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Many of our members were recognized during an online ceremony on the evening of October 24. Contest winners were announced and three members were awarded the Benny J. Simpson Fellows Award.
In addition the annual awards previously announced were formally presented at the event, which was conducted over Zoom and YouTube Live. Watch a video recording of the complete ceremony.
The Fellows Award is presented to a member for service and work for the enrichment of the Society at the state, regional or chapter level. It is intended to recognize work within the Society and embodies “grass roots” recognition by members of our fellow members, since members determine the winner through a voting process. Recipients must be members of the Native Plant Society of Texas for at least ten years and must not have previously received a Fellows Award.
For 2020 the membership elected Liz Moyer, Robert Kamper and Dr. Alfred Richardson. Liz and her husband Pat have been members of the Trinity Forks Chapter since 1986. She speaks at civic groups, maintains an online bulletin board and distributes a regional plants list to new members. Robert has been with the Williamson County Chapter since 2008, volunteering for many committees. He has also organized the photo contest at previous symposiums and served as state webmaster. Dr. Richardson is a member at large who has previously been recognized with the Donovan Stewart Correll Award in 1995 and the Carroll Abbott Award in 2002 for his books.
The Chapter of the Year Award is presented by the President to the chapter that has best exemplified the mission of the Society in the previous year. This year Kim Conrow presented the award to the Boerne Chapter, citing their “amazing community involvement, especially in advocacy and projects.”
Bill Hopkins announced the winners of the various contests, who will receive their certificates in the mail. For the first time all the contests were conducted in the same format, with a panel of judges using a scoresheet to award points in various categories to each contestant.
The photo contest attracted over 90 entries and was judged by Cindy Kearney, Mary Horn, Michael Eason, and Wallace Ward. View all the entries here. The photo of Maclura pomifera by Roger Sanderson was judged to be Best in Show. Other certificates were awarded as shown below.
| Central Texas Great Plains | Pauline Singleton | Castilleja sp |
| Chihuahuan Deserts | Pauline Singleton | Echinocereus coccineus |
| Cross Timbers | Brenda Wellenreiter | Centaurea americana |
| East Central Texas Plains | Tom Lebsack | Alophia drummondii |
| Edwards Plateau | Paula Levihn-Coon | Viguiera stenoloba |
| Gulf Coast Prairies and Marshes | Robert Kamper | Helianthus maximiliani |
| High Plains | Pauline Singleton | Engelmannia peristenia |
| Southern Texas Plains | David E. Lemke | Berberis trifoliolata |
| Texas Blackland Prairie | Roger Sanderson | Maclura pomifera |
| Western Gulf Coastal Plain | Roger Sanderson | Rhododendron canescens |
No awards was given in the Southwestern Tableland or the Arizona/New Mexico Mountains ecoregions.
The chapter newsletter contest was judged by Heidi Gigler, Ricky Linex, and Lonnie Childs. The judges selected the Trinity Forks Native Plant Press, edited by Mike Mizell, as the best newsletter. You can view current and past issues at https://www.npsot.org/wp/trinityforks/newsletters/. The judges also listed the Collin County Chapter newsletter as runner-up and cited the Highland Lakes Chapter for best layout, Cross Timbers Chapter for best content and Clear Lake Chapter for technology use.
The video contest was judged by Kay Jenkins, Martha Peet, and Robert Kamper. The video they judged to be the best was a segment of a larger video made by Julie Fineman for the Friends of the Warren Ferris Cemetery. The video was narrated by Meghan Peoples, former president of the East Dallas Chapter and now a graduate student at Tarleton State. You can view the winning video on our YouTube channel.
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