Brittany SutherlandJan 5, 2023

Hi, plant folks! I have a question:

I'm teaching a plant diversity course this spring. Because we don't have a Botany course here, I'm trying to split the difference and heavily cover botanical basics in the first half before I start surveying groups.

The nutshell is that I have about six weeks to cover the Angiosperms. I can cover everything terribly or a subset well.

Therefore: What are your MUST KNOW Angiosperm groups for U.S. based students, mostly Ecology majors? Please opine and boost!

Show threadJon Sullivan
@SutherlandBL I've been in the same situation. I started out lecturing on each of the big Angiosperm families, but I struggled to excite students. I ended up flipping it and giving one lecture on the plant family tree before diving into plant natural history (pollination, seed dispersal, competition, defenses against insects, etc.) and layering as much taxonomic context into my examples as I could. Plus, as @Anna_Scharnagl also suggested, I get the students using #iNaturalist a lot. Good luck!
Jan 5, 2023 at 8:01pmWeb
Show threadBrittany SutherlandJan 5, 2023
@joncounts @Anna_Scharnagl
Thanks! I'm front-loading a lot of the ecological basics as they pertain to classification (I'm using Judd et al for the text). I definitely think trying in to what they see up here in northern Virginia will help!
Show threadrspJan 5, 2023
@SutherlandBL @joncounts @Anna_Scharnagl When teaching diversity courses, I'm a fan of framing everything on a phylogenetic tree. Along the lines of what @joncounts said. E.g. seeds: these plants here produce seeds, the others don't because the seed evolved down here on this branch. It doesn't really matter which groups as long as you include commonly encountered species representing major lineages, and include some of medical, historical, or ecological significance (e.g. invasive vs. native).