NEWS from BOTANY 2025

On 10 December, our traditional Christmas party took place in the department’s offices. An exceptionally varied buffet provided by the participants (including Ziziphus jujuba and Dimocarpus longan), the obligatory mulled wine and presentations by Thomas Gregor (Kyrgyzstan) and Christian Printzen (Cape Horn) ensured a great atmosphere among the 40 participants. Many thanks to Heike, Luisa and Viola for organising the event.

Volunteer Gerhard Winter attended this year’s conference of the International Association of Bryologists (IAB) in Taiwan in October (13–17 October). The conference was organised by the Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute (TBRI) in Jiji. Three days of interesting lectures and poster presentations were followed by a two-day collecting excursion to Sun Link Sea. Following the conference, colleagues from the TBRI organised an exclusive week-long excursion for G. Winter, A. Schäfer-Verwimp and J. Shevok to northern Taiwan, during which numerous moss specimens were collected for the Senckenbergianum Herbarium in FR and JE.

From 22 to 25 September, the annual meeting of Senckenberg botanists took place in Dresden and Görlitz. The Frankfurt participants first travelled to Dresden on the 22nd, where we were given a guided tour of the garden by Prof. Dr. Christoph Neinhuis, Director of the Botanical Garden of the Technical University of Dresden, and visited the scientific collections in the afternoon. 

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On 1 September 2025, Rainer Döring will have been working at and for Senckenberg for 50 years. Born in the Eifel region, he began his training as a museum assistant at the Senckenberg School on 1 September 1975, which he completed in 1977. After completing his training, Döring worked as a volunteer in the botany department for several months, where he was hired on a permanent basis on 1 February 1978. Rainer Döring’s ‘normal’ period of service ended on 1 March 2023, but fortunately for all of us, he has continued to work on a part-time basis since then, so that his decades of experience continue to benefit the herbarium.

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Dear Rainer, thank you for many years of productive and friendly cooperation, and all the best for the future.

Margret Kessler passed away at the age of 82 at the beginning of July 2025. She volunteered at Senckenberg from 2007 to 2024, initially working on museum education programmes for adult education and later in the botany department. In recent years, she worked closely with Gerhard Winter on our moss herbarium. She processed over 2,000 specimens and entered the specimen information into the SeSam collection database. We would like to express our sincere thanks to her for her work for our Senckenbergianum herbarium.

From 19 July to 7 August, Stefan Wanke, Matthias Jost and doctoral student Woorin Kim successfully searched for species of the genera Krameria (Krameriaceae) and Pholisma (Boraginaceae) in the Sonoran Desert in the southwestern United States. The collected material will form the basis for studies on the phylogeny and molecular evolution of parasitic plants. Particular attention is being paid to the evolution of plastid and mitochondrial genomes.

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Juraj Paule visited the department on 7 and 8 July. Topics discussed included flow cytometry and the continuation of collaborative projects in the field of bromeliads and marigolds. Juraj, Matthias Jost’s predecessor as head of the ‘Molecular Evolution of Plants’ department (2011-2022), has been curator of the phanerogam herbarium at the Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum in Berlin since 2022.

On 27 June 2025, members of the department were given a guided tour of the premises of the Physical Society and the telescope dome. The meteorite collection was particularly admired, and even the sun played along: exceptionally strong solar prominences could be observed through the telescope. In ideal weather conditions, a barbecue followed in the SBIK-F garden, where the head of the department took it upon himself to personally tend the grill (occasionally relieved by Rainer Döring).

Many thanks to the organisers of this successful event and also to the Physics Association and its two members, who gave us an exciting and informative introduction to astronomy.

I am a plant biologist specialising in molecular biology, phylogenetics and herbarium-based research. My work focuses on plant evolution, integrating genetic/genomic and morphological data, with an increasing focus on parasitic plant lineages. I have experience in DNA-based systematics and have contributed to large-scale biodiversity and conservation projects. As a postdoctoral researcher, I enjoy combining fieldwork, herbarium work and molecular tools to investigate key questions in angiosperm evolution.

