Plant Collections — Staff

Boyce Tankersley

Director, Living Plant Documentation

Boyce Tankersley serves as Director of Living Plant Documentation at the Chicago Botanic Garden. His staff's responsibilities include maintaining records on over 2 million plants; verifying the accuracy of all plant nomenclature; labeling 9,400 taxa of permanent plants and 4,000 taxa of seasonal plants; mapping all woody plants and many perennial plants; tracking the change in status of all accessioned plants from cradle to grave. Documentation staff also collect, store and disseminate information related to phenology (bloom sequence); manage the Bloom Cart at the front of the Visitor Center; collect herbarium voucher specimens, digital images and DNA samples of the Garden's accessioned plants; and collect soil samples in association with various researchers.

In addition to having expertise in plant database software, Boyce also specializes in geophytes, or plants that produce a bulb or have a bulb-like resting stage during their life cycles. A veteran of plant-collection expeditions, Boyce has focused his interests on the Republic of Georgia; participating in a plant-collecting trip in 2000 and building collaborations between Georgian and American scientific institutions since then. He currently serves as Secretary of the Friends of the Bakuriani Alpine Botanical Garden Foundation. Prior to coming to the Garden in 1998, Boyce was Curator of Living Collections at the Missouri Botanical Garden. He serves on the Information Technology, Plant Collections and North American Plant Collections Consortium committees of the American Public Gardens Association.

Boyce is Project Director for the Institute of Museum and Library Services Building Digital Resources National Leadership grant "PlantCollections™ – A Community Solution." The American Public Gardens Association and University of Kansas Biodiversity Research Center and Natural History Museum are primary partners with Chicago Botanic Garden on this project and assist with technological and communication/management issues. PlantCollections™ demonstrates the use of distributed queries to access the databases of the 16 participating institutions and provide the collated results to users in an easy to use format on the internet.

After passing the Royal Horticultural Society of Great Britain examination in Horticulture, Boyce received his bachelor of science degree in horticulture from New Mexico State University. He received his master of science degree in floriculture from Texas A&M University.

publications

Tankersley, Boyce (moderator and speaker), Kristina Aguilar, Pamela Allenstein, Christopher Dunn, Michael O’Neal and David Vieglais. 2006. PlantCollections – A Community Solution Workshop. American Public Gardens Association annual meeting. San Francisco, California.

Davidson, Christopher and Nancy Morin (moderators), Lamara Asieshvili, Marine Eristavi, Shalva Sikhuralidze, James Solomon and Boyce Tankersley. 2006. Sustaining Collections of Ornamental Plants from the Flora of the Caucasus as Future Resource for Horticulture. American Public Gardens Association annual meeting. San Francisco, California.

Weathington, Tianna, Prentiss Sawyer, David Sollenberger and Boyce Tankersley. 2006. Who Dominates Gravel Hill: Comparison of 1992 and 2005. American Public Gardens Association annual meeting. San Francisco, California.

Tankersley, Boyce, Pamela Allenstein and David Vieglais. 2006. Plant Collections – A Community Solution Poster. American Public Gardens Association annual meeting. San Francisco, California.

Tankersley, Boyce. 2006. The Importance of Plant Collections Public and Private. Rock Garden Quarterly. Volume 64 Number 2. Spring 2006. pp 130 – 133.

Tankersley, Boyce (moderator), Kayri Havens, Marcel Rejmanek and Mark Widrlechner. 2005. Invasive Risk Assessment: Methods to Evaluate New Taxa for Invasive Characteristics. American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta annual meeting. Chicago, Illinois.

Tankersley, Boyce (moderator), Rebecca Noricks, Dennis Stevenson and Larry Sugarbaker. 2005. Future Advances in Information Exchange. American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta annual meeting. Chicago, Illinois.

Kyle Hamm, Boyce Tankersley, Veronica Harry-Jackson, David Sollenberger and Pati Vitt. 2005. Monitoring a Chicago Area Re-created Natural Environment. American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta annual meeting. Chicago, Illinois.

Tankersley, Boyce (moderator), Peter F. Duncombe, Robert Flynn and David W. Smith. 2004. New Irrigation Technologies. American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta annual meeting. Dallas, Texas.

Tankersley, Boyce, Lara Jefferson, Kay Havens and Galen Gates. 2003. Implementing Weed Risk Assessment and Evaluation Procedures: The Chicago Botanic Garden Model. Oral Presentation. Invasive Plants in Natural and Managed Systems: Linking Science and Management and 7th International Conference on the Ecology and Management of Alien Plant Invasions.

Tankersley, Boyce (moderator and speaker), Michael Doyle and Margaret Popovich. 2003. Creation of a Garden Operation System at the Chicago Botanic Garden in session entitled Working Smart: Maximizing the Use of Stored Information within an Institution. American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta annual meeting. Boston, Massachusetts.

Tankersley, Boyce (moderator), Neil Anderson, Chris Dionigi, Michael Maunder and David Theodoropoulos. 2003. Differing Perspectives on Invasive Species. American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta annual meeting. Boston, Massachusetts.

Tankersley, Boyce. Plant Collecting in the Republic of Georgia. Herbertia, Journal of the International Bulb Society. Vol. 57. 2002. pp. 109-118.

Moderator. 2002. Mapping Your Collections Workshop. American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta annual meeting. Royal Botanic Gardens, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Moderator. 2001. Technologies for Mapping Your Garden. American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta annual meeting. Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver, Colorado.

Speaker. 2001. 2000 Midwestern Plant Collecting Collaborative Expedition to the Republic of Georgia. International Bulb Society annual meeting. Chicago Botanic Garden, Glencoe, Illinois. May 4-6, 2000.

Tankersley, Boyce and Veronica Harry-Jackson. 2000. Getting on the Map. Public Garden, Journal of the AABGA. Vol 15, No 4. Oct/Nov/Dec 2000. pp 12-15.

Moderator and Speaker. 2000. Plant Collecting Techniques Workshop. World Botanic Gardens Conference (Joint Meeting of AABGA, BGCI, CPC). Ashville, North Carolina.

Speaker. 2000. New Technologies for Botanic Garden Records. World Botanic Gardens Conference. (Joint meeting of AABGA, BGCI, CPC). Ashville, North Carolina.

Speaker. 2000. Plant Collecting in Republic of Georgia. Great Lakes Regional Group, International Bulb Society. Glencoe, Illinois.

Speaker. 1999. Hardy and Tropical Bulbs for the Midwest. Great Lakes Regional Group, International Bulb Society, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Tankersley, Boyce. 1995. The English Woodland Garden Grows Up. Missouri Botanic Garden Bulletin LXXXIII (2): 5-7.

Tankersley, Boyce E. III. 1994. AABGA Newsletter Journal Review: “The Role of Kew’s Living Collection in Orchid Conservation” by Sandra Bell, The Kew Magazine, 11(1), February, 1994.

Tankersley, Boyce E. 1981. Growth and Propagation of Acer grandidentatum Nutt. M.S. Thesis, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.

Tankersley, B.E. and E.R. Emino. 1981. Propagation of Acer grandidentatum Nutt by Layering.

The International Plant Propagators Society Combined Proceedings 31: 512-515.

Tankersley, B.E. and E.R. Emino. 1980. Acer grandidentatum: A potential new ornamental tree for the Southwest. HortScience 15: 274.

Tankersley, Boyce, E.R. Emino, and Benny Simpson. 1980. The Bigtooth Maple: An Interesting Tree for Southwest Landscapes. Texas Horticulturist 6(4): 3-4.

Book Reviewer for the Chicago Botanic Garden Library since 1999.