Online course to learn plant family ID

On 22nd May, we tried out a completely new kind of plant ID session - an online workshop aimed at helping beginner botanists get started with identifying some of the more common plant families. 

Around 50 participants signed up for the course. The £15 full fee (a discount was available to students) covered the cost of sending each participant a copy of Faith Anstey's excellent book, a Pocket Guide to Wildflower Families. The course was based on Faith's user-friendly approach to teaching plant families and how to use the kinds of keys found in many plant ID guides. 

One of Faith's pre-Covid workshops

BSBI's new Chief Executive, Julia Hanmer, decided to sign up for the course, to see how it worked and to refresh her plant ID skills. Since the Covid lockdown, we are hearing from more and more people who studied botany years ago and are now looking to brush up those ID skills and reconnect with the plant world and nature conservation, so online refresher courses are likely to become increasingly important – but do they really work?

Julia received her copy of Faith's book through the post a few days before the course so at 10a.m. on the day, she was all set for two hours of botanical training. Julia told me "I really enjoyed the course. It was well structured and presented and great fun to do. There were three short interactive sessions led by Aileen, punctuated by breaks, where we were given tasks to do on our own, IDing plants using Faith's book and then coming back together to look at how we had done. It all worked well online, with Aileen teaching and Jim McIntosh, BSBI Scottish Officer, facilitating and answering the many brilliant questions posed by participants, through Zoom’s Q&A facility.”

Great to hear that the format worked so well! What about Faith's book? Julia said "Yes I love the diagrams that feature on almost every page of the book, showing for example the different kinds of flower structures (image on right), or what 'whorled leaves' look like. I also liked the way Faith’s pocket guide has a glossary of plant terms and uses straightforward language wherever possible, e.g. she talks about flowers having either radial symmetry (slice them in half anywhere you like and the two halves would be identical) or else mirror symmetry (where there's only one place to slice them if you want two identical halves). Many beginner botanists will find that easier to understand and remember than 'zygomorphic vs actinomorphic' as used in Stace's ID keys."

Faith has certainly been building a reputation in recent years for helpful workshops and user-friendly booklets that help demystify how we identify plants including grasses, sedges and rushes, and those tricky yellow composites aka dandelion lookalikes. If you missed out on this online workshop, you can order all Faith's booklets from her website.

Jim McIntosh said “Faith’s Pocket Guide to Wildflower Families is a great way into the sometimes confusing world of wildflower ID! A total of 46 people participated on the day, and Aileen, our tutor, guided students clearly and concisely through naming plant parts, how to use the booklet to identify common plant families (e.g. the Rose family, image on left)  and how to use books like Collins Wild Flower Guide to pinpoint the species. We used the breaks to give students short exercises and asked them to photograph five flowering plants and identify their families, and the species, as (optional) homework. Participants were able to ask questions at any time during the session and we had a bit of fun with an interactive online poll. The session was recorded and you can watch the video here on the Training playlist on our BSBI YouTube channel”.

Another of Faith's pre-Covid workshops

Julia said that "Getting out and practising after an online course certainly helped consolidate our learning. The whole workshop really made me think about the different ways we ID plants - it's so easy to play 'plant snap' and try to match our plant to a picture in a book, rather than keying it out properly, but picture-matching is not always reliable - much better to learn how to do the job properly, and this online workshop was a huge step in the right direction" 

So, a vote of confidence from Julia but how does an online workshop compare against a more conventional beginner ID session in the field? We'll soon have a chance to find out because on the same day that Julia was attending the online workshop, BSBI's new Fundraising Manager Sarah Woods was attending a field meeting for beginners in Cambridgeshire with County Recorder Jonathan Shanklin. She has promised to send a short report so watch this space!