606-310 Field Botany

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Botany 606-202.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

Topics to be covered include:

• taxonomy of the Australian flora;
• field identification of major families and genera of plants;
• assessing population variation;
• collection and pressing of dry and wet specimens; mounting and cataloguing specimens; curatorial skills; nomenclature;
• using computer-based identification systems and databases; and
• techniques for description and classification of vegetation - structural types, floristic associations, measures of abundance (cover, density, basal area, biomass), sampling techniques (quadrats, line transects, plotless methods), sampling scale and species-area relationships, profile diagrams, life-form spectra.

At the end of this subject, students will have:

• skills for identification and description of plants and plant communities in the field;
• skills for collection, cataloguing and preserving plant specimens; and
• a knowledge of the Australian flora.

Assessment

Submit a curated collection of up to 20 plants (20%); a written report of a maximum of 2000 words (40%) and a 2-hour practical examination at the end of the subject (40%).