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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Recently, Dr M discovered a botanical website called simply: “Go Botany“, based at the New England Wild Flower Society in the USA. This wonderful botanical site embraces botany in the 21st century with a whole suite of online teaching and learning tools, basic and advanced online keys, plant sharing and interaction with the botanical community young and old alike.

To contrast with the endless rains of recent weeks Dr M is pleased to present this guest blog: an eXtreme botanical story from drier climes! Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a desert, and in that desert was a house, and beside that house was a garden and in that garden was a visitor, a botanist and plant
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Dr M is leading a botanical vigil in Forbury Park, Reading and what is at stake is no less than the end of botany as we know it!

Dr M had planned to put a day aside last term to tidy his office, it didn’t happen! A tidy desk is a great motivator allegedly, so what does that mean for Dr M who has always seen himself as a bit of a Dr M-otivator!? Albert Einstein and Roald Dahl had messy desks! That’s good surely?!

Dr M’s MSc New Year Plant Hunt (borrowed from the idea by BSBI) took place on Tuesday 14th January 2014. Three groups of MSc students walked the University of Reading Whiteknights campus for 1 hour each in the chilly sunshine collecting any plant in flower and these were taken back to the lab and identified

Dr M looked out of his window and notices – it’s raining again! Roger Brugge of the Meteorology Department at University of Reading, puts the recent rains in context: “after a dry start to December 2013, a total of 165.3 mm (roughly 6.5 inches) of rain was recorded in the 28 days ending on 8 January 2014.”

Dr M put his hand deep into the warm wet webness, otherwise known as the internet, and pulled out this moist, clammy and dankly fascinating feature on fungi! Yuk!

Dr M’s mission to discover the best plant ID aids continues, and recently stumbled upon (for that is how the internet often works!) a nice post by Michelle Slatella on the US Gardenista website reviewing apps for plant ID.

Dr M is particularly fond of social media (at least those he understands how to use!) for communicating his passions for field botany and plant ID to a wider audience, and increasingly to young people. He was therefore delighted to find, via the Annals of Botany (AoB) blog listed on Louise Marsh’s BSBI publicity and outreach blog, a link to a great lecture by
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