Two Russian botanists at Eagle Hill

Two Russian aquatic botanists, Alexander Bobrov and his wife Elena  Chemeris, were recently hosted by the Humboldt Field Research Institute  in Steuben. They were here with Dr. C. Barre Hellquist, Professor  Emeritus of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, of North Adams,  Massachusetts, as part of an extended expedition to New England to  conduct field studies and collect aquatic plants that are similar to  those found in rivers and lakes in Russia. They were especially  interested in observing plants in the numerous acidic aquatic habitats of  eastern Maine. Dr. Hellquist took them to known sites in the region to  study pondweeds and their hybris, including the Narraguagus River and  Pushaw Lake in Oronoand even into rainy Aroostook County. During the  three weeks they were in the United States, they collected and observed  plants from as far west as Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New  York, as far south as southern Connecticut, north throughout Vermont, New  Hampshire, and Maine. While here, they had the chance to observe and  collect 30 species of Potamogeton, and numerous Potamogeton hybrids, many  aquatic mosses, and many other species of aquatic plants both familiar  and unfamiliar to them. Alexander Bobrov and Elena Chemeris are  associated with the I.D. Papanin Institute for Biology of Inland Waters  of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in Borok, Yaroslavl District,  Russia. They both study the biology and ecology of northern Russian  Rivers north of Yarolsavl. Alexander specializes in the biology and  taxonomy of the pondweeds, Potamogeton, and their hybrids. Elena  specializes in aquatic mosses and charophytic algae.
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