Summer Camps
Dig in, get dirty, and explore outdoor fun at Camp BRIT! Camp BRIT is the summer experience that takes your child's brain outdoors.
Bella Goes to Camp:
For pre-K and K children, ages 4 & 5.
Camp BRIT
Welcome to BRIT
Welcome To BRIT
Plant to planet.®
Ever have a desire to discover? Ever have a desire to teach others what you've learned? We do - every day. By nature, that’s who we are. We’re the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, an international scientific research and learning center focused on conservation and knowledge sharing.
Visit Our Campus
Membership Programs
Membership support is essential to the success in preserving BRIT’s priceless library collection and herbarium collection, including our 4,222 specimens of rare or endemic plants from Texas.
By becoming a member of BRIT, you help us to inspire people, conserve native plants, and document biodiversity to protect rare and endemic plants. And membership has rewards for you, too! Find out more information by visiting our Membership page.
BRIT Members don't forget to check out our Upcoming Events webpage for workshops, classes, and special events for your special discounts to attend.
Nature Hike Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge (FWNC&R)
Botany, Ecology, and Nature
Workshops and classes for the botanically inclined.
BRIT and the Fort Worth Botanic Garden are pleased to offer this series of classes and workshops that will focus on giving participants hands-on, experience-based education in the fields of plant and wildlife science, conservation, sustainability, and ecology. These carefully designed classes and workshops (most of which will will feature field investigations or lab work) will enhance participants' prior education, offer participants the opportunity to assemble a unique set of skills, and allow participants to interact and network with professionals in their field of interest.
Bees! Part I
Bees! Part II
2019 International Wine Competition
Come join the competition!
The BRIT International Award of Excellence in Sustainable Winegrowing – the only competition of its kind – came about in 2010 out of a recognition of the bond between wine and botany and the need to distinguish wineries that truly embrace a “ground to glass” attitude towards sustainability. Where other competitions may focus on the end product – the wine itself – our competition, in addition to wine taste, focuses on a winery’s real-world application of the three tenets of sustainability: environmental, economic, and social.
2019 Wine Awards: Call for Applications
Research Lecture Series
Brown Bag Lunchtime Lectures & BRIT Research Seminars
The BRIT Lecture Series encourages community-wide conversation about a diverse range of important and rapidly-developing topics. Scientists and speakers share with the public the most current information about their areas of expertise.
Meet the Researchers
Monitoring bats in Fort Worth through outreach
BRIT® and the Fort Worth Botanical Garden Partner to Strengthen Shared Mission
Starting in March 2018, BRIT and the Fort Worth Botanic Garden will launch new education and volunteer opportunities as part of an innovative public-private partnership between the institutions. The partnership, signed by the Fort Worth City Council and the BRIT board of directors in the fall of 2017, transfers responsibility for the Garden’s education and volunteer programs to BRIT. “There’s potential for enormous synergy between BRIT as a scientific and education organization and the Fort Worth Botanic Garden as a municipal garden,” says BRIT Executive Director Ed Schneider. The organizations, which have shared a campus since 2009, are making use of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model of shared responsibility that has grown in popularity in the U.S. and around the globe. It is bas...
Dr. Eula Whitehouse
In our "Hidden Treasures" series, Special Collections Librarian Alyssa B. Young features notable works in the BRIT rare book collection. The work of Dr. Eula Whitehouse spreads tentacles throughout BRIT. Our herbarium contains over 500 specimens she collected, our library houses six of her publications, and the Eula Whitehouse Collection in the BRIT Archives documents her life's work. Much like the names Mahler or Shinners, Whitehouse's name is omnipresent since she's integral to the core of BRIT as an institution. To celebrate Women's History Month , we want to tell the story of this remarkable woman. Eula Whitehouse was born in Cleburne, Texas, on August 1, 1892. She attended University of Texas in Austin, where she received a B.A. in 1918, M.S. in 1931, and a Ph.D. in 1939. Such educati...
A Ferntastic Day with NLU
On Sunday, February 25th, BRIT staff had the pleasure of hosting members of the Southwestern Fern Society, our local chapter of the American Fern Society, for a volunteer day. Six volunteers worked hard to organize and sort ferns and lycophytes from the recently acquired University of Louisiana at Monroe’s (NLU) herbarium collection. Ferns and lycophytes (once referred to as “fern allies”) are two special groups of plants that do not have flowers or seeds but rather reproduce by spores. Happy volunteers and BRIT staff hold "golden tickets" found among the collections. Tickets were exchanged for fun prizes! NLU Collections Assistants Miranda Madrid and Ashley Bordelon and BRIT Research Botanist Dr. Alejandra Vasco led the group on a tour of BRIT’s plant preservation studio, digitization stu...
What Is This Thing? Oenothera triloba fruit
"What is this thing???" We often hear this question from friends and family in relation to natural "treasures" found in the landscape. Sticks, leaves, flowers, fruit, fungi, lichens, moss. You name it, somebody has likely brought it to BRIT for identification at some point (or emailed us a photo). The object below was brought in recently by a Fort Worth resident. Roughly the size and shape of a pine cone, this is actually an aggregation of many fruits (capsules) from a plant called stemless evening-primrose ( Oenothera triloba ). A winter annual, this native wildflower comes up in disturbed places (and often lawns) at the end of the year, overwinters as a rosette, then produces yellow flowers in the spring. Flowers arise from the base of the plant, meaning fruit eventually develop at the b...
Trudy and Charles Hess
Trudy and Charles Hess Q: How did you come to be interested in conservation and botany? A: Our earliest realization of the need to protect our fragile environment comes from our SCUBA diving days. The exposure to what was then mostly undisturbed ecosystems, and the exposure to an incredible display of diversity with all its amazing interrelationships, gave us an understanding of the true complexity of nature. And of course, we greatly value its beauty also. A very important part of SCUBA certification was the emphasis on not disturbing the environment. This instilled in us a lasting respect for nature which has evolved into our deep concern for the survival of critical habitats. In our lifetime we have sadly witnessed the massive destruction of large parts of our ecosystem. After retiring...
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