So, have you mown the lawn for the last time before Christmas? Well, if, like Dr M your answer is no, then, like Dr M, no doubt you can be found gazing guiltily out of the window at a scruffy, soggy mat of grasses, covered in equally soggy, manky leaves and praying for snow to hide it all away!
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.
Dr M is particularly fond of mosses and was delighted to find on the British Bryological Society Facebook page a link to this Moss in Nature Competition from Digital Photography Review.
Dr M is developing a new botanical business concept – eXtreme bryology meets artistic floristry and the result is Bryo-Logical Floristry!
Dr M is always on the look our for useful resources for teaching an learning plant ID and recently he discovered (belatedly, for it has been around since 2009!) an illustrated manual by Lena Struwe, Associate Professor in the School of Enviromental and Biological Sciences and Director of the Chrysler Herbarium (CHRB) at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA.
Two of Dr M’s students, Christine and Waheed, came up with a devilishly eXtreme botanical challenge to test different aspects of the botanists’ ID skills at the BSBI Annual Exhibition Meeting on Saturday 23rd November at the Natural History Museum, London!
“Botany is just the best “B” word we have“, Dr M tells the delegates at the BSBI Annual Exhibition Meeting at the Natural History Museum, 23rd November 2013.
Dr M spoke at the BSBI Annual Exhibition Meeting at the Natural History Museum, London on Saturday, 23rd November.
Yes, Dr M headed into London Town for the Annual Exhibition Meeting of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland on Saturday 23rd November at the Natural History Museum. Dr M was there with his eXtreme botany manifesto, and with some of his current students who prepared an eXtreme botanical challenge for the delegates!
Dr M is very fond of taking his students into the University of Reading Herbarium to demonstrate the role of the modern herbarium in teaching, research and consultancy.