Joni Ward
Plant Registrar
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Data basing
- Inventorying
- Accessioning the Garden’s Living Collection
- Flora of Arizona and the Southwest
PERSONAL STATEMENT
As one of two Plant Registrars, I use my analytical skills to interpret our GIS maps and to data base, inventory, identify and accession the Garden’s Living Collection. I came to the Garden as a volunteer in 1989 and have volunteered with the Cactus Voucher Project since 1993. In 2002-2003 I completed several AZ Flora classes at ASU and began a floristic study of the Lime Creek area near Horseshoe Dam with another research volunteer. We completed that study in 2006. Recently I agreed to serve as the coordinating botanist for a new PAPAZ project in the Fossil Creek area. I also serve as a volunteer assistant curator in Desert Botanical Garden Herbarium. I enjoy collecting and identifying plants wherever I go in Arizona and the southwest and particularly enjoy collecting cacti, having learned from the experts in the Research Department at the Garden. I am currently documenting the Opuntia near Nashville, Tennessee, my home town. I am interested in experientially communicating the brilliance of the natural world to preschoolers, young children and their parents.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Goldman, Dawn and Joni Ward. 2010. A Survey of the Vascular Plants in the Area of Lime Creek, Maricopa County, Arizona: A Unique Upland Sonoran Desert Environment. Canotia 6(1): 1-25.
Webber, A. N., P. B. Gibbs, J. B. Ward and S. E. Bingham. 1993. Site-directed mutagenesis of the photosystem I reaction center: The proline cysteine motif. Jour. Biol. Chem. 268: 12990-12995.
Webber, A. N., S. E. Bingham, P. B. Gibbs, L. M. Misra, and J. B. Ward. 1992. Site directed mutagenesis of the photosystem I reaction center in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Murata, ed. Research in Photosynthesis Vol. I: 561-564.
