Hi All,

I am excited to make the announcement that we have decided to run one more iteration of leaf collections this summer/fall!

The directions remain very similar to last year. If you participated last year, we would love to have you participate again this year! Many of you reached out directly during the past year to say you couldn't participate last year but wanted to if we ran another round of collections. Now is your chance and we'd love to have you.

For those that participated previously, the only differences are the address to send the leaves to, and the format of the Unique Leaf ID. We switched the underscores to periods (given iNat didn't seem to play well with underscores). These details are updated in the DIRECTIONS post on the iNat project page.

Unfortunately, Stephanie had to step away from the project last fall suddenly for personal reasons. I am currently in the process of recruiting another student to lead the processing, analysis, and publication of the leaves from this summer (and last) as a senior thesis research project. In the meantime, I am acting as the point person for the leaf collections during the summer and early fall.

I plan to pick up where Stephanie left off and complete a preliminary analysis of the leaves from last year to share with all of you here soon.

As always, please reach out with questions, ideas, etc, and a huge thank you for your engagement!

All the best,
Rachel