{"id":70944,"date":"2019-03-22T17:17:59","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T15:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/espores.org\/?p=70944"},"modified":"2026-02-05T13:09:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T11:09:21","slug":"botanist-of-the-month-lluis-serra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/espores.org\/en\/interviews\/botanist-of-the-month-lluis-serra\/","title":{"rendered":"Botanist of the month: Llu\u00eds Serra"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Required question to start with, <\/strong>what attracted you to Botany?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My family enjoyed going out to the mountain ranges around Alcoy on weekends, and this, together with my interest in science in general, made me wonder about the species we found in the countryside and why they were there and not others. So curiosity and proximity led me to botany, a science that is very accessible and easy to share with family and friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA
Final degree trip in biological sciences. In Urbi\u00f3n Lagoon with classmates and Gonzalo Mateo (1992).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What has your professional career been like?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, my career has always been related to plants. While I was still in secondary school, I began studying urban trees, which led to my first publication. Shortly afterwards, while studying industrial engineering, this turned into a series of short courses that I gave at the Alcoy Teacher Training Centre. Little by little, I began giving talks and short courses while studying first engineering and then Biology in Valencia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA
Reading of the PhD with the Board and directors. (Alicante, 2005). \/ A. Bort.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After graduating, I began my PhD with a scholarship related to the conservation projects led by Emili Laguna at the Regional Ministry, who shortly afterwards hired me to develop the Plan for the Conservation of Rare, Endemic or Threatened Flora in Alicante, while Juanjo Herrero did the same for Valencia and Carles Fabregat and Silvia L\u00f3pez did so for Castell\u00f3n. Although, before entering the professional world of management, I was able to enjoy a three-month research grant at Kew Gardens in London, where I developed my interest in taxonomy and was involved in many articles, including one describing a new genus of South African plants. Holding in my hands a sheet collected in 1710 of a plant described by Linnaeus to study and classify it was, I believe, the most exciting thing that can happen to a botanist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA
Studying the taxonomy of\u00a0Solenopsis\u00a0at Kew Gardens (London, 1995) \/ A. Bort.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Shortly afterwards, we began to carry out LIFE projects on Micro-reserves of Flora, Conservation of Priority Habitats in the Natura 2000 Network and Conservation of 3 High Mountain Habitats from the Regional Ministry. During those years, we combined management with research and dissemination of information on the flora and habitats of the Valencian Community, and we published several collective books, including one on the orchids of the Valencian Community. It was then that we began a line of research and dissemination on orchids, within which we started an orchid course that is now in its 14th<\/sup> year, making it the longest-running orchid course in Spain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems like a path involved in many aspects.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Yes. We also combined our work at the Regional Ministry with teaching at the University of Alicante (for just one year) and, above all, with writing a PhD on the flora of Alicante, which was published by the CSIC in 2007. And when the LIFE projects came to an end, it was time to implement the Valencian Community’s Tree Heritage Law. For two and a half years, we compiled the official database of monumental and unique trees and groves and developed protocols for action in the event of damage to trees declared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA
Taking a census of\u00a0Halimium atriplicifolium\u00a0working as environmental agent at La Romana (Alicante 2012) \/ R. Torregrosa.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the end, this stage finished when I was offered a position as an environmental agent in Vinalop\u00f3 Mitj\u00e0, where I continue to work, in this case directly involved in flora conservation, as I can speak directly with the owners of protected species populations and write reports to prevent damage or complaints if action is taken against protected species or habitats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, I\u2019ve never stopped taking courses on flora and vegetation at the Font Roja Scientific Station and CEMA Font Roja, publishing popular science books such as those on Montg\u00f3, Font Roja, Trees and Shrubs of the Valencian Community, Flora of Elda and Flora of Orihuela. On the more strictly scientific side, I work as a regional advisor for Flora Ib\u00e9rica, run by the Botanical Garden of Madrid, and publish articles on new flora and new taxa in Alicante and our community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And of all these projects, which one are you most proud of?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The LIFE projects were very enriching because they were new, especially the Microreserves of Flora project. We were leaders thanks to the spirit of Emili Laguna, and this allowed us to imbue a sense of conservationism towards flora within our administration and in other autonomous communities and countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us know more about these publications you have told us about.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I think the first book was the one of Santa Pola, in 1998. It came about almost spontaneously when I entered a local research competition where the prize was publication. Let’s say that’s where I added my interest in disseminating information about flora, studying plant distribution, and photography as a tool for transmitting information and aesthetic enjoyment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA
