Pollen Grains – World Travelers without a Passport

Pollen Grains – World Travelers without a Passport

Mervi Hjelmroos-Koski

Join us to explore the incredible world of pollen grains. Pollen has a unique outer wall made of one of the toughest materials known in the organic world, resistant to high temperatures, acids and bases, enzymes, and other chemicals. As a result, pollen grains that are hundreds of millions of years old – as old as the time of the dinosaurs - can still be studied today, providing valuable insight into plant-climate interactions, landscape development, human impact on vegetation and even forensic investigation.

Mervi Hjelmroos-Koski is a Finnish-born scientist with a Ph.D. in quaternary biology from the University of Lund, Sweden, and D.Sc. in aeropalynology from the University of Stockholm. She has worked with pollen grains since her first year of college in Finland and has been involved in all aspects—from marine archaeology to asthma, and from lake sediments in the arctic tundra to the snowfields in South Georgia, Antarctica. The author and co-author of over 100 scholarly publications, she has been a researcher and taught at universities worldwide. Since 2007, she has managed the School of Botanical Art and Illustration at Denver Botanic Gardens.

November 6, 6:30-8 p.m. Gates Hall

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