Description

The New England Botanical Society’s Les Mehrhoff Botanical Research Award supports research on botanical diversity, distribution, habitats, and historical records. Funded projects have included targeted searches for rare and historically recorded populations, botanical inventories, habitat characterization, and studies of ecological requirements. The award’s research portfolio includes vascular plants, fungi, bryophytes, lichens, and algae, with work in forests, wetlands, coastal marshes, alpine areas, and ponds.

Past awards have supported herbarium-based research and biogeographic modeling to guide field surveys, revisions to rare plant and moss lists, and the preservation, assessment, and creation of herbarium collections. Other funded studies have examined land-use history, forest stand age, ecological niche differentiation, plant hybrids, and chromosome characteristics. Many projects focus on New England, while past work also includes northeastern North America and Minnesota.