This weekly seminar, attended by students and faculty from Washington U., St. Louis University, UM-St. Louis, and the Missouri Botanical Garden, provides an introduction to/overview of Plants, each semester progressively covering orders and families in a sequence derived from the Angiosperm Phylogeny website: http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/Research/APweb/welcome.html; Fall 2018, the seminar will cover the large order Caryophyllales, which includes many small and several large families such as Polygonaceae, Amaranthaceae, Cactaceae, and Caryophyllaceae. Weekly presentations include a summary of all relevant information (molecular, chemical, anatomical, embryological, morphological, ecological, geographical, historical/paleontological, etc.) about the plant group under consideration, review of the classification/phylogeny of the group, examination of fresh and/or preserved specimens, and discussion of relationships, human uses, and other relevant aspects of the biology of that group. Credit will be contingent on one (or two) seminar presentation(s) per student, regular attendance and active participation in group discussions.
Course Attributes: