-Theres is with us. When we take the herbarium vouchers out of the binder and put them on display, the wall gets elevated into an art gallery.”
Dr. David L. Creech is receiving the Charles Leonard Weddle Award for lifetime achievement in the field of Texas native plants. Dr. Creech has spent the better part of the last thirty years including native plants in his classroom material at Stephen F. Austin State University, encouraging nursery professionals to include native plants, and counseling landscape professionals to do the same. Though he has retired from classroom teaching, he remains at the university as director of their gardens. He is also a co-director of the Pineywoods Native Plant Center which is not only a fine place to see native flora on display, but also continues to test and select new material. Dr. Creech also served as president of the Native Plant Society of Texas in 1992.
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**ARCHIVED POST AUTHOR: kimconrow
