Botany for Beginners gets off to a great start

Ian sets out our specimens for ID
Image: L. Marsh

The first module of Botany for Beginners kicked off this weekend with a tuition session on 'Wild Flowers of Woodlands and Glades'. 

The weather forecast was dreadful, so we made sure that there were lots of specimens available for the new students to look at. 

Here is Ian arranging some of the plants that he brought in from our list of ~80 woodland species recorded as occasional, frequent or abundant in VC55 in the recent Flora of Leicestershire &; Rutland by our BSBI County Recorder Mike Jeeves. 

Sally recording the flora of the Shiant Islands
Image L. Marsh 2013

Ian completed all five modules of Botany for Beginners in 2013, so he has come back this year as a Botanical Buddy to help people who are keying out plants for the first time. 

Sally Peacock also came down from Notts. With her teaching skills and considerable botanical expertise, she is an ideal co-tutor for this course. Sally really helped people find out how you go about identifying a wild flower. 
And we were delighted that plant-finder extraordinaire Brian Laney, from Northants., responded to our invitation for regional expert botanists to come along and share a few ID tips. Many thanks to all three of them for making it such a successful day! 

It's too late for you to join this module, but there are still a few spaces available on each of the other four modules. The next one is on 'Summer Meadow Flowers' - more info here.