In her free time, Ginna volunteers as a digital archivist, cataloging images into NTBG’s digital asset manager from her home in San Jose, California! She made her first trip to Kauai and NTBG in 2010 and immediately feel in love. Passionate about our mission, Ginna started her volunteer journey by making annual visits to volunteer at our annual Moonlight and Music fundraiser. In 2014, Ginna bought a home in Kekaha, giving her more opportunities to visit the garden. She’ll eventually retire to the island but in the meantime gives back to NTBG while virtually visiting NTBG as she catalogs images for our staff.

At home in California, Ginna works at Adobe as an international product manager for the Creative Cloud. She also leads Adobe’s San Jose Action Team which leads 4,000 employees at Adobe’s headquarters in fundraising and volunteer opportunities. Ginna’s volunteer work is essential to NTBG staff, providing our scientist and researchers with an easily accessible catalog of images to use in reporting and publishing their work.

Thanks for all that you do, Ginna!

Support David’s work with the Breadfruit Institute by making a donation!

Breadfruit Institute

Founded in 2003, the Breadfruit Institute promotes the conservation, study, and use of breadfruit for food and reforestation. The Institute is a global leader in efforts to conserve and use breadfruit diversity to support regenerative agriculture, food security, and economic development in the tropics and serves as the international center for breadfruit research and information resources. The Institute curates, studies, and conserves the world’s largest repository of breadfruit diversity—150 cultivars—at NTBG’s Kahanu Garden, Maui, and McBryde Garden, Kauai.

The Breadfruit Institute is also engaged in a Global Hunger Initiative to respond to critical global food security issues and deforestation by expanding plantings of good quality breadfruit varieties in tropical regions. This work is central to our participation in the Alliance to End Hunger—a coalition of 90 corporations, non-profit organizations, universities, individuals, and religious groups working to end hunger domestically and internationally.

Support Steve & Dot’s work with NTBG by donating today!

“I am a retired engineer who helped build the first cell-phone networks. (So feel free to blame me when your calls drop.) My wife Liza and I fell in love with Kaua’i on our first visit here 15 years ago, and we were finally able to move here for good last June. We are avid hikers, so as soon as lockdown is over and Waimea Canyon is open, that is where you will find us. In the meantime, I am happy to be watching our cat Beastly explore her “mew” home and helping out Matt Goodale with the Garden’s database software.”

Andy Kostic, Kalaheo, HI

Thanks for all that you do, Andy!

Support Andy’s work with NTBG by making a donation!

Specializing in molecular immunology, Dr. Jeffry Frelinger is no stranger to the laboratory. Jeff earned his Ph.D. in immunology from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor. Over Jeff’s distinguished career, he has raised multiple millions of dollars in grant funding and published over 280 books, book chapters, and journal articles, including in Science and Nature. Along the way, he even worked and published on coronaviruses in mice. Among Jeff’s numerous awards is his most recent – the American Association of Immunologists Distinguished Fellow award in which he was in the inaugural group and is in good company with Nobel Laureates as his fellow awardees.

Jeff now splits his time between volunteering in the NTBG Seed Lab and running his research Lab at the University of Arizona, where he is developing a vaccine for the fungal infection known as Valley Fever. In the NTBG Seed Lab, Jeff is tremendous help where he treats his volunteering equal to his professional responsibilities and is perfectly happy doing “undergraduate work,” yet can counsel Seed Lab Manager Dustin on higher level ideas. Jeff also provides the best banter in the Seed Lab! The unique combination of these skill sets makes Jeff a marvelous asset, and we are lucky to have him.

Thanks for all you do, Jeff!

Seed Bank and Laboratory

In alignment with the Global Strategy For Plant Conservation, the Hawaii Strategy for Plant Conservation, and the National Seed Strategy, we are investigating methods to preserve and protect Hawaiian species of conservation importance ex situ in the Seed Bank and Laboratory.

Our emphasis is determining seed and pollen storage behavior, seed longevity, and aging kinetics, seed-borne pathogen abatement, and seed dormancy and dormancy alleviation of native Hawaiian plant species of conservation importance. Our research aims to understand how seeds respond to desiccation and subfreezing temperatures, identifying regeneration intervals, and determining optimal seed propagation techniques.

