{"id":71474,"date":"2018-11-28T07:16:54","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T05:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/espores.org\/?p=71474"},"modified":"2026-04-22T11:45:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T09:45:45","slug":"botanist-of-the-month-olga-mayoral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/espores.org\/en\/interviews\/botanist-of-the-month-olga-mayoral\/","title":{"rendered":"Botanist of the Month: Olga Mayoral"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Why did you choose Botany? What about botany attracted you?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Since I was a child I have been in contact with nature. My grandfather lived in Venta de Contreras and for me it was usual to walk through the Cuchillos de Contreras and the banks of the River Cabriel. He taught me my first scientific name, Rosmarinus officinalis<\/em>, and bought me a book on medicinal plants. As a child I lived in the Pyrenees and in Cuenca, where I had the opportunity to go to the mountains with people who knew the territory and enjoy learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"OLGA
At just a few months old in Panticosa, in the rucksack with her father.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So the curiosity for knowing what surrounds me comes from when I was very little, but when I decided to study Biology, I soon became particularly interested in plants, although the best experiences were always the field trips with various specialists, who offered a more interesting and complete vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"OLGA
With a bunch of white wall-rocket (Diplotaxis erucoides<\/em>) when she lived in Cuenca.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Isabel Mateu<\/a> was my first botany lecturer and the first person who opened up the possibility of joining a research group. Pilar Donat, then director of Montg\u00f3 Natural Park, generously helped me to identify my first plants with the 1990 edition of the \u2018Keys to the Valencian flora\u2019 and made me see that it was possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your relationship with the botanic garden goes back a long way. How did it come about and where does it stand now?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When I started my degree, as biology students we were regular visitors to the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic, although always on a private basis, because we only made one visit with teaching staff during botany practicals. The Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic was a place to learn and spend pleasant times with friends. In 1999, shortly after finishing my degree and returning from a long trip through Patagonia, Gonzalo Mateo<\/a> offered me the opportunity to join the work team for the Atlas of Natural and Semi-natural Habitats of Spain at a scale of 1:50,000 and Atlas and Maps of the Potential Vegetation of Spain, commissioned by the Ministry of the Environment. I gladly accepted the job together with Miguel \u00c1ngel G\u00f3mez-Serrano, a fellow student and colleague for many years of subsequent work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"OLGA
Field trip to El Saler, during Planta Europa (2004).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The coordination of our work area was carried out by Manuel Costa Talens<\/a> and moved to the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic as soon as the research building was inaugurated in 2000. So we can say that my link as a botanist began with the new research building in May of that year. The first years there were very exciting, as some congresses were held that helped to give it visibility and allowed botanists from other regions to get to know the new facilities. In 2002 the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic hosted the \u20181st<\/sup> Congress of Plant Conservation Biology\u2019, at which we presented a study on the Distribution and demography of the yew (Taxus baccata<\/em>) and the lime (Tilia platyphyllos<\/em>) in the Valencian Community, as well as a conservation proposal for the cottonweed (Otanthus maritimus<\/em>) in dune ecosystems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the first years of the 21st<\/sup> century we were developing, together with Gonzalo Mateo and based at the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic, vegetation cartographies, as well as studies for the Regional Government of Castilla-La Mancha for different protected areas. In 2005 we began, together with the then director, Antoni Aguilella<\/a>, studies on the Quality of Riparian Forests (QBR) in the J\u00facar river basin. Simultaneously I began to make use of the plant collection of the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic as a botany lecturer, first from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (PUV) and from 2007 also from the Faculty of Biological Sciences (University of Valencia).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"OLGA
With colleagues from the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic at the III Biodiversity Week<\/em>, returning from Benidorm Island (2008) \/ Cristina Torres.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2011, together with Jaime G\u00fcemes<\/a> and Elena Carri\u00f3, we started the project \u2018Analysis of inbreeding and its effect on the reproductive success of Castilian-Manchegan populations of Atropa baetica<\/em>\u2019, which allowed me to link my knowledge of the Castilian-Manchegan territory and the populations of this unique plant with the knowledge that Jaime and Elena could contribute from the world of reproductive biology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, my involvement expanded to one of the things I like most: making the world of botany known to the public. I consider that the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic is the perfect place for all those people interested in the world of plants who haven\u2019t been able to access specific botany studies to receive training from botanists who enjoy teaching. And since then we\u2019ve organised different editions of courses on general botany initiation, plant identification or knowledge of plant landscapes, among others. I also try to collaborate with the initiative \u2018De ruta amb el Bot\u00e0nic<\/a>\u2018, where we carry out routes through Valencian geography in which an expert guide in plants, who offers a unique vision with a botanical approach, goes along with another expert in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"OLGA