During the study of the Font Roja with Jaume Soler (Alcoi, 2008) \/ A. Bort.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Then, the guide to the Montg\u00f3 Natural Park appeared some years later, written with my good friend Jaume Soler, in which we discussed and illustrated the third part of the park’s flora. After reading my PhD in 2005 and publishing it in 2007, I took on the challenge of producing a complete flora of the Font Roja Natural Park, where I used to go with my parents as a child. I was very lucky that the CAM Social Work, led by the manager of CEMA Font Roja, Begonya Marco, thought it could be an interesting book and financed the publication, so Jaume and I presented it in Alcoy in 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, thanks to my time as an environmental agent the possibility of writing a book about the flora of Elda turned up, a harsh, dry and unfairly undervalued area in environmental terms, so we worked hard to change the idea of these arid and desert landscapes into places of high naturalistic and even scenic value. The town council and the regional government got together and it was published in 2016 as the plant heritage of Elda with a significant subtitle, \u2018Between the salt flats and steppes of Vinalop\u00f3\u2019, with the intention of getting people to start loving the landscape they live with as it is and not as they would like it to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what impact or repercussion do you think these publications have?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hahaha (laughs), you’d have to ask the readers that. The truth is that they\u2019re all sold out, and every time I teach a course, people ask about some of them (especially Montg\u00f3, orchids, and Font Roja). Many people around me use them, from university students or vocational training students related to the environment to professionals working in the natural environment and, of course, flora and photography enthusiasts. I\u2019d like to think that they\u2019ve helped many people to love nature more and to see the vast biological diversity of the territory where we live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are very much involved in disseminating the botanical wealth of our lands: talks, excursions, etc. What role does outreach have for you?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s essential, but I understand that it has to be disseminated with a certain level of scientific rigour. I\u2019m very particular when reviewing texts with botanical nomenclature to make sure that the scientific names and authors of the species are spelled correctly. It may seem unimportant, but this conveys that the author knows what he\u2019s talking about and respects the work of hundreds of previous authors who have described the species that we photograph and enjoy around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA
13th<\/sup> edition of the orchid course of the Valencain Community in Vistabella del Maestrat (Castell\u00f3n, 2018).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Knowledge must be passed on to society. And although I really enjoy it and do it whenever I can, I publish in scientific journals, but few people read them. I think it\u2019s important that the information generated by those who work in research centres gets to the general public, so botanists such as Jaume Soler, Josep Oltra, Emili Laguna and myself devote ourselves to writing books, giving talks and courses, so that appreciation for our plants and landscapes will help to preserve them for future generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You collaborate with the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic in these types of activities. What is your relationship with the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic has always welcomed me as if I were a member of its team, not only its directors, from Manuel Costa to Antoni Aguilella, Isabel Mateu and now Jaime G\u00fcemes, but also the rest of its staff, especially Xuso Riera and Javier Fabado from the herbarium, who have eased my research work. For several years now, they\u2019ve also called on me to guide some excursions when they\u2019re close to home, around Font Roja or Mariola, so I enjoy showing people \u201cmy\u201d mountains, where I\u2019ve developed as a botanist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are you working on nowadays?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At this point, we are about to release a new edition of the guide to orchids in the Valencian Community, ordered by the Regional Ministry, where I\u2019ve been able to act as editor and design it so that it\u2019s not only useful but also a beautiful book with photos from more than 50 photographers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"lluis
Observing orchids in J\u00e1vea (Alicante, 2011) \/ R. Torregrosa.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m also finishing the fieldwork for my next book on the flora of the protected landscape of the Sit and Maigm\u00f3 mountain ranges, which should be published before the end of the year. And I\u2019m continuing to review the flora of the Mariola mountain range for the next book, which will cover the flora of Mariola and Font Roja together, practically half of the flora of Alicante, in addition to the ongoing study of Valencian orchids and the flora of Alicante, in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you assess the employment situation in this sector?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Well, I think that botanists aren\u2019t particularly well recognised and that it seems like a job from the last century (or even before that!). Unfortunately, it\u2019s been accepted that the study of biodiversity is an obstacle to the supposed development of the human species, instead of considering it a necessity to achieve harmonious and sustainable development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA
