Botany Lab

Botany is the study of plants and many of the other non-animal groups in the tree of life. With regard to organisms, this course begins with the Cyanobacteria, winds through several groups of unrelated organisms that were all once categorized as fungi, picks apart pieces of the ‘protista’, and finally emerges into Kingdom Planate. With regard to scientific disciplines, we begin with ecology, transition to a bit of chemistry and cell biology, assemble these building blocks to learn anatomy and physiology, use these characteristics to discuss evolution and systematics, classify our organisms into related groups based on organismal biology, then discover their interrelatedness by returning back to ecology--all with a sprinkle of physical geography to give us some historical context.