Callery Pear Leaf Collection

My name is Dave Coyle, and I’m an assistant professor at Clemson University.  I’m part of a project with several faculty and a M.S. student at the University of Tennessee that’s looking at population genetics of the callery pear and its relatives.  In the long run, we hope this information may help contribute to management tactics beyond what we currently have available.  We would like to collect and analyze foliage samples from across the region where callery pear is present.  To that end, we would greatly appreciate any assistance you can give, perhaps from some of the Master Naturalists in MS.  I have attached a document that details what we need.  Basically, each sample location is a patch of callery pear of at least 10 individuals (different sample locations at least 15 miles apart).  From each individual tree, we’d like 10 leaves put into an envelope.  So, each sample location would have 10 envelopes (1 per tree).  Written on the envelope would be the gps coordinates of each tree and if the tree is thorny or not thorny.  All the envelopes can be FedExed to my UT colleagues (shipping information is in the document).  If you’d like envelopes sent to you (or the collector), let us know.  All this is in the document I’ve attached. 

We do have some funding to collect a bit on our own but we’ll obviously be geographically limited, and it would be great to get several samples from across the region (and we have none from MS at the moment).  Sample collection can begin immediately where trees have leaves (leaves don’t need to be fully mature).  Please contact me or Marcin (mnowicki@utk.edu) if you have any questions – Marcin is the scientist who will be handling most of this project.

Thank you, and don’t hesitate to call/email if you have any questions.