The Hoard Historical Museum, Fort Atkinson, has announced that University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Ken Cameron will be presenting “The Vanilla Ice Cream of Orchids,” as part of the museum’s ongoing garden education program.
Cameron will make his presentation Saturday, May 6, at 2 p.m., at the museum, 401 Whitewater Ave., The program is free and open to the public.
According to the release, Cameron is the author of “Vanilla Orchids: Natural History and Cultivation,” which “explores the natural history of the world’s most popular flavor and fragrance … providing an introduction to the pollination, biology and diversity of vanilla and related orchids. With more than 30,000 known species, orchids represent the largest family of plants. But only one genus has agricultural value — the vanilla orchid.”
Cameron developed a passion for botany at an early age, the release stated.
“He became one of the first people to apply modern DNA sequencing methods to the study of orchid evolution and classification. As a result of his international lab and field research, he has become the world’s authority on vanilla and its relatives. He served as a curator and director of the New York Botanical Garden’s molecular systematics laboratory for 10 years before relocating to the Midwest,” the release continued.
The professor serves today as the director of the State Herbarium at UW-Madison.
For more information about the presentation, contact museum director Merrilee Lee by phone: 920-397-9914 or email: info@hoardmuseum.org.
For other opportunities and programming, visit the museum during its hours of operation: Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission is free. Questions may be directed to museum staff and volunteers by calling: 920-563-7769, with additional information available on the museum’s website: www.hoardmuseum.org.
Ken Cameron
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