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Sedges

Dr M’s mini-quiz from Maiden Castle: answers part 2 – vegetative ID!

If you arrived here and have not completed Dr M’s Maiden Castle mini-quiz and you would like to, then check it out here! and then the answers here! If you have, well, with Part 1, the easy bit, out of the way, here’s the real eXtreme botany bit: vegetative plant ID and in chalk grassland – one of the most species-rich communities in Britain – to
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Dr M’s MalHam diary #4

eXtreme botany heads North to Malham Tarn Field Studies Centre with Dr M and University of Reading Plant Diversity MSc students, this is #4 of Dr M’s MalHam Diary. Day 4 Tuesday: eXtreme Limestone Pavement day at Ingleborough National Nature Reserve! A day in which we witness Dr M’s gryke falls, hairy balls and eXtreme Apiaceae not to mention MalHam’s very own Wars of the Sedges,
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Dr M’s MalHam diary #3

eXtreme botany heads North to Malham Tarn Field Studies Centre with Dr M and University of Reading Plant Diversity MSc students, this is #3 of Dr M’s MalHam Diary. Day 3 Monday: which was a day of species-rich vegetation in calcicolous grassland and calcicolous fun in the Ha Ha Fen! The group walked from the FSC centre down the hill to the calcicolous grassland overlooking Malham Tarn looking at its
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Dr M’s MalHam diary #2

eXtreme botany heads North to Malham Tarn Field Studies Centre with Dr M and University of Reading Plant Diversity MSc students, this is #2 of Dr M’s MalHam Diary. Day 2 Sunday: In which Dr M, Guest Tutor Hermione and students (and especially the Sedge Queen!) have a good Cyperaceous day! The day was largely spent in, on and around the board walk in the exceptionally floriferous and
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On Dr M’s Golden Pond – The Solution!

OK it’s not golden and it’s not a pond! Rather it’s a large water-filled plastic flower pot stuffed with aquatic plants! But recently Dr M posted about this “pond”, and despite its diminutive size, there are quite a number of plant species living happily in it at the moment and Dr M presented images of six aquatic plants for your examination and identification.


A voyage round Dr M’s pond!

Dr M says: OK so it’s not a pond, it’s a very large plastic flower pot with the drainage holes bunged up with duck tape and filled with water and aquatic plants! But which aquatic plants and how many species (and are there any ducks)? This is Dr M’s first ever eXtreme aquatic botanical challenge for you! Have a close look at the gallery
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Dr M’s Spring term plant ID test: vascular plants

Dr M’s students have returned from the vacation and spent the first week of the new term on the New Year Plant Hunt in which they and Dr M found 38 species in flower on the University of Reading campus! This week Dr M set his students a plant ID test of vascular plants and bryophytes. This was a formative test which is a
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The top 30 British vascular plant species – how do you do?

Can you recognise the commonest plant species in Britain? Dr M has previously posted the 30 most common British plant species based on data in the New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora and the Online Atlas of the British and Irish Flora.


Online resources for plant ID: the SAPS key to trees and shrubs

As the University teaching term gets closer Dr M has been investigating plant ID aids which might be tested by his students and some of which might even be useful! Here Dr M has a look at an interactive key from the Science and Plants for School project (SAPS), Cambridge University.


Tools of the eXtreme botanists trade #3: Plant identification guides

The Natural History Bookstore (NHBS) tells Dr M there is a  new flora on the block called Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland