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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Dr M loves it when his students work gets published! Last month it happened again when Amy Denness had her MSc Plant Diversity dissertation work on the taxonomy of the non-native invasive species Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) published.
2013 was drmgoeswild.com’s first Christmas and he got so excited hanging up his botanical stockings and all, awe bless! Launched in April/May 2013 drmgoeswild.com took off (viewing wise) in the Summer and has grown steadily since, now receiving around 3000 views per month.
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.
Dr M has already posted on the top 20 UK plant families and the series is on-going. Here Dr M continues a series of cameos on a selection of these families together with his top tips for family recognition. Asteraceae: the Daisy or Dandelion or Composite or Aster family. A large and diverse family but the really key feature is the composite inflorescence. Yes, those
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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.
Dr M is teaching the top 20 UK plant families and, as regular followers of drmgoeswild.com will know, he has already posted in some detail on a number of these families and the series is on-going. Here Dr M provides starts a short series of cameos on a selection of these families with top tips for family recognition. Fabaceae: the Pea or Legume family.
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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).
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.
Dr M moves on to this very characteristic family which is very easy to recognise – if you keep your wits about you and follow the looking and listening rules of eXtreme botany! Brassicaceae – the Cabbage family – includes more than 330 genera and 3,700 species World-wide, including many important crop plants