Facilities
The Corpse Flower, Amorphophallus titanum, is developing a flowering bud in the UMSL greenhouse. This particular plant, grown from seed in 1995 at UMSL, collected by James Symon, also bloomed in 1998. Two of its siblings have also bloomed at UMSL, in 2001 and 2009. When this plant bloomed in 1998, it surprised everyone by being capable of flowering at a very small size and weight, just under 3 pounds. It was the first of all the seeds that James Symon distributed around the world to bloom, and the first one to bloom in the United States since 1939. This is the "archetype", the original, the first, and is nicknamed Archie. To learn more click here.
Department facilities include research and teaching laboratories, environmental chambers, greenhouses, and a large array of supporting modern research instrumentation. Graduate research can be pursued using facilities of the Missouri Botanical Garden or the Saint Louis Zoo. Several sites within an hour of campus are suitable for field studies, including state parks, wildlife conservation areas, The Shaw Nature Reserve and Washington University's Tyson Research Center. UM-St. Louis is a member of the St. Louis University Research Station Consortium that operates Lay and Reis Field Stations in Missouri and also the Organization for Tropical Studies, which operates three field stations in Costa Rica. CEIBA Biological Centre in Guyana has hosted several UM-St. Louis courses and student researchers. Student researchers work independently at research stations throughout the tropics.
Cooperative Programs
The department participates in a cooperative consortium program in biology
with Washington University, Saint Louis University, Southern Illinois
University-Edwardsville, and the Missouri Botanical Garden.