continue research and speak with ABDSP Botany class. Dr. Simpson will also spend a little time after the main talk highlighting an upcoming online CCH2 Checklist of the Steele/Burnand Desert Research Center. Talk title: Plant Dispersal between the American Continents and the Special Case of the Popcorn Flowers Brief abstract: Botanists have long known of a strange pattern in the distribution of plants, with hundreds of examples of plants found in the desert and temperate regions of North America and South America, but not in the tropical areas in between. In this talk, we will explore this pattern, how it was thought to have happened, and the interesting changes that occurred after seeds got from one continent to another, with several examples from the group of plants known as Popcorn Flowers. About the speaker: Michael G. Simpson is professor emeritus at the department of biology at San Diego State University who specializes in plant systematics, plant taxonomy, and floristics. He is also the collections manager at the San Diego State University herbarium and is the author of the textbook Plant Systematics. Add Katelin D. Pearson is currently the project manager for the California Phenology Collections Network (capturingcaliforniasflowers.org), a digitization grant funded by the National Science Foundation and based out of Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo, CA. Katie graduated with a M.S. in Ecology and Evolution from the Florida State University, where she was also curator of the R. K. Godfrey Herbarium. Katie's research interests include botany, ecology, and bioinformatics with particular foci on phenology and biodiversity collections.

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