Robbie Hart

@oreotrephes.bsky.social

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Director, William L. Brown Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden -- plants for people (and vice versa). Programs in Himalayan climate change, mountain plant ecology, community based conservation in Madagascar, and ethnobotany.

A team of field workers at a GLORIA site for monitoring alpine plant community responses to climate change and effects on mountain ethnobotany in Yunnan, China, near the Kawagebo mountain area
An old castle ruin in a circular valley with the snow-covered mountain Jomolhari behind, just below two GLORIA sites for monitoring alpine plant community responses to climate change and effects on mountain ethnobotany
The round slope of a GLORIA site for monitoring alpine plant community responses to climate change and effects on mountain ethnobotany in Manang, Nepal, with the snowcovered mountain Chulu behind.
Four members of the Missouri Botanical Garden / Western Washington University joint feild team stand on a small summit on an alpine ridgeline with Mt. Olympus behind them; Olympic National Park Summer 2025.
The cover of the paperback edition of The White Mirror, a Li Du mystery by Elsa Hart, held up in front of a snowy morning scene in St. Louis Missouri
A conference poster for the Society of Ethnobotany. The background shows dry thistle plants in front of a calm lake and clear sky. Large text announces the theme ‘Undisciplined Ethnobotany,’ with smaller text noting the 65th Annual Meeting, held 31 May–4 June 2026 in Montpellier, France.
Four scientists sit before an audience in a panel discussion under the multicolored light of Tomás Saraceno's work "Cosmic Filaments"
Colorful Buddhist prayer flags stretch across the blue waters of Omta Tertsho, a sacred lake in Bhutan that reflects the mountains above.
One pale inflorescence cluster of Edgeworthia chrysantha (paperbush) in the foreground, with yellow daffodils, the red brick of historical Missouri Botanical Garden buildings, and the blue sky of a sunny day in the background.
A central yellow sunflower stands out above a field of yellow sunflowers in the bottom half of the image. In the top half of the image, a background of blue-grey clouds and mountains. Taken at Yulong Xueshan (Jade Dragon Mountain) in Southwest China, 2010.
A roll of signal-orange flagging tape sits next to an open compass with reflecting mirror on the summit of an alpine peak in Yunnan, China which is covered in moss, orange lichen, and alpine vascular plants. In the backgrounds, roiling clouds and the distant peaks of the Hengduan.
A witch hazel branch with yellow-orange flowers lit by a low winter sun shining through them grows in Tower Grove Park, Saint Louis; picture taken late December 2023.
The joint team from Tribhuvan University, Missouri Botanical Garden, and Manang, Nepal survey a subalpine-alpine plot above Manang for monitoring biodiversity response to climate change. Behind the three people holding measuring tape on a grassy alpine summit the Marsyangdi River valley is visible.
A rainbow above a high valley between two mountain ridges at Meili Xueshan in Yunnan, China was appropriately celebratory as it appeared just as we finished the final survey of a permanent plot where we monitor alpine plant responses to climate change as part the PEAKS project at Missouri Botanical Garden, in collaboration with Shangri-La Alpine Botanical Garden.
A team of Missouri Botanical Garden scientists in Madagascar work to collect, take data on, and press in newspaper plants from the Garden-managed community conservation area at Ibity Massif in Madagascar, which is known to host 304 plant species, including 217 found only in Madagascar and 37 found only in Ibity. Specimens like these are part of a pipeline of collection, curation, and data-sharing that allows the discovery and better understanding of species and their traits and underlies global efforts to conserve biodiversity and address climate change impacts.
The label of one herbarium specimen from the Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium collected in 1869 by George Engelmann, the first scientist at the Garden. The Garden's herbarium collection is now close to 8 million specimens and will be comprehensively digitized as part of a new initiative called Revolutionizing Species Identification (https://mobot.org/RSI)
A cardinal in silhouette flying on a winter day outside the Missouri Botanical Garden Climatron, a large hemispherical greenhouse.
Fang Ye of Shangri La Alpine Botanical Garden and Robbie Hart of Missouri Botanical Garden work together to resurvey an alpine plant ecology monitoring plot in the rain. They’re both quite wet despite the umbrella Fang Ye is holding.
Three ecologists sitting on a rocky peak in SW China looking at field notes, mountain slopes and clouds in the background. Yunnan, China, 2024, collecting data as part of the Plant Ecology and Adaptation Knowledge Systems program at Missouri Botanical Garden.
Sun glowing on a deep blue gentian flower (Gentiana decorata) in flower in an alpine meadow surrounded by mountain ridges, photographed Fall 2024 at the mountain in SW China where we work to monitor climate impacts on high elevation plants and on they way they are used by local people.
Foreground is a ginkgo branch with golden leaves decorated with a red tassel in Yulong Temple outside Yunnan, China, photographed in 2011. At 2600 meters above sea level, this individual tree has grown and thrived much higher in the mountains than usual for the species, even in cultivation. Background is a banner in dongbawen, the ideographic script used by ritual specialist in the Naxi community indigenous to this area.
Ginkgo trees with falling golden leaves line a path at Missouri Botanical Garden in November 2024.