About:

Do you want to get to grips with plant ID, but feel daunted by the seemingly endless number of species in the field guides making you unsure where to start? If so, then our online self-study ‘Beginner’s Botany’ course has been designed especially for you!

This course can only be completed May – September when there are flowering plants!

Course Description:

This course aims to provide you with a basic knowledge of how to identify wild flowers using families, keys and field guides. During the course you will also become familiar with some of the most common flowering plants that you are likely to encounter in different habitats. This course can only be taken between May and September as you will be required to collect and identify plant samples.

The course will cover the following topics:

• Plant structure and features commonly used for ID
• Plant families and clues to their ID with examples for each family
• Using keys and field guides
• Examples of species from unimproved grassland and riparian habitat will be shown
• Includes tree workshop and some common grasses.

The tips you will learn from our experienced tutor will help you gain confidence in identifying plants yourself, at your own pace.

This a comprehensive course with a lot of content. Allow time to stop the videos frequently to make notes and refer to your samples and your ID book/chart.

Allow 12 hours to complete this course (equivalent of a 2 day field course).

What you will need:

At least one of these:

• Flower ID book:
  • Collins Pocket Guide The Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe, Blamey, Fitter and Fitter New edition 1996 (out of print but available secondhand)
  • The Wildflower Key. Francis Rose (2006)
  • Collins Tree Guide (2004)
• FSC Guides to flowering plants – grassland plants 1 and 2, trees, grasses.
• Or other flower ID book with trees and grasses in it.

Also:

A hand lens or magnifying glass.

A hard-back sketchbook (A4 minimum, A3 better) to collect your samples in (optional)

Sticky tape to stick your samples in your book (optional)

Course format – Video:

Part 1

Plant structure and habitats Playing time: 1 hour 15 mins

Part 2

Plant families Playing time: 1 hour 12 mins

Part 3

Tree and grass ID Playing time: 1 hour

Part 4

Practice and Assessment Playing time: 46 mins

Assessment

The assessment is in three parts:

• In the Part 4 video there is a plant quiz and tree quiz – submit your answers by email.
• You will need to collect some flowering plant samples and send a picture by email or WhatsApp or short video via WhatsApp of 10 identified flowering plant species with their common name, Latin name and family.
• At the end there will be a short quiz and if you get over 70% you will receive a Certificate.

What our students say

“I liked the course, it was very comprehensive. I’m surprised how much I enjoyed the online elements of the course, I thought I would do better in a face to face course but honestly being able to go at my own pace is really working for me as I can spend time on the bits I find tricky as they come up rather than making a note to look things up later… I like the YouTube videos, being able to pause or even speed up the video to match my pace works well for me. I do feel like I learnt a lot. I would 100% recommend the course to others.” SC

Booking for another person?

If you are purchasing a course/s on behalf of another person, please follow these steps to ensure they can access their course/s:

1. Create a student account using the student’s (whoever will be taking the course) details and contact information or use their existing student account.
2. Including the correct billing address and information for the payment method that was used.
3. Leave us a note in the ‘additional information’ box to let us know it was purchased with another person’s debit/credit card.
4. Make sure to pass on the Username and Password to the student so they can get started on learning. All their course materials will be available on their account.

Booking for multiple people?

If you are purchasing courses on behalf of multiple other people, follow these steps to ensure they can access their course/s:

1. Create a student account under your own details and add the correct number of courses for all the students you are purchasing for. (Example: If three people need to take Mammal ID, add it to basket three times).
2. Ask each student (person who you have purchased the course for) to create their own student account on our website with their own details.
3. Once purchased, contact us directly to let us know the Names, student account Usernames and Email Addresses for each student you have bought for.
4. We will contact each of them directly with directions on how to purchase the course free of charge once it has been paid for already.

If you have any problems with this process, please get in touch – [email protected] or 03301653024