Taking a census of the ghost orchid (Dendrophylax lindenii) with Ernesto M\u00fagica (Cuba, 2014) \/ A. Bort.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I see that we all move towards where we can develop part of our experience. Jobs in research centres have been dramatically reduced in the ten years of crisis we\u2019ve been going through, and some teams have even disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And with that, how would you encourage current biology students to pursue the same career as you? What do they need?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Above all, you have to be consistent and have a goal. If you like flora, you can enjoy it in many ways. One of them is to become an environmental agent. I would have never thought about it, but now that I\u2019ve been an agent for ten years, I see that for a field biologist it\u2019s a very interesting career path that allows you to develop your interest in flora or fauna with many opportunities for environmental education, research and, especially, conservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you work alone or as part of a team?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve worked with many people, first with Gonzalo and Benito when I was on their teams at university, then with Emili. Currently, I share projects with Jaume Soler and Josep Oltra, but I\u2019ve also been writing a series of articles on Valencian orchids for years, compiling interesting news from many enthusiasts, many of them being students of orchid courses. So, in this field, we could say that I work with a large team of enthusiasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In all these years, how do you think your work has changed?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I consider myself a 19th<\/sup>-century botanist, a romantic of the botanical explorations of that time, even though I use new technologies that ease our research or dissemination tasks. In fact, I started in 1984 with a database on a cassette player connected to a Philips MSX computer with 64Kb of memory. Can you imagine that? That database already included the information I collected in my field notebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Measuring lilies for Flora Ib\u00e9rica at the Font Roja with Santiago Castroviejo (Alcoi, 2007) \/ J. Soler.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I still keep field notebooks, which I consider to be the most important tool for a naturalist. In my case, I have kept 116 notebooks since 1984, numbering my outings with plant data (6,161 the last one). This has expanded my database of Alicante’s flora to its current 396,000 records of, more or less, 2,600 species. Having a good database is essential, as are other GIS (Geographic Information Systems) programmes to cartographically represent the information. And so is going out into the field with GPS or mapping programmes on your mobile phone to know where you are and where the plants are. In fact, we have friends who we go out into the field with who ask us, \u2018Which grid are we working on today?\u2019 because of the work of recording species in 1 km2<\/sup> grids every time we go out into the field.
So, the work in the field hasn\u2019t changed much, except that today we do it with greater precision, and digital photography has made it much easier for us to obtain high-quality graphic material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talking about photography, you also like a lot, what does it contribute to the study of plants and outreach?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As I mentioned earlier, my photographic archive is also extensive and requires time to make it useful. I use it to illustrate talks, courses, articles, and books, but also as material to identify species. Currently, it complements my herbarium material. In my herbarium, which contains around 14,000 sheets, there are numerous specimens that I have previously photographed in the field or in my study, and there are details that have been lost once the plant has been pressed but remain in the live photographs, therefore facilitating the exact identification of the species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In your daily life, what other topics do you learn about?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Everything related to cartography, publishing, and photography. Of the 28 books we\u2019ve participated in, I have designed seven, so I\u2019ve had to learn editing programmes as well as digital photo development programmes. Imagine that the photographic archive now has over 60,000 images, and they have to be thoroughly documented with numerous keywords so that you can quickly find what you need at any time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell us about the funniest or most curious situation, that can be told, you have found yourself in.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I think the most surprising thing is how little known our work of studying and learning about biodiversity is. On a trip to Corsica, when I arrived at the campsite, I started pressing plants on the ground because I didn’t have a table, and drying the blotting paper from the press, and what I ended up doing was attracting people to see what I was doing. This has also happened to me in other areas such as Patagonia and Cuba. In Romania, they couldn’t understand why Spanish tourists were asking for used cardboard boxes at a supermarket as if they were short of money. And it’s always been fun to explain why you need old newspapers wherever you go, whether it’s Norway, Sicily or Morocco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA
