Tag: biodiversity

Resources to Prepare a Plant Diversity Course by Bruce Kirchoff

A free plant diversity course by Bruce Kirchoff is now available to all educators. Here is a summary of his open-access teaching resources available online for download and…

Video: How to save a species from going EXTINCT | Plants are Cool, Too!

Another amazing episode of the video series Plants are Cool, Too! is out, and this time Chris Martine goes to Hawaii. Highlighting one of the coolest and most…

Videos: Plant Systematics lectures by Bruce Kirchoff

Here is a list of recorded lectures on Plant Systematics by Bruce Kirchoff, professor at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA, and used in his course…

Manual: El Nombre de las Plantas by Lena Struwe (Spanish translation of ‘The Naming of Plants’)

Carmen Acedo at University of León, in León, Spain, has gracefully translated the manual The Naming of Plants into Spanish.  We are making it available as a free…

Presentation: How to photograph plants (and more), by Lena Struwe and Peter Nitzsche

So much of documentation of biodiversity and educational projects today include digital images, but how do you take good photos of plants and features associated with plants (such…

Video: Rappelling Scientists Find Rare Species Hiding for 100+ Years | Plants Are Cool, Too!

A team of biologists drops off a cliff to learn more about one rare plant, but ends up discovering something completely unexpected with the help of science Twitter….

Video: Allegheny Ice and the Blue False Indigo | Plants are Cool, Too!

Key concept: Even plants we use in gardens can be rare in nature – and student Cheyenne Moore is doing her best to help protect one of the…

Video: Rare plant biodiversity protection at the National Tropical Botanical Garden | Plants Are Cool, Too

Behind-the-scenes view of the plant conservation pipeline at the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kaua’i, where plant people are working every day to protect the plants of Hawai’i…

Activity: Botanical Home Products, by Amy Berkov

What kind of and how much botanical diversity can you find in the products in a a home, or just in a bathroom,  freezer, fridge, or pantry?  Go…

Activity: iNaturalist Observation Project, by Aaron Liston

This iNaturalist plant observation assignment for college students was developed by Aaron Liston from Oregon State University. It was designed to replace a traditional collection assignment. The students…

Activity: Timeline of Evolution of Food, Agriculture, and Cooking, by Lena Struwe

UPDATE:  Unfortunately TimeGlider was bought, then the new owner decided to shut the website down in Dec 2020.  I have a CSV of the downloaded data, but there…

Images: Univ. Wisconsin-Madison’s Virtual Foliage website

University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Dept of Botany have many teaching images available on their Virtual Foliage homepage. They are divided up in three themed sets (linked below with an…

Online course: Intro to Alaska Flora, by Stefanie Ickert-Bond

The online college class Intro to Alaska Flora from University of Alaska Fairbanks includes fantastic components developed by botany professor Stefanie Ickert-Bond. These online resources are available for…

Book: ‘Botany in a Day’, by Thomas Elpel

The new 6th edition of this well-known book by Thomas Elpel follows the APG system (a phylogenetic classification system now used worldwide) and provides easy to access information…

Article: The Making of a Student-Driven Online Campus Flora, by Lena Struwe et al.

Key concept:  Engaging students in the discovering of biodiversity on a campus of a school or university can turn into a solid and valuable research project for years…

Images: Botanical Morphology and Anatomy (Flickr Group)

Looking for good photos to use in class or to learn morphology and anatomy? Scroll through the thousands of photos that have been added to the Flickr group…

Video: Can a Fence Help Solve Hawaii’s Biodiversity Crisis? (7:22), by Chris Martine

Key concept: The first predator-proof management fence installed in the US is helping to prevent species extinction in Hawaii. Dr. Marian Chau and Kim Shay are the guest…