Goldie Award Winner 2014 - Dorothy Tiedje

 In 2014, the Field Botanists of Ontario present the 8th John Goldie Award to Dorothy Tiedje. This award is given annually to an individual or organization whose efforts have made a significant contribution to field botany in the province of Ontario. The award honours John Goldie who conducted botanical surveys in Upper Canada and beyond in the early 1800’s, mostly on foot. 
 Dorothy and her late husband, John Tiedje, have been members of the Field Botanists of Ontario since its creation in 1984 and were present at the first meeting at Red Bay that year. They thoroughly enjoyed the many FBO outings and workshops and the friends they made. Dorothy was on the FBO board at one time, with meetings in Toronto. She led at least five field trips for FBO including trips to Walpole Island (1989), Ausable River (1992), Sarnia Howard Watson Trail (1995), and Port Franks (2005 and 2008).

 It must be emphasized that Dorothy and John acted as a team for many of the botanical activities for which she is being recognized by FBO. The Goldie Award is not the first award that recognized their combined efforts. In 1999, they were given a Meritorious Service Award by Lambton Wildlife Incorporated and they were included on the Lambton Wildlife Incorporated President’s Honours list three times. Dorothy served on the Board of Lambton Wildlife for many years and as president for one term. In 2007, they were given an individual Conservation Award by Carolinian Canada for their work. In 2009 the Lambton Woodlot Owners’ Assn. gave them their yearly award.


 Dorothy and John worked together for over 40 years to compile a complete inventory of  the vascular plants in Lambton County. In that time they published 13 editions of that inventory [Tiedje, 2010]. That inventory served as the basis for contributions to the Guide to the Natural Areas of Lambton County [Catterson] in 2009 and to The Huron Shore Flyway report [Sarnia Urban Wildlife Committee] in 2007. During her field inventories, she made a number of  significant plant discoveries, one of the most exciting of which was the discovery of a new genus of native grass for Canada, Diarrhena obovata which she found in 1988 in the Ausable River Valley, Lambton County [Oldham, 1995]. 

 Jane Bowles once said that John was good at spotting unusual plants. Dorothy did the collecting, preserving, identifying and cataloguing.  Starting in 1963, (with Queen Anne’s Lace) Dorothy created a herbarium of Lambton Co. vascular plants. They took a duplicate of each collection to UWO where Jim Phipps, personally, in Dorothy’s presence, approved or corrected the ID. From all available records, and from their own collections, Dorothy compiled the list which John persuaded the computer to organize numerically as to plant families and alphabetically as to species within the families. John looked after the reproduction and printing. Dorothy also has a small collection of  Lambton mosses, liverworts, and lichens.
 Dorothy’s contribution extended to helping students complete their thesis work. In 1988 she helped Pascale Rettien with her thesis on Ulmus fulva (U .rubra, Slippery Elm from the Hungry Hollow woodlot) for the Diplome d’etat de Docteur en Pharmacie at the Universite D’Aix, Marseille. She worked with Nikki May on her MSc. on Volunteer Monitoring of Forest Restoration at the University of Guelph in 2004 by identifying many plants collected for that project. Also in 2004, she assisted Pak Kin Chan at York University with field work for a thesis related to the Karner Blue Reserve at Port Franks. That thesis was entitled “Plant Communities in Oak Savannahs in Ontario: Are we ready for reintroduction of the Karner Blue Butterfly (Lycaeides melissa samuelis)?” Dorothy and John were involved with hands-on efforts to aid FON/NCC volunteers remove the invasive Dog Strangling Vine (Cynanchum nigrum) at the Port Franks Forested Dunes Nature Reserve and to reduce the amounts of Knapweed on the Howard Watson Nature Trail in Sarnia.  

 Dorothy and John made at least 25 wildflower presentations, based on John’s superb photographs. Dorothy inventoried and listed plants on the Howard Watson Trail, Canatara Park, and many other Lambton locations.

 In April 2009, John and Dorothy donated the Tiedje Woods in Hungry Hollow to the Thames Talbot Land Trust. The 6.1-ha (15-acre) wooded property is located in the Ausable River Valley area of natural and scientific interest (ANSI) and the Ausable River Valley Carolinian Canada site. It has been certified as ecologically sensitive through the Eco-Gift Program administered by the Canadian Wildlife Service. 

 Dorothy Tiedje has made outstanding contributions in documenting Ontario plants, supporting the Field Botanists of Ontario and conserving natural places. The Field Botanists of Ontario is pleased to recognize these accomplishments by awarding Dorothy with the 2014 John Goldie Award. 