Reviewing herbalization at Pinar del Rio (Cuba, 2014) \/ A. Bort.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Have you met interesting people thanks to your work?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Botanists such as Pedro Montserrat, Santiago Castroviejo and Diego Rivera have been very interesting due to their vast knowledge of flora and the history of botany, but I\u2019ve also met enthusiasts with a great deal of knowledge I\u2019ve learned a lot from, older people from some villages who knew about unknown populations of valuable plants and wanted to share this information with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine you have as much budget as you want. What would your work be like? What things would you improve?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Well, it wouldn’t change much, except that I\u2019d have more time to focus on outreach projects, perhaps on a larger scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you consider yourself a disciple of any particular botanist?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I am obviously the botanical offspring of Gonzalo Mateo and Benito Crespo, my PhD supervisors. Gonzalo taught me to work with a global vision of all flora and systematics, to take things slowly and not to think that knowledge of a large area cannot be tackled; it\u2019s all a matter of doing fieldwork and more fieldwork. Benito taught me that any research, large or small, may have value, and if you find the point of interest, it can be published in any journal. He\u2019s a great taxonomist with a prodigious memory who has taught me the value of nomenclature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA
Herbing at the Mariola mountain range with Gonzalo Mateo (Alfafara, 2018) \/ A. Bort.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Other botanists, such as Santiago Castroviejo, have also helped me a lot. I shared many good moments with him at Kew Gardens, where I shared my passion for discovery, big or small, when faced with a botanical document or text. Diego Rivera offered me his vast library to improve my PhD and also influenced my love of browsing through ancient texts. Finally, Emili Laguna, my boss for many years at the Regional Ministry, taught me the importance of the legal aspects of conservation and the importance of reaching out to people, who, after all, are the ones who finance conservation projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which era of Botany would you have liked to live in?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I believe that botanists enjoyed the greatest recognition in the 18th<\/sup> and 19th<\/sup> centuries. It was a time when you could travel all over the world to describe biodiversity, and this was valued by the authorities. Biodiversity was seen as an important asset, but unfortunately this has now been lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which botanist would you have liked to meet in person?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What botanist wouldn’t have liked to meet Linnaeus? I think he had an incredible capacity for systematic work (let’s not forget that in the 18th<\/sup> century there were no computers, hahaha) to merge all the written information, synonymise thousands of names and describe thousands of species. All this after making a trip to Lapland at a time when it was like going to the moon. Another exceptional figure I would have liked to meet (and accompany) is Alexander von Humboldt, who also had an extraordinary ability to synthesise, in this case not species but habitats and landscapes, and to develop biogeography as a science based on his experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would you save from your office in case of fire?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The herbarium is the most important thing, but I don’t think I would have time (there are so many boxes, hahaha). Obviously, the hard drive with copies of everything, both the databases and the graphic material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA
Herbing in Evisa (C\u00f3rcega, 1996) \/ A. Bort.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Do you have a favourite plant or landscape?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In addition to those described by us (as was to be expected), there are always plants that receive more attention. The first one that Benito and I described during my degree thesis, a restharrow (Ononis rentonarensis<\/em>) an alcoyano-di\u00e1nico endemism, is clearly important, as is the last one, in this case a hybrid orchid initially discovered in Cartagena (Anacamptis x dafni notho<\/em> subsp. solanoi<\/em>), a very beautiful and much-photographed plant dedicated to a colleague from Murcia, Pedro Solano.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SERRA
Taking a census of yews at the Mariola mountain range (Agres, 2005).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, the yew (Taxus baccata<\/em>) is a tree I\u2019ve worked with for many years in European projects, having an emotional connection with it. Especially in the Tejera de Agres, in the Mariola mountain range, which I\u2019ve visited since I was a child with my father, and which I\u2019ve had the chance to protect as a micro-reserve for flora and improve through reforestation, the elimination of invasive species and the dissemination of its values in articles, books, courses, talks and even on the radio programme I occasionally do on Radio Alcoy about plants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Required question to start with, what attracted you to Botany? My family enjoyed going out to the mountain ranges around Alcoy on weekends, and this, together with my interest in science in general, made me wonder about the species we found in the countryside and why they were there and not others. 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