Rosa Nejapa Mendoza
Former B.Sc. - Biology (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico). Concluded 2021

For her undergraduate thesis, Rosa Nejapa has looked at the ontogeny of successive cambia in stems of genus Wisteria of the Leguminosae. This is a genus of lianas occurring in temperate zones of eastern Asia and the eastern United States. A lot of people is familiar with Wisteria sinensis, since it has been broadly planted across both the northern and souther temperate zones as an ornamental vine, at times becoming an invasive plant. This fact came to Rosa's benefit, since plants could be collected in Argentina, United States and Mexico to her ontogenetic studies. In addition, she got loans from the TWTw wood collection from Japan of plants derived from natural populations. Previous research has basically suggested all possible modes of successive cambia formation for W. sinensis, without a consensus. Rosa unraveled that the successive cambia of Wisteria is derived from the cortex, above the pericyclic fibers. Her work was published at the Botanical Journal of Linnean Society and she defended her thesis at Facultad de Ciencias UNAM in 2021.