References: 

Oldham, M., S.J.Darbyshire, D.McLeod, D.A. Sutherland, D.Tiedje, and J.M.. Bowles, 1995. New and noteworthy Ontario grass (Poaceae) records. The Michigan Botanist 34: 105-132.

Tiedje, J, and D. Tiedje. 2010. Vascular Plants of Lambton County, Ontario. 14th Edit. Published by the authors. 66 pp.

The Huron Shore Flyway.  2007.  Sarnia Urban Wildlife Committee 2nd Edit. 20 pp. 


Catterson, G., 2009.  Guide to the Natural Areas of Lambton County. 1st Edition 2009.  Lambton Wildlife Incorporated, Sarnia. 32 pp.   

TRCA Sedge Workshop 2014

Toronto and Region Conservation is considering hosting a sedge identification workshop in the summer of 2014. 

This course which has run successfully in the past will run again pending the appropriate interest level.  The 2-day workshop, consisting of in-class and in-field training is designed to introduce participants to a wide cross-section of sedge species found throughout the Greater Toronto Area and the keys to their identification. 

Workshop details, including dates and registration information will be provided at a later date. 

If you or anyone you know would be interested in attending such a workshop please respond back before February 17th to:

Natasha Gonsalves, B.Sc. 
Sedge Workshop Coordinator, Watershed Monitoring and Reporting Section
Toronto and Region Conservation AuthorityE-mail: ngonsalves@trca.on.ca 

(I have attended this workshop and it is a great one for woodland and wetland sedges!)

Early Trip alert for 2014!

The FBO is offering a Winter Woody Plant ID workshop at the University of Guelph Arboretum Taylor Centre in Guelph on Sunday, February 2^nd, 2014.  Brian Lacey, who helped to develop a manual of woody plants for the Department of Botany at the University of Guelph, will provide guidance on the characters used to recognize woody plant species without their leaves, including bark, winter buds, leaf scars and growth form.  We will start using a hand lens and field guides with some samples indoors, and follow up with a walk around the Arboretum to apply our knowledge. The trip will end at approximately 4:00.  If you are interested please contact Sarah Mainguy  for details.  Registration will be restricted to approximately 24 people due to space restrictions.  Please note that there will be an additional charge to cover the room rental of $9.00 per person.

Goldie Award Winner 2013 - Adele Crowder

The 2013 recipient of the Goldie Award was Adele Crowder.  On October 17th 2013, FBO President Mike McMurtry and Bill McIlveen travelled to Kingston to present the award to Adele during the monthly meeting of the Kingston Field Naturalists.

Adele Crowder was born in Ireland, completed her PhD on the chemistry of peat bogs at Dublin University, and worked as a research associate in Paleoecology at the University of Belfast. In 1966 Adele came to Canada with her husband Christopher and three children and settled in Kingston where
Chris, a medieval historian, was appointed professor in the History Department at Queen’s University. Having initially turned down a full-time position in the Biology Department at Queen’s in order to balance family commitments, Adele began working part-time in the department, first as a lab coordinator in 1967, then as an assistant to Roland Beschel in the Fowler Herbarium, and eventually as a Professor of Biology. In 1970 she was named Curator of the Fowler Herbarium, a position
which she held until 1995. In 1971 she helped to develop a general Ecology course – Biology 202 – which she continued to teach with Professor Raleigh Robertson for 20 years. This course took a hands-on approach to field ecology with numerous field trips in the Kingston area and to the
field station at Lake Opinicon. Adele was a very involved and approachable teacher who inspired many students to pursue ecology and organismal biology as a course of study.

Adele is quick to tell you that she is not a taxonomist or field botanist – but rather a theoretical ecologist who makes observations in the field and takes them back to the lab to figure them out . Her research accomplishments are therefore cross - disciplinary in nature, and cover a broad spectrum of habitats.

The subjects of her academic publications range from the paleoecology of eastern Ontario streams and lake basins – to studies of aquatic macrophytes, wetlands, sediments and fish habitat in the Bay of Quinte – to metal uptake and toxicity in plants adjacent the Sudbury smelters – to forest succession in old fields. In addition to her academic work, Adele has conducted numerous botanical and ecological investigations and produced 45 technical reports for Parks Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, and the private sector. Focused on the Kingston region and eastern Ontario, these include ecosystem and species recovery plans, environmental assessments, feasibility studies and general inventories.

