The Council of the New England Botanical Club honors Merritt Lyndon Fernald's exemplary contributions to the botany of northeastern North America through the Merritt Lyndon Fernald Award. The award is given annually, if deemed appropriate, to the author(s) of the best paper published in each volume of Rhodora that has made use of herbarium specimens and/or involved fieldwork.

Topics to be considered include, but are not limited to, biogeography, floristics, life-history studies, monographs, and revisions. Papers on vascular or nonvascular plants, lichens, fungi, and algae will be considered. The competition is not limited to a particular geographic area but is open to studies in any part of the world. Recipients of the Fernald Award will receive $1,000 and a certificate acknowledging the achievement.

Rhodora 122 (991):214–233

The Merritt Lyndon Fernald Award Committee members “appreciate that this comprehensive study represents a detailed and thorough collaboration across a broad range of individuals, institutions, and geography. The study exemplifies the central tenets of the Fernald Award by an extraordinarily thorough combination of field work and evaluation of herbarium records, as well as careful review of records collected by citizen scientists––something new for botanical research. In the midst of rapid and landscape-scale changes in the environment, the excellent evaluation of field and herbarium records paints a clear picture of what we might expect for Dichanthelium scoparium as a component of the future flora of the Northeast.”

Rhodora Vol 122 (992):251–273

The Merritt Lyndon Fernald Award Committee recognizes, with special consideration, that “the authors have explored an important question in the matter of ecological monitoring, which has not been investigated previously. Though there are questions about the ease of identification, this paper provides potentially important information on the use of marine lichens as indicator species. While this study is preliminary, the quality of the field work, as well as the later analysis, reflects a level of maturity of the principal author not typically expected in a researcher of high school age.”