Plant Systematics Fall 2019 (4 credits)
Dr. Catherine Paris 308 Jeffords Hall Phone: 802-338-0312 email: cparis@uvm.edu

Teaching Assistants:
Susan Fawcett	Morgan Southgate
306 Jeffords Hall	306 Jeffords Hall
Phone: 231-622-2333	Phone: 802-839-6059
e-mail: Susan.Fawcett@uvm.edu	e-mail: Morgan.Southgate@uvm.edu

Please Note: e-mail is the preferred mode of contact for all three of us.  We will make every attempt to respond promptly.  Thank you.

Lecture:             Tuesday and Thursday, 11:40 a.m. - 12:55 p.m., Room 110 Jeffords Hall

Laboratory:      Monday, 1:15 ‑ 5:15 p.m., Room 100 Jeffords

Tuesday, 1:15 ‑ 5:15 p.m., Room 100 Jeffords

      Wednesday, 1:15 - 5:15 p.m. Room 100 Jeffords

Course Overview

Plant Systematics serves students who come to the course from a diversity of academic backgrounds and who bring to it a variety of needs and expectations; we hope you will all find some of what you are looking for here in the next fourteen weeks.  We develop five principal themes in Plant Systematics:

· Plant Structure and the Terms Botanists Use to Describe It

· Introduction to Vermont Plant Families

· Plant Taxonomy (the field of biology dealing with the identification, nomenclature, and classification of organisms)

· Flowering Plant Phylogeny

· Plant Reproductive Biology

In addition, we aim to provide each student with the following skills:

· Plant identification using the technical literature and appropriate field guides

· Recognition of about 25 plant families common in the flora of the Northeast

· Understanding of plant form and associated terminology

· Preparation of a museum-quality plant collection

· Recognition of a set of herbaceous species that characterize Vermont’s flora

More will be said about each of these at the first class meeting.

Texts

Castner, J. L. 2004. Photographic Atlas of Botany and Guide to Plant Identification. Feline Press. (Recommended; out of print, but available online, e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Photographic-Atlas-Botany-Guide-Identification/dp/0962515000)

Newcomb, L. 1977. Newcomb's Wildflower Guide. Little, Brown. (Required)

Magee, D. and H. Ahles. 2007. Flora of the Northeast, 2^nd edition. University of Massachusetts Press. (Required)

Additional Resources

"Go Botany: Discover Thousands of New England Plants." Go Botany: New England Wild Flower Society, 2.4.1. New England Wild Flower Society, n.d. Web.  https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/   19 Aug. 2019.

Struwe, L. 2009. Field identification of the 50 most common plant families in temperate regions (including agricultural, horticultural, and wild species). Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA. Published by the author, available at http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~struwe/

Labs

Labs meet in Room 100 Jeffords Hall, beginning on Monday, September 9.  Labs during the first two-thirds of the semester will be field labs; please dress appropriately.  You will need your flora (Magee and Ahles), your field guide (Newcomb's), and your hand lens for the first lab.  Note for students in the Monday lab section: UVM will observe a mid-semester recess on Monday, October 14.  Students in the Monday lab section are strongly encouraged to attend lab on Tuesday or Wednesday that week.  Please talk with your TA or your instructor as soon as you can if that will be impossible. 

Blackboard

We will use Blackboard in PBIO 109 as a tool to post power point slides, assignment reminders, course grades, and occasional quizzes.  Please check it regularly.

Equipment for plant collection and identification

Press (you may put this together or borrow one from the department; a $35 deposit is required upon issue), field notebook, hand lens (consider ordering the Bausch and Lomb Coddington 10X lens, available from Amazon for $19.99 [http://www.amazon.com/Bausch-Lomb-Coddington-Magnifier-10x/dp/B0009POLWE/ref=sr_1_1?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1439405451&sr=1-1&keywords=coddington+magnifier]; the UVM Bookstore offers a cheaper one), small metric ruler, pocketknife, digging tool

Weekly Quizzes

A quiz will be given each Thursday - not including exam weeks - in PBIO 109, beginning the second week of the semester.  Quizzes will cover the material discussed in lecture that week. 

Exams

There will be two hourly exams and a final in PBIO 109.  Hour exams are scheduled for Tuesday, October 8 and Thursday, November 14, Room 110 Jeffords.  (These dates are subject to change.) The final is scheduled for Thursday, December 12, at 7:30 a.m. in Room 110 Jeffords.      

Plant Collection

In addition to your work in lecture and the laboratory, you will be preparing a collection of 20 dried specimens of non-woody spore-dispersed and flowering plants, representing 20 different plant families.  Specimens must be correctly identified, completely labeled, and attractively mounted.  In order to provide you with helpful feedback on your specimen preparation, I will collect the first five specimens on Thursday, September 26.  The entire collection (20 specimens) is due on Friday, November 22.  Read the handout on collecting and begin to collect AT ONCE: good specimens get harder to find as we move into the fall, and once we get a hard frost, usually about October 15 in this part of Vermont, it's all over.

Plant Family Presentation

One goal of PBIO 109 is an orientation to plant families.  We will pursue this goal in a variety of ways through the semester, both in the field and in the lab. Each student will choose a different family and will design a presentation (Power Point or Prezi) about it.  Presentations should be information dense and image rich.   They will be evaluated on three criteria: 1) accuracy of information; 2) effort and creativity evidenced in the product; and 3) technical competence.  More will be said about the family assignment in the weeks ahead.  The presentation must be completed by Wednesday, December 4.

Grading

Laboratory                                                                   25%

Hourly exams, 10% each                                             20%

Final exam                                                                   15%

Plant collection                                                            25%

Family presentation                                                     05%

Attendance, participation, and quizzes                        10%

How to get an A in Plant Biology 109: I do not strive for a normal distribution of course grades in Plant Systematics: I would happily assign an A to each of you at the end of the semester; I hope that quite a few of you will have earned one.  Here is what you can do to make it likely:

Come to class regularly.  Nothing takes the place of actually being present in the classroom.

Begin collecting plants immediately and spend some time on it each week until it is finished.

Ask questions whenever something is unclear.

Work in study groups; quiz one another on botanical terms, plant family characters, etc.

Keep up with the assigned reading

Work hard … and have fun!

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is expected of all students at the University of Vermont.  UVM has a strict policy concerning academic integrity; violations of this policy will not be tolerated.  Consequences for violation range from a zero on the test or assignment to expulsion from the University.  The UVM policy on academic integrity can be found at https://www.uvm.edu/policies/student/acadintegrity.pdf

Students Working with SAS

In keeping with UVM policy, any student with a documented disability interested in utilizing accommodations should contact SAS, the office of Student Accessability Services, on campus. SAS works with students and faculty in an interactive process to explore reasonable and appropriate accommodations via an accommodation letter to faculty with recommended accommodations as early as possible each semester. Contact SAS: A170 Living/Learning Center; 802-656-7753; access@uvm.edu; or https://www.uvm.edu/academicsuccess/student_accessibility_services

Religious Holidays

Students are welcome to practice the religion of their choice and have the right to observe the holidays of their religious tradition. If you plan to miss class for a religious holiday – especially if an exam is scheduled for that day - please let me know which days you plan to miss, in writing, by the end of the second week of class.

Cell Phones

As a courtesy to your instructor and fellow students, cell phones must be put away and silenced during class. Texting during class is not permitted.