Over the course of her career Adele has supervised or mentored and co-published with 26 students. Among them, Don Cuddy, retired ecologist for OMNR, Dr. Gregory Taylor Dean of Science in the Office of Sustainability, and Professor in the Department of Biology, University of Alberta and the
late Sam Vander Kloet who was professor of Botany at Acadia University.  As Curator of the Fowler Herbarium Adele was determined to make specimen information accessible for use. In 1996, she
was senior author of the Plants of the Kingston Region and has continued to update that publication with new specimen records in subsequent years. In 2003, she co-authored with Vivien Taylor a catalogue for the Jordon Library exhibition: Mrs.Traill, Mrs. Roy and Miss Boyd: Plant collectors in 19th century Upper Canada. The publication celebrates these three women, whose plant collections
were originally deposited in the Fowler Herbarium, and places them in an historical context of
Canadian botany and taxonomy at that time.

Adele has been , throughout her career, actively associated with the Queen’s University Biological Station (QUBS) at Lake Opinicon and has documented its flora. In 1976 she was instrumental in securement of the Hughson Tract, a significant expansion of land holdings of the station, which enabled long-term field studies and started the series of acquisitions which has provided a significant amount o f working property and a substantive conservation presence in the Rideau Lakes area (now in excess of 3,232 ha).

In 1979, Adele introduced the idea of and codeveloped and taught the Naturalists Workshops which were offered by the QUBS for 19 years. These week-long events were designed to provide interpreters, professional field biologists and dedicated naturalists with a broad knowledge of natural history, ecology and animal behaviour, and to assist with identification skills. She also convened one- or two-day workshops on wetlands, species at risk, and other topical subjects to train and enhance
communication amongst biologists working in the field. Adele continues to lend her scientific expertise to, and speak out on, local environmental issues.

The 2013 Goldie award celebrated Adele Crowder’s many contributions to our understanding of the ecology of Ontario plants and the impacts of human activity on them. She has provided us a model for the modern ecologist who increasingly needs to step outside of disciplinary boundaries and be willing to look at the interactions between plants, animals, fungi and their environments. Thank you Adele.

The Once and Future Great Lakes Country

John Riley’s new book The Once and Future Great Lakes Country is available for pre-order, with a 20% discount.  For those of you that don’t know about it, John has exhaustively researched the earliest accounts and descriptions of Great Lakes landscapes, many from the 1600’s. These very early accounts paint a picture of very open landscapes, rich with nut trees, vines, plums, abundant game etc. These descriptions differ from later accounts from the mid-1700’s and 1800’s. With the aboriginal population crash brought on by disease, the land reverted to much more of a forested condition.

http://www.mqup.ca/once-and-future-great-lakes-country--the-products-9780773541771.php?page_id=73&.  Then “Preorder”,  then “Checkout”, and then “Promo Code” and enter “RILEYJ13”.  Some relief from new book pricing.”

29th Annual General Meeting

Field Botanists of Ontario’s

29^th Annual General Meeting

Saturday - Sunday

September 14 and 15, 2013

Cambridge

The AGM is a two day event with two field trip options on Saturday and two on Sunday.  When you sign up for a trip, you will receive detailed instructions on where to meet one to two weeks prior to the date.  The evening meal and talk, and this year’s Annual General Meeting (open to executive and members) will be held in Cambridge at the Hilton Garden Inn.

Four trips (two on Saturday and two on Sunday) have been organized for your enjoyment and our leaders will take you to various botanical hotspots of the Cambridge area.

Please note that field trips are open to non-FBO members but there is a surcharge of $5 per person per trip, and after priority has been given to the members. Your cheque will be cashed following the AGM. Refunds will be issued provided cancellations are made at least 7 days prior to the AGM. No-shows will not be refunded.

Looking for BioBlitz Leader

Ontario Nature is having their 82^nd AGM on June 8, 2013 and part of the activities for the day are a mini BioBlitz on our Cawthra Mulock Nature Reserve (just northwest of Newmarket).

As a Provincial Partner of Ontario Nature’s Nature Network, I was wondering if someone from the Field Botanists of Ontario would be available and willing to co-lead the plants group at our BioBlitz (this will be both a BioBlitz and an educational hike). It will run from 10am – 12pm and then 1pm – 3pm with a BBQ lunch in between. The group will be about 20-30 people which could split up into two separate groups and/or be co-lead by another plant expert.

More information about the event can be found here: www.ontarionature.org/agm

Ontario Nature would be happy to cover your lunch and mileage to and from the event.  Please let me know if anyone would be interested, or if you have any questions. We would love to have you join us.   

Lauren Wright   laurenw@ontarionature.org