Dr. Shahina Ghazanfar, author of Plants of the Qur’ān, History and Culture will deliver the 36th annual John Dwyer Public Lecture at 4 p.m. Friday, November 10, in the Bayer Event Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden. 

The lecture, sponsored by Saint Louis University’s Department of Biology and the Missouri Botanical Garden, is free and open to the public. The annual John Dwyer Lecture in Biology honors the memory of Dr. John Dwyer, a professor of biology at Saint Louis University and a research associate of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Plants of the Qur’ān, History and Culture is the first book to explore and highlight the history of the plants mentioned in the Qur’ān. It delves into the historical and current cultural significance of the 30 most-featured plants from the Qur’ān, such as castor oil, myrtle, and food plants, such as ginger, garlic and dates. The book explores traditional and present use of these plants, including as food and medicine, and the context in which plants are mentioned in the Qur’ān. Ghazanfar is a Pakistani botanist based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Looking at these plants from a current perspective, the book also advocates for conservation and sustainable use of plants and their habitats as many face threats from climate change and human impact on their natural habitats.

Ghazanfar will be holding a book signing following the lecture.

Information:

WHAT: 2023 Dwyer Lecture
WHO: Dr. Shahina Ghazanfar, author of Plants of the Qur’ān, History and Culture
WHEN: 4 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 10
WHERE: Bayer Event Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Blvd., south St. Louis   
COST: Free

About Shahina Ghazanfar

Shahina Ghazanfar was educated at the Universities of Punjab and Cambridge, and has been based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, since 2001. She is co-editor of the Flora of Tropical East Africa, a detailed taxonomic account of the roughly 12,000 plant species found in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, for which she researched and wrote the account of the family Scrophulariaceae. She also co-organized, and edited the proceedings, of the 17th AETFAT Congress in Addis Ababa in 2003.

Her main areas of research are the systematics, vegetation, and biogeography of Oman, Arabia, and Pakistan. She has published a detailed account of the biochemistry and usage of Arabian medicinal plants and is the author of the first ever Flora of Oman. As an expert on the Arabian Peninsula, she is often consulted on its native flora, medicinal and perfume plants, and since 1992 has made numerous environmental assessments of development projects and proposed nature reserves in the region.

In addition to writing and editing scientific publications, she is an accomplished botanical artist who has illustrated most of her books and all her research papers. The British Council in Oman mounted a solo exhibition of her watercolors in 1993.

Shahina Ghazanfar is on the editorial board of Systematics and Geography of Plants, and a member of the Linnean Society, AETFAT, IAPT, the Society for Arabian Studies, the Society of Economic Botany, and the Arabian Plant Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission, IUCN.

About Saint Louis University

Founded in 1818, Saint Louis University is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious Catholic institutions. Rooted in Jesuit values and its pioneering history as the first university west of the Mississippi River, SLU offers more than 15,200 students a rigorous, transformative education of the whole person. At the core of the University’s diverse community of scholars is SLU’s service-focused mission, which challenges and prepares students to make the world a better, more just place.

About Missouri Botanical Garden

The Missouri Botanical Garden’s mission is “to discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment in order to preserve and enrich life.” Today, 164 years after opening, the Missouri Botanical Garden is a National Historic Landmark and a center for science, conservation, education and horticultural display.