Support Jeff’s work with the Seed Lab by donating today!

Support Oshibana and their mission to fundraise by donating today!

If you are working from home or spending more time in online video calls these days, add a little NTBG garden beauty to your background. Download these NTBG garden Zoom backgrounds today. Click on an image below to download and save. Then follow instructions on your preferred conference platform for installing the background image.

Instructions from Zoom:

• Click your profile picture, then click Settings.
• Select Backgrounds & Filters.
  Note: If you do not have the Virtual Background tab and you have enabled it on the web portal, sign out of the Zoom desktop client and sign in again.
• Add your own image by clicking the plus sign and choosing if you want to upload an image or a video. 
  If prompted, click Download to download the package for virtual background without a green screen.

Zoom Garden Background Images

Stay Connected

Follow NTBG on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to stay connected during this time of social distancing. Take a peaceful journey through our gardens in Hawaii and Florida and learn more about plant conservation by watching this video.

Want a behind the scenes look into our Science and Conservation programs? Check out our recorded webinar series below or our events page to register for upcoming sessions.

The National Tropical Botanical Garden is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of botanist W. Arthur (Art) Whistler on April 2 as a result of complications from the coronavirus. A longtime collaborator and friend of NTBG since the early 1970s, Art served as the Garden’s first ethnobotanist, and he was also an affiliate botanist at the University of Hawaii. Over his storied career, Art spent years exploring the islands of the Pacific. Being a visionary, he was just as dedicated to bringing knowledge about the flora, useful plants, and their conservation to local communities and decision-makers as to a scientific audience.

In recent years, NTBG worked closely with Art to prepare the manuscript and catalog thousands of herbarium specimens for the Flora of Samoa, which NTBG intends to publish in early 2021 as part of NTBG’s Pacific islands flora program. This flora, Art’s magnum opus, and the collections that he deposited in NTBG’s herbarium will contribute enormously to our collective understanding of tropical species, which will, in the years ahead, serve to help protect the people, plants, and places Art loved. Our loss is tremendous, but his legacy is greater.

Explore herbarium specimens collected by Art Whistler’s.

The National Tropical Botanical Garden is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Irene Hirano Inouye on Tuesday, April 7. Irene was not only a remarkable leader in many cultural, educational, and social institutions and organizations; she was an avid supporter and dear friend of the Garden. NTBG’s 1964 Congressional Charter was the first piece of legislation written and successfully passed by Daniel Inouye as a freshman senator who remained a steadfast champion of the Garden for decades. Shortly after Irene and Sen. Inouye were married in 2008, the senator brought Irene to visit NTBG’s national headquarters on Kauai and in 2011 they agreed to serve as Honorary Co-Chairs of our National Blue Ribbon Committee, overseeing a $15 million capital campaign.

After Sen. Inouye passed away in December 2012, Irene continued as Chair of our campaign which sought to make NTBG more resilient by building a vibrant visitor program in McBryde Garden. In 2014, as part of the 50th anniversary of NTBG’s Congressional Charter, Irene attended the celebration in McBryde Garden and participated in the opening ceremony of the garden’s Biodiversity Trail and dedication of the Inouye Overlook which marks the location where Sen. Inouye’s grandparents worked for the McBryde Sugar Plantation. Irene’s years of friendship, support, and dedication to helping NTBG advance plant science, conservation, and education will remain an important part of her legacy, one that will continue to bear fruit for generations to come.

NTBG President Chipper Wichman said, “Irene was such an amazing woman, full of grace and dignity that allowed her to fiercely and effectively champion causes that she believed in. It was an honor to have worked closely with her to advance NTBG’s mission. As we mourn her passing, let’s also remember that she has been such a wonderful role model for Hawaii and the world.” NTBG is grateful for Irene’s years of friendship, support, and dedication to helping NTBG advance plant science, conservation, and education which will remain an important part of her legacy, one that will continue to bear fruit for generations to come.

—April 8, 2020, Kalaheo, Hawaii

FIRST PERSON: The ‘inseparable bond’ between Hawaiian culture and native plants

NTBG’s own Mike DeMotta, Curator of Living Collections has been featured in a United Nations News article.

Read the full article here:

https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1059742