Our spring 2024 issue opens with an overview by William Bartram scholar Brad Sanders of some of the Philadelphia. explorer’s eighteenth-century botanical discoveries. As the reader might expect, Sanders begins with the famed Franklinia, long since lost in the Georgia wilds, while he continues with such plants that have grown enduringly popular as oakleaf hydrangea and bottle-brush buckeye. Next comes Judy Perry’s in-depth look at the Society’s annual meeting in Wilmington, NC, her article covering the many details of formal presentations, as well as site and garden tours that spanned a period of two days. Photos by Peggy Cornett and Charles Perilloux illustrate meeting activities, Perilloux’s images beautifully capturing moments enjoyed during dinner aboard the battleship USS North Carolina. Readers will also get details on award and scholarship winners, including Jeff Lewis (Flora Ann Bynum Medal), Bill Welch (William Lanier Hunt Award), and Mason Marshall (James R. Cothran Graduate Fellowship). In the issue’s closing article, Ken McFarland writes on the Osage orange, famed in the nineteenth-century for creating impenetrable hedge rows and a plant that today is an ever-popular topic of conversation.
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