De ruta amb el Bot\u00e0nic in the rain, in the surroundings of Pego-Oliva Marshland Natural Park.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another project that I developed with great enthusiasm at the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic was launching the \u2018Garden Tours\u2019, guided visits in English around the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic itself. The pilot project began in 2014 and has allowed foreign visitors, many of them, to visit the garden with a botanical guide in English. But I\u2019m very excited about the moment we are in, as I now form part of the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic, from the Department of Didactics of Experimental and Social Sciences, with the conviction of the potential that plants and botanic gardens have as a teaching resource. I must confess that since I\u2019ve been in this department I come more often with my students to the Jard\u00ed Bot\u00e0nic, which has become yet another classroom in teacher training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in all these years as a botanist, what is the most curious or amusing situation, that can be told, in which you have found yourself while carrying out your work?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Well, a day comes to mind when we had to enter a private hunting estate near the Ciudad Encantada, in Cuenca, where there were two female wild pigs with their piglets. Supposedly they were all very peaceful, but we ended up running away from the nervous bites of one of the female wild pigs who demanded attention and whom we had to placate with a packet of sunflower seeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"OLGA
Long hours of cartography of the genera Carpobrotus<\/em> and Agave<\/em> on the Valencian coast. In this case, on fossil dunes in Alicante \/ Miguel \u00c1ngel G\u00f3mez-Serrano.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There were days when, to access populations of certain cliff-dwelling species, we had to descend deep chasms and subsequently swim through icy waters of mountain rivers, with samples of geraniums of the genus Erodium<\/em> in our mouths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Floristics, conservation, biodiversity\u2026 Which line of work in the field of plants best defines your career?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I believe that floristics would be the base on which a good part of my work is founded, which has been more focused on conservation. My doctoral thesis focused on the flora of the Upper Cabriel, in the province of Cuenca, but trying to offer some guidelines for conservation that might be useful for managers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"OLGA
During a botany course by the Laguna del Marquesado in Cuenca \/ Rosa Chesa.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And the projects I\u2019ve worked on have been cartography and population censuses of threatened species, management plans for flora micro-reserves and other natural areas, invasive alien flora studies, studies on the quality of riparian forests, etc. But always with a clear vocation for dissemination and teaching, so that everything that\u2019s learned through research can permeate society, improving its knowledge and promoting citizen activation and participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, although plants continue to be part of your working environment, your current work has been reoriented towards another area, hasn\u2019t it? How did you get here?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The complicated circumstances we have experienced in public universities over the last 15-20 years have meant that since 2000 my work as a botanist has been as a self-employed professional. From 2005 I combined this work with teaching at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, as an associate lecturer, in Forestry Engineering and Environmental Sciences, and from 2007, also at the Faculty of Biological Sciences (University of Valencia).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"OLGA
In the laboratory during a Science Didactics class at the Faculty of Education, with future primary teachers \/ Tatiana Pina.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve always had a special interest in being able to transmit effectively, not only knowledge, but also in awakening interest and promoting attitudes towards science, and especially towards botany and biodiversity conservation. But it was almost by chance that I ended up as an associate lecturer in the Department of Science Didactics, at the Faculty of Education and in teacher training. At that moment I decided to train in this field, taking the Master\u2019s in Research in Specific Didactics, which showed me a fascinating world in the field of research in this context. Furthermore, I soon became aware of the multiplier effect that teacher training has. In recent years I\u2019ve been meeting up again with biology and environmental sciences students to whom I taught botany and natural resource management and conservation subjects who are taking the University Master\u2019s in Secondary Education Teaching. It\u2019s a joy to be able to share with them the love of biology and the challenge of making it accessible and interesting to younger students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today I\u2019ve reoriented myself towards aspects such as the incorporation of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), especially in secondary education, with projects like Quicknatura<\/a>, in which we try to bring the world of plants closer through the use of QR codes so that they go from being mere urban furniture to elements of great interest in our environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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