Biology (BIOL) 321

Overview

Wild Flowers (plant taxonomy) is the study of flowering plants and some of their nonflowering relatives such as ferns and conifers. Close attention is paid to reproductive structures, identification, classification, phylogenetic relationships, and plant habitats.

Wild Flowers is a field-oriented course and students must participate in a nine-day workshop held in July at the Biogeoscience Institute at Barrier Lake (70 km west of Calgary). Students are responsible for paying their own board and lodging (approximately $440) in addition to course tuition. Students must register in time for a June 1 start date. The course ends August 31 and students will have no option to extend. More information is listed in the workshop details.

Learning Objectives

When students have completed BIOL 321 they should be able to accomplish the following:

1. Describe the morphology and evolutionary trends of vegetative and reproductive parts of vascular plants.
2. Discuss various aspects of the scientific naming of plants.
3. Prepare dichotomous keys to identify plants.
4. Distinguish selected plant families, genera, and species from each other by using botanical keys.
5. Collect, identify, and prepare herbarium mounts of plants.
6. Draw floral diagrams and write floral formulae of flowering plants.
7. Describe various processes of classification, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses.
8. Compare different systems of classification of vascular plants.

Outline

The following topics discussed in the book by ZE Murrell constitute the outline for this course.

Chapter 1: Introduction to plant taxonomy

Chapter 2: Botanical nomenclature

Chapter 3: Taxonomic evidence

Chapter 4: Systematic methods and classification

Chapter 5: Floras, manuals and botanical descriptions

Chapter 7: Collecting and preserving plants for study

Chapter 8: Survey of the vascular plants

Chapter 16: Experimental plant systematics

Chapter 17: Revisions and monographs

In addition there will be a detailed study of selected plant families (this study will take place in the workshop).

Evaluation

To receive credit for BIOL 321, you must attend the entire field workshop (9 days), achieve a course composite grade of at least “D” (50 percent), and a grade of at least 50 percent on the final examination. The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:

To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University's online Calendar.