BIOL 297 - Topics in Biology

Credits: 3 or 4 in fall or winter; 4 in spring
Planned Offering: Fall, Winter, Spring

Spring 2014 topic:

BIOL 297A-01: Field Botany (4). An entirely outdoor course, including some strenuous hiking, in which students learn to identify vascular plants using professional “floras” of the upper Shenandoah Valley watershed The conservation biology of many of these plants is discussed focusing upon alien invasive and rare plants of the upper Chesapeake Bay watershed. With no formal lectures in the course, students work with the group to identify plants as each student accumulates an annotated reference collection (a herbarium) of plants. The class reads and discusses several professional papers dealing with conservation problems caused by alien plants and the conservation ecology of rare plants. Some strenous hiking involved. (SL) Knox.