Field Botany Crash Course

Overview

This short course in field botany will take place over four weekends. The class will concentrate on the basic skills recognizing families and local species as well as an understanding of plant communities and basic plant ecological principles. Taught partly in the laboratory and partly in the field, the emphasis will be on developing an understanding of why plants are found in particular places. By the end of the year fledgling field botanists should be able to see all the plants in an area, recognise many of them, and have the theoretical and technical ability to identify, using books, most of those not immediately recognizable. A great advantage of doing this kind of training in the context of a residential environmental institute is that there will be constant opportunities to practice and use the knowledge as the year progresses (e.g. in relation to the bushcraft, foraging and horticultural activities). Students will have a rare opportunity to internalize the 'jizz' of hundreds of species, whilst developing a real feel for the subject.