Botany
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We'd love to hear from you so throw something on the Wall, post a Photo, or start a Discussion. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Botany is housed in Birge Hall at 430 Lincoln Drive. The building, initially known as the botany building, was finished in August of 1912 and renamed in 1950 in honor of Edward Asahel Birge, one of the pioneers in the study of limnology. There are a wide variety of botanical resources to choose from on the UW campus - the Wisconsin State Herbarium, Plant Ecology Lab, the Arboretum, Botany Art Studio, and the newly renamed Newcomb Imaging Center just to name a few. If you're a student or prospective student, please check out our list of regular course offerings at: http://www.botany.wisc.edu/botanycourses.htm
To subscribe to or watch videos the department puts up, please visit our YouTube page at: http://www.youtube.com/user/UWMadisonBotany
If you would like to learn more about our faculty or reach out to them, please visit our faculty introduction page: http://www.botany.wisc.edu/faculty.htm
If you're interested in ordering a poster from our store, please visit: https://charge.wisc.edu/botany/sales.asp
If you'd like to see our upcoming colloquium schedule, please visit: http://www.botany.wisc.edu/biocolloquium.htm
To keep up with our news and current events, please visit: http://botany.wisc.edu/currentevents.htm
If you're an alum of Botany or BAC (Biological Aspects of Conservation), or would like to learn even more about what's going on in the department, please check out our alum page: http://www.botany.wisc.edu/alumni.htm
If you would love to donate to any of our programs and various scholarships, please visit: http://www.botany.wisc.edu/giftgiving/ We certainly appreciate your generosity!
05/11/2026
Kaylin DeHart is a senior at the University of Wisconsin–Madison majoring in Neurobiology and Botany. Her work is a model for why studying across disciplines can build a broader understanding of the science of life:
https://madison.com/exclusive/fueling-discovery/article_2456ff48-71e6-454f-b51b-c2b6723822a3.html
04/27/2026
John Zaborsky, along with fellow UW Botany alumni Jeff Rose, Ricardo Kriebel, Bryan Drew, and Ken Sytsma have published a paper on the phylogenetics and biogeography of Sesamothamnus (Pedaliaceae) in American Journal of Botany. A phylogenetic tree based on 512 nuclear genes and entire plastomes was generated for Sesamothamnus. The nuclear and plastome data provided congruent phylogenies and showed that the species restricted to northeast Africa are sister to the species in southern Africa. Sesamothamnus shows a classic distributional pattern between these arid areas: the African Arid Corridor (AAC) disjunction. A hypothesis explaining this disjunction posits the former existence of a corridor of arid habitats that linked the two areas. Searching the literature, the authors found 73 examples of vascular plants that exhibit this distribution. Along with Sesamothamnus, time-calibrated splits were obtained for these groups, ranging from 34 Ma to the Pleistocene, with the majority dated to the late Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene.
Most clades, including Sesamothamnus, appear associated with waves of aridification that shaped the biota of Africa during this time, with the corridor opening and closing repeatedly. The rise of C4 and CAM photosynthesis, evolution of succulence and spiny stems, and the diversification of bovids also occurred during this time. The data show that the AAC formed and reformed many times, allowing the ancestors of these plants to frequently migrate from the southwest to the northeast. The pattern is complicated, and phylogenetic studies of widely distributed African genera may reveal more AAC disjunctions between sister taxa.
https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajb2.70192
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