Webinar – Botany in Context Part 1: Basic Wildflower Botany

Companion resources:

• Presentation slides with additional notes
• Notes on Florida Wildflowers – a text-only accompaniment to the full series

Full Series:

This crash course in basic botany for the beginner takes us on a journey from understanding plant anatomy and physiology to learning how plants are named and the botanical jargon that demystifies plant keys and identification. Dr. Folsom contextualizes it all in Florida native plant communities.

• Part 2: 10 BIG IDEAS Regarding Plants – Wednesday, January 15, 2pm
• Part 3: Coming to Terms with Plant Names – Wednesday, February 19, 2pm
• Part 4: Getting Familiar with Plant Families – Wednesday, April 16, 2pm
• Part 5: Botanical Jargon, A Concise and Precise Language for Plants – Wednesday, May 21, 2pm
• Part 6: Using Keys to Florida Plants – Wednesday, June 18, 2pm

Jim Folsom, PhD rides the demographic peak of baby boomers, having been born in southeastern Alabama in 1950. His lifelong love of plants is reflected in a BS in botany from Auburn University, an MA in biology from Vanderbilt University, and a PhD in research botany from the University of Texas at Austin. Though his research has centered largely on the orchid family, with much of that time spent in tropical America (including a year in Colombia on a Fulbright Pre-Doctoral Fellowship), Jim’s botanical interests are wide-ranging. For 35 years before his retirement in 2021, as curator/director of the Botanical Gardens at The Huntington in San Marino, CA, he dedicated much of his effort to educational programs that increase public interest and understanding of the science, culture and history of plants and gardens, topics reflected in his website botanyincontext.com as well as his TikTok channel, @botanyincontext. He lives on Saint George Island, FL, with his wife, Debra (also a botanist); they have two adult children, Molly and James.  Jim currently serves as an incoming member of the board of the American Horticultural Society.