Dr. Dennis F. Whigham is a senior botanist based at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, where his current projects focus on wetlands, the rarest terrestrial orchid in eastern North America, and invasive species. Throughout his long career at the Smithsonian, Dennis has been primarily interested in the ecology of plants, and his attempts to understand how plants go about their business has resulted in a journey through forests, fields and wetlands around the world. He has studied woodland herbs – including orchids, vines, a range of wetland species, invasive species – and forests in the tropics, temperate and boreal zones. In recent years, examinations of the interactions between plants, especially orchids, fungi, and invasive earthworms have lead to new and exciting explorations. Dennis and his collaborators have published almost 200 articles in journals and books and he has co-edited 10 books, including one on terrestrial orchids and a 2009 volume on Tidal Freshwater Wetlands. His current passion is to establish the North American Orchid Conservation Center (NAOCC). NAOCC will be based on continentally focused public-private collaborations that will eventually result in the conservation of the genetic diversity of all native orchids, initially in the U.S. and Canada.

Greg Allikas

Saturday Afternoon
Orchid Photography for the Digital Age

After Dinner
The 25 Best Orchids I Have Seen in the Past 3 Years
The “25 best” is a good all-around that features 25 of the best out of 200 or so awards I shoot each year.