Friends of the Farlow
Activities & Events

Sunday, 5 April 2009 Clara Cummings Walk

Saturday, 7 November 2009 FoF Annual Meeting & Lecture

Settled in 1650, Dogtown was an inland, centrally located village of Cape Ann that provided protection from attacks from the sea and freshwater and plenty of land for grazing sheep and farming. After the War of 1812 the farms were abandoned, and today Dogtown is a protected woodland site littered with glacial erratics that occupies roughly 3,600 acres between Rockport and Gloucester.

Thomas Dresser, author of Dogtown: A Village Lost in Time, will join us for the walk and share his knowledge of the history of the site. The goals for the walk include dusting off the long winter with a spring search for bryophytes, lichens and fungi and admiring the large glacial erratics, such as Peter's Pulpit and Whale's Jaw, and the carved Babson Boulders. Visit online also Dogtown Walks.

Directions: Take Rt. 128 N to Gloucester, MA. After crossing the bridge onto Cape Ann, travel around the "Grant [traffic] Circle" to get on Rt. 127 towards Annisquam. At a little over 1 mile a small bridge crosses an inlet. Immediately after the bridge take a right onto Reynard Strret. Continue to the end of Reynard Street, then turn left onto Cherry Street. The sign "Dogtown Common" will be on the right, about 0.2 miles from the intersection. Drive up the road to the small parking lot on the right, next to the entrance sign. See the map below. If you wish to carpool, please contact Elizabeth Kneiper (ekneiper@aol.com), 781-801-2734.

The trails will be wet in spots. Please wear sturdy hiking boots and bring a bag lunch, water, weather-appropriate clothing, a hand lens and a friend. The walk will go on, rain or shine. There will be ticks.

Lichens:
what are they,
what are their relatives, and
what are they good for?

Dr. Michaela Schmull
Farlow Herbarium

The talk will give an overview of the general morphological and anatomical diversity of lichens and their symbiotic partners: fungi, algae and/or cyanobacteria. Questions such as 'how do lichens live' and 'where do they grow' will be asked and answered. Within the 'tree of life' their systematic position will be discussed followed by an introduction to fungal systematics. In a closing section the fascinating diversity of lichen use and their importance for humans and animals will be demonstrated.

Michaela studied Biology at the University of Goettingen, Germany, and at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. She got her masters degree from the University of Goettingen, focusing on higher plant ecology. For her Ph.D. also from the University of Goettingen, she switched to lichen ecology. Her dissertation thesis on "Site factors determining epiphytic lichen distribution in a dieback-affected spruce-fir forest on Whiteface Mountain, New York", was in cooperation with the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Michaela was a post-doc at the Department of Systematic Botany, University of Goettingen, until 2007 where she taught classes in general biology and field botany and worked on lichen systematics. She is currently a Research and Curatorial Associate at the Farlow Herbarium, Harvard University.