Dr. John L. Clark, a research botanist at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, has been reappointed as a Research Associate in the Department of Botany at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Clark’s appointment lasts for three years, until May 2026. It continues an affiliation he has had with the Smithsonian since 2005. Specifically, the academic affiliation with the Smithsonian gives Clark personal access to the vast collections in the NMNH’s Department of Botany. The department’s herbarium, or collection of dried and preserved plants, currently holds 5 million specimens, making it one of the world’s 10 largest. The Research Associate position also will facilitate Clark’s ongoing collaborative research with botanists around the country and the world. He is particularly excited about several projects he is working on with Dr. Larry Skog, research botanist emeritus at NMNH and Clark’s advisor when he pursued his PhD at George Washington University. Clark’s sponsor for the new three-year Smithsonian appointment is Paul Peterson, a current research botanist and curator of botany at NMNH. Clark has been affiliated with Selby Gardens through a research partnership since 2009. He joined the staff full-time in January 2023. Since then, he has conducted plant research expeditions to Dominican Republic and Ecuador. Clark specializes in the plant family Gesneriaceae, flowering plants that are distributed throughout the world’s tropical forests. Gesneriads are an important part of Selby Gardens’ botanical research and a notable component of its living plant collection. About a third of gesneriads are epiphytic, meaning they grow on other plants without harming them. Selby Gardens is the only botanical garden in the world dedicated to the study and display of epiphytes. Selby Gardens is also a Smithsonian Affiliate, one of more than 200 museums and cultural institutions around the country that have engaged in a long-term partnership with the Smithsonian to promote “the increase and diffusion of knowledge” by creating experiences that educate and inspire.