ENV 731b () / 2024-2025

Tropical Field Botany

This course teaches students how to identify the most important tropical plant families, with an emphasis on woody taxa. Students learn key characteristics for identification. We concentrate on families that have high economic, ecological, or ethnobotanical importance. We also discuss distribution, habitat, and ecology. The course has a strong practical component, and instructors emphasize vegetative characters to identify families and higher-level taxa. The course includes a two-week field trip to Costa Rica over spring break.