A display of contemporary poetry inspired by the beauty of nature, selected by student interns at the Smith College Poetry Center, Janan Scott '13 and Liliana Farrel '13. Poets represented in the exhibit include Li-Young Lee, Jean Valentine, and Louise Glück.
Janan Scott is a senior majoring in African-American studies, with a concentration in poetry. Liliana Farrel, also a senior, is an English Language and Literature major, with a minor in Film Studies, and a concentration in poetry. Both have been working for the Poetry Center for two years. As stated by Scott and Farrel, "the shapes, colors, smells and textures in this stunning array of blooming are reflected in poetry's rhythms, sounds, and images".

Maize is the largest production crop in the world and plays a central role in all of United States agriculture and food production. Explore the science of maize, one of the most significant crops to humankind for thousands of years, and why it continues to surprise us today.
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Darwin's "Abominable Mystery" and the Search for the First Flowering Plants
by William (Ned) Friedman
Arnold Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University

For over twenty-five years, William (Ned) Friedman's research program has focused on the evolutionary origin and early diversification of flowering plants. His studies of evolutionary history have recently led him into a rather serious interest in the history of evolutionary thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He currently teaches a freshman seminar at Harvard called "Getting to Know Darwin," in which the students re-create ten of Charles Darwin's experiments and/or observations and read correspondence associated with each topic.

Charles Darwin's "abominable mystery" has come to symbolize just about every question we have about the origin and early evolution of flowering plants. What did Darwin think was so abominably mysterious? Ned Friedman explores this mystery through Darwin's correspondence with some of the most eminent botanists of his time and discovers what led him to worry about the evolutionary history of flowering plants right through the last year of his life. Fossils, insect pollination, and rates of evolutionary change were all part of the complexity of trying to understand where flowering plants came from and how they eventually came to dominate most of Earth's plant communities.

Finally, we will look at the recent botanical discoveries and determine whether the abominable mystery has been solved. As will be seen, our current hypotheses for the earliest phases of flowering plant evolution are radically different from the static, if not dogmatic, views that dominated most of the twentieth century — and a far cry from anything that Darwin might have imagined.

General Public Hours: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm daily
and Friday evenings, November 8 & 15, 4:00 - 8:00 pm

Each fall as colors fade outdoors, a riot of color erupts indoors in the Lyman Conservatory at the Botanic Garden of Smith College. While not as widely known as the Spring Bulb Show, this autumnal display is even more spectacular, with vibrant oversized blooms reaching 8 inches across, floral walls of color, and chrysanthemums overflowing the greenhouses.