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Biol 3400: Vascular Plant Taxonomy: Course Details

Prerequisites
An introductory biology course that includes a portion on the structure of vascular plants. Students that have not had such a course may take the course, but should be prepared to work extra hard to compensate for the lack (as should students that have had such a course but just scraped through the material on plant structures or for whom the course is a distant memory).

Special Accommodation
The class is intended to be open to all students. If you have some needs that require special accommodation, please let me know.

Text books
You must have your own copy of R.J. Shaw's Vascular Plants of Northern Utah and you should bring it to every laboratory period. I shall sometimes provide replacement keys, but most of the time we shall use those in Shaw. There are some differences between the first and second printing, so the second printing is preferable to the first, but it is not critical.

Almost every student that takes the course relies heavily on Plant Identification Terminology by J.G. Harris and M.W. Harris. The second edition is better than the first.

The best reference for the lecture material is Judd et al. Plant Systematics. I shall sometimes refer explicitly to its contents. I think that it will be useful to have your own copy, but there are copies in the herbarium that can be consulted (but not borrowed). It will also provide an invaluable resource for the laboratory, but there are places where the families that I shall ask you to learn will differ in their circumscription from those in Judd et al. You need to know that changes have been proposed, and have some grasp of the nature of the changes.

Course Fees
The course fees contribute to the cost of obtaining, storing, and organizing the plant material studied, and printing of the handouts. These costs greatly exceed the amount of money generated by the class fee.