Ferns and Fern Allies
Summer (8 hrs. or less) | This course is completed
1 session, 11:30 AM - 3:30 PM
Saturday, July 22, 2017
(Rain date: July 23, 2017)
Montshire Museum - Norwich, VT
Course Fee: $40
Are you eager to get to know more of your neighbors - that is, your neighbors in the plant kingdom? Ferns and fern “allies” (horsetails and club-mosses) are an approachable group - abundant in the Upper Valley, easy to find, and, with practice, easier to identify than some other groups of plants. Lacking flowers but including species with exquisitely beautiful foliage, they include some of our most ancient terrestrial life forms.
This workshop will include lecture, microscopic examination of fresh plant material, and field identification of the fine array of ferns and related species along the trails at the Montshire Museum in Norwich. The field portion will be mostly on easy terrain but will include some moderate hills and maybe a bit of bushwhacking. But never fear - we will always proceed at a botanist’s pace (=slow!). No reading is required, but the Peterson Field Guide to Ferns of Northeastern and Central North America, Second Edition by Cobb, Farnsworth, and Lowe is highly recommended.
There is an optional text for this course.
Alice Schori
Alice (graduate of Oberlin College) is a field botanist who studied native plants through the New England Wild Flower Society starting in the mid-1990s. She has performed botanical surveys for conservation organizations and the Towns of Hanover and Lyme, and spent nine summers doing similar work for the White Mountain National Forest.
DO NOT USE Don DO NOT USE Lubin
Don Lubin, fern enthusiast, grows dozens of fern species in his garden in Allston, MA and has led field trips and taught many fern workshops and classes for the New England Wild Flower Society, including here at the Montshire. He has a website with information and photos of ferns, http://nefern.info/.