WEBINAR — Before They Were Native — A Brief History of Florida’s Flora
“Webinar: Before They Were Native — A Brief History of Florida’s Flora” by James Stevenson originally aired July 20, 2022. View the recording above.
Over millions of years, Florida’s geology and plant communities have undergone a myriad of changes. Driven by evolution, continental drift, ice ages and many more environmental pressures, today’s native plant communities are just a snapshot of the rich diversity spanning millennia. In this webinar, James Stevenson explores a simplified timeline of the events that lead to today’s Florida native plants.
James Stevenson is an extension specialist with the University of Florida IFAS Extension in Pinellas County. He works out of the Brooker Creek Preserve Environmental Education Center in Tarpon Springs, and teaches classes on a variety of natural resource conservation topics including: plant identification, botany, entomology, ecology and native plants such as ferns, wetland wildflowers and epiphytes.
James grew up in Clearwater, then went on to University in Tennessee, worked in botanic gardens in North Carolina before moving to the UK to work at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the University of Oxford Botanic Gardens from 1998-2006. James has been with the Pinellas UF/IFAS Extension since 2006.
UF/IFAS Extension Pinellas County is the local branch of a nationwide network of land grant universities providing non-biased, research-based information to America’s citizens. In our state, Extension’s land grant link is the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS).