I always look forward to collaborating and exchanging ideas!

Dr. Matthias Jost obtained his doctorate in evolutionary biology and botany from Dresden University of Technology. After completing postdoctoral research in Dresden, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and most recently at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, he took up his position at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt. Here, Dr Jost holds the position of Head of the Department of Molecular Evolution of Plants and is responsible for managing the Grunelius-Möllgaard Laboratory, which serves as Senckenberg’s central molecular laboratory and is available to visiting researchers.

In addition to investigating the molecular adaptations of heterotrophic plants, Dr. Jost’s scientific interests focus primarily on researching the structural evolution of plant organelle genomes (plastid and mitochondrial genomes).

My research interests are systematics and the use of comparative methods to study the evolution of bromeliad traits using next-generation sequencing (NGS) data. I am currently a doctoral student at the Institute of Biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In my project, I am investigating whether the size of the nuclear genome is related to the occurrence of species in limited habitats in a group of Tillandsia..

During my research stay at Goethe University Frankfurt, I will perform genome size measurements in a flow cytometer to address the lack of knowledge about nuclear genome size in Tillandsia. To this end, I will also visit various bromeliad collections: the Palmengarten in Frankfurt and the Loki Schmidt Garden in Hamburg, as well as the Botanical Garden of Utrecht University. As part of the collaboration, I will also establish fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) methods for Bromeliaceae at RWTH Aachen University. I will be working at Senckenberg and Goethe University for three months.

Ms. Bähr worked as a volunteer in our department for 20 years (1996-2016) and was still active at the age of over 90. Every Wednesday, she devoted herself to the technical processing of herbarium material with meticulous care and expertise. As long as her health permitted, she also took part in the department’s social activities, such as our botanical day trips and Christmas party. We will always remember her friendly, communicative nature, her enthusiasm for ginkgo trees and the good wishes she sent to colleagues on special occasions via cards. It is thanks in no small part to her commitment and enthusiasm that a ginkgo tree with a special growth form was able to move with the department from its former location on Kuhwaldstraße to the Senckenberg grounds.

Dr. Veranso-Libalah is an expert in plant systematics with a special focus on tropical African flora. She earned her doctorate in natural sciences from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz in 2017, where her research on the phylogeny, taxonomy, and biogeography of African Melastomateae led to the recognition of several new genera and species as well as extensive taxonomic revisions.

Her career encompasses both research and curation, including postdoctoral positions at JGU Mainz and LMU Munich, as well as curatorial duties at the State Botanical Collection Munich (SNSB). Dr Veranso-Libalah is currently focusing on phylogenomic research of the Dichapetalaceae and Francoaceae, contributing to our understanding of the evolution, diversification, origin and systematics of these plant families.

In 1985, the city of Frankfurt was one of the first German cities to commission an institute, Senckenberg, to set up and carry out permanent, comprehensive biotope mapping.

The entire city area is mapped every 5-7 years, and the new maps are all digitised. For decades, the results have been an important basis for species and biotope protection, monitoring the success of maintenance measures and urban planning in general in Frankfurt (e.g. species and biotope protection concept, main and freight station track areas, airport, nature reserves, orchards).

Press releases on the 40th anniversary (in German):
(idw) News Information Service Science
Die Grünen Frankfurt

On 18 March 2025, the new Senckenberg Book 89, ‘Flore illustrée du Burkina Faso et du Mali’, was officially presented at the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques in Geneva (one of the largest herbaria in the world with over 6 million specimens) in the presence of the ambassadors of Burkina Faso and Mali and the representative of Swiss Development Cooperation.

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On 13 February 2025, Heinz Kalheber passed away at the age of 91. He had been a member of the SGN since 1946 and its appointed honorary employee since 1990. We are deeply grateful to him for his many years of excellent and friendly cooperation and for his outstanding contributions to the Herbarium Senckenbergianum and the library of the Department of Botany and Molecular Evolutionary Research.

Obituary for Heinz Kalheber (in German)