Monthly Meeting - Working with Wildflowers in a Changing Climate

In January, David Inouye will join us for his presentation, Working with wildflowers in a changing climate: The value of long-term research.

David will talk about how the climate has changed in Colorado over the past 50 years, and how those changes are influencing mountain wildflowers and their pollinators. His insights come from having spent his career as a researcher at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, near Crested Butte, working with wildflowers, bumble bees, hummingbirds, butterflies, and flies. One of the interesting wildflowers he works with is a gentian that flowers once and then dies, after spending as long as a century growing until it's big enough to flower.

David Inouye is a retired professor from the University of Maryland, who has spent 53 years doing research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. His long-term research there includes work on plant demography (following individual plants for as long as 50 years), hummingbirds (helping document the oldest known hummingbird in the wild), and the phenology (timing) and abundance of flowering by about 120 species of wildflowers that he and his collaborators check three times a week for the whole growing season (since 1973). He's also helping with the most extensive and longest monitoring program for native bees in Colorado. His work was featured in articles in National Geographic last April, and in the Colorado Sun this summer.

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SCHEDULE

We will serve appetizers from 4:00 to 4:30, then start the program. A small donation is suggested for the food, and wine will be served for a $3 donation. The program will include announcements and a Humanist Moment before the presentation begins.

We hope to see you at 4:00 pm, on Sunday, November 26, at Jefferson Unitarian Church! It is an in-person-only event.
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“If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” - Apocryphally attributed to Albert Einstein