So says one of Dr M’s MSc Plant Diversity students, and, well she’s right of course! It is fast becoming a key tool of the eXtreme botanists trade.

Dr M’s second botany lesson for his MSc Plant Diversity and MSc SISS students was all about getting to know the top-twenty plant families in Britain. Students divided themselves into smaller groups and set out to different parts of the University of Reading campus to collect material of flowering plants and to bring them back to the lab.

Dr M is delighted to continue this series of botanical selfies with a colleague, Richard Bateman, visiting Professor at University of Reading, whose wit and wisdom has leavened many a board of studies meeting.

Dr M has set his students some homework. Having already started to look at the top-twenty plant families this term, Dr M has asked his students to construct a key to the top fourteen families of dicotyledons (broad-leaved flowering plants).

Dr M’s first lesson with MSc Plant Diversity students and MSc SISS included a tour round the woodland known as the Wilderness on the University of Reading award-winning green campus.

Dr M will be meeting his new University of Reading MSc Plant Diversity and MSc Species Identification and Survey Skills (SISS) students for his first big teach-in on Thursday.

Previously seen on Dr M Goes Wild discussing New England Asteraceae and different types of Moncocot, Molly Marquand was a recent student of Dr M’s on the MSc Plant Diversity at the University of Reading.

Dr M is stuck in a train somewhere near Slough as he heads to the second meeting of the UK Plant Science Federation working group on training and skills to save UK botany from oblivion! Important work this and fortunately he is not alone, the working group has no fewer than sixteen keen and able people botanically beavering away on the issues and outcomes.
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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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It’s one thing to rampage the ramparts and scale the slopes of Maiden Castle, but have you survived Dr M’s chalk grassland mini-quiz?