Laguna del Hunco A new paper describing fossil Ceratopetalum (coachwood, New South Wales Christmas bush) fruits has been published in Annals of Botany . The paper documents new winged fruits from the early Eocene (ca. 52 million years old) Laguna del Hunco flora of Chubut Province, Patagonia, Argentina. I co-authored the paper with Dr. MarĂa A. Gandolfo of Cornell University. Update (March 2017): A short synopsis of the paper can be found in the Content Snapshots section of the March 2017 issue of Annals of Botany.
Modern and ancient passionflowers. Left: A maypop flower. Right: A fossil seed. I have recent been doing outreach about the fossil passionflowers I described from Gray Fossil Site, Tennessee. See the following for more: ETSU News: "Paleontologists discover extinct relative of Tennessee state wildflower": https://www.etsu.edu/etsu-news/2021/12-december/passionflower.php In Defense of Plants: Episode 360: Exploring a 4.5 million year old flora: https://www.indefenseofplants.com/podcast/2022/3/13/ep-360-exploring-a-45-million-year-old-flora
I attended the Midcontinent Paleobotanical Colloquium at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia from May 6th to 7th to present the talk "Seeds of Passiflora subgenus Decaloba from the early Pliocene Gray Fossil Site of Tennessee."