David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration

Friday, February 7, 2020 – 6:00pm to 9:00pm

Presentation of the Twenty Second Annual David Fairchild Medal
for Plant Exploration to Dr. Jan Salick

The National Tropical Botanical Garden presents the prestigious David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration annually. This award honors individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the field of botanical research or horticulture, and provides the opportunity to draw public attention to the ongoing global crisis of plant extinction.

Dr. Jan Salick, Senior Curator Emerita at the Missouri Botanical Garden, is a renowned ethnobotanist and educator who has conducted extensive research and fieldwork related to conservation, tropical ecology and agroecology in Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Himalayan region. Since 2000, Dr. Salick has been with the Missouri Botanical Garden, where she has taught botany, ethnobotany, ecology, and evolution. In 2000 she embarked on fieldwork in Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, and Yunnan Province, China, where she studies the effects of climate change on plants and indigenous people. Since 2013, Dr. Salick has expanded this research to the Wampanoag and Narragansett territories of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Additionally, Dr. Salick has served as President and Distinguished Economic Botanist of the Society of Economic Botany, and as a visiting curator at the Royal Botanical Garden, Kew, at the University of Oxford, and the National Museum of Natural History, Paris. In the tradition of David Fairchild, Dr. Salick is recognized as a leader and champion for advancing greater understanding of the relationships between people and plants.

The David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration was cast from a mold of an original bronze portrait medallion by Theodore Spicer-Simson. Mr. Spicer-Simson, born in France in 1871 of British citizenship, was a world-renowned sculptor and medalist and good friend of David Fairchild. Many world and literary figures of the first half of the 20th century were among his subjects, including three U.S. Presidents.

The Kampong, located on Biscayne Bay in Coconut Grove, Florida, is a 9-acre botanical garden and historic estate. The living collection is comprised of more than 1,750 species, varieties and cultivars of tropical and sub-tropical plants from around the world. The collection features plants of economic and medicinal importance.

The Kampong is the former home of David and Marian Fairchild, and later Catherine Hauberg Sweeney who preserved the historic home and plant collection by gifting it to the National Tropical Botanical Garden, a not-for-profit organization headquartered in Hawaii. The mission of NTBG is to enrich life through discovery, scientific research, conservation, and education by perpetuating the survival of plants, ecosystems, and cultural knowledge of tropical regions.

Cocktails and Dinner $195 per person.
For more information call 305-442-7169 ext 100.