TMN GLC Chapter Meeting

Our TMN GLC January chapter meeting will be held on Saturday, January 17, 2026, at 9:30am at the Winedale Historical Complex, 3738 FM2714, Round Top, Texas 78954.

We will be reviewing the budget for the upcoming year and sharing more information about the history of our chapter as we continue to celebrate our 20th anniversary.

We all love Texas natives and will be honored to have one speak on the topic, “Bryophytes: Taking a Closer Look at Biodiversity”, at our January meeting. Dale Kruse has been Curator of the S. M. Tracy Herbarium at TAMU since 1999. His early interest in botany originated on numerous trips to the family farm in Lavaca County (coastal plain of south-central Texas). There he developed a deep love of the outdoors and first took notice of the flora of Texas. His interests include the Poaceae (grass), Cyperaceae (sedge), and Juncaceae (rush) families, but his true botanic passion is the lower plants (bryophytes). In the broadest sense, his interests involve the systematics, ecology, and biogeography of the mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. Learn more about bryophytes and Dale’s work at https://www.texasbryology.com/.

Dale brings a broad and deep experience to his work, having been responsible for the day-to-day management of the herbarium for over 26 years. He recently oversaw merging TAMU’s Biology Department Herbarium into the Tracy Herbarium, creating the third largest herbarium in Texas with approximately 366,000 specimens. Although his emphasis is largely in Texas and the southern United States, he has made substantial collections in the southeast, northeastern, and northwestern United States, in addition to numerous trips abroad to Scotland, England, Trinidad, and Mexico.

Are you interested in collecting bryophytes to support the Tracy Herbarium and Mr. Kruse’s work on his current book in progress about bryophytes? Following the chapter meeting, Mr. Kruse will conduct in-depth training for how to collect bryophytes. Sheri Wilcox, Immediate Past TMN GLC President, met Mr. Kruse at the TMN Annual Conference in October where she discovered that he is eager to increase collections in the counties our chapter covers and invites us to contribute.

If interested in this Citizen Science training, please bring your lunch. We will take a break to eat lunch and drive over to Indian Creek Nature Area, 213 N Main St, Burton, TX 77835 (~12 minutes from Winedale), where we can be near the creek area for the bryophyte collection training. Bring water and dress accordingly with boots (water and mud proof if it rains), sun and bug protection, etc. (you know what to do!).