There are a growing number of online forums and communities providing free help with plant (and other wildlife) observations and identification. Here Dr M checks out the Natural History Museum’s Nature Plus community.

This key is listed by BSBI (Botanical Society of the British Isles) as “A free and easy online key for beginners, by Quentin Groom“. So here, Dr M gives it the once over. It is undeniably free, but is it easy? And, more importantly, is it accurate and useful?

In Dr M’s survey of online plant ID aids he has already taken a look at the SAPS key to trees and shrubs from Cambridge University. Here Dr M has a look at an interactive key to 88 species of trees and shrubs from the Natural History Museum key to Nature project.

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.

Geraniaceae includes around 800 species in 7-10 genera World-wide. The most important genera are Geranium (Crane’s-bills – 430 species), the garden Geranium (Latin name = Pelargonium – 280 species – native to the Cape region of South Africa) and Erodium (Stork’s-bills – 80 species).

Question: How many native conifers are there in Britain (conifer = seed plants bearing cones rather than flowers)?

Dr M has previously posted here about “Imagining Science”  a living Science-art collaboration. The next collaborative project for Reading Science Week 2014  is entitled “Symbiosis” and is about art-science relationships and uses lichens – the weird wonderful complex plant-fungus dual organisms – as a source of inspiration!

Dr M is particularly fond of the University of Reading campus which extends over 123 ha of grassland, open water and woodland. Known as Whiteknights Park, it is home to over 400 species of native plants and many more planted and naturalised and is an ideal setting for Dr  M’s teaching of plant identification and vegetation survey methods.

It’s high time for another of Dr M’s top 20 flowering plant families, this time it is the turn of the Apiaceae. Maybe you know this family by the older name – Umbelliferae – a name very evocative of the typical inflorescence – the umbel or umbrella-like inflorescence.

Spring came late this year, jostling with glorious summer (while it lasted).  Now, as temperatures drop and nights draw in, autumn makes its way centre-stage. Summer’s legacy of sunshine (recall the heatwave?) seems rather fruitful in our countryside and a host of blackberries has now given way to a myriad acorns (2013 is looking like a mast year for oaks), haws (Hawthorn berries) and
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