PLANT IDENTIFICATION COURSES - NORTH QUEENSLAND
Correct identification of plants is essential in many land management roles, whether it is for weed control, threatened species management, or simply to confirm that a labelled specimen in a garden is correctly named.
Over the past fifteen years, plant identification has been made much simpler through the wide introduction of "Lucid" keys.
Lucid, a computer program developed at the University of Queensland, provides an easy-to-use interactive tool for plant identification.
Lucid keys have now been published for the Australian eucalypts, wattles, mangroves, grasses and tropical rainforest plants - some of these are available for free online. A Lucid key for the rainforest plants of south-eastern Australia is soon to be published by Terania Rainforest Publishing.
The Australian Tropical Herbarium and the Wet Tropics Management Authority, as part of their public engagement programs, have developed a series of plant identification short courses, using the CSIRO Lucid Key to Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants as a learning tool.
The short courses introduce participants to the skills and resources needed for plant identification using the Lucid Keys. Targetted at the interested layperson, the courses cover:
- How are plants named?
- Plant structure and terminology.
- Practice in the use of the rainforest plant identification key.
- A walking tour of a nearby rainforest.
- Hands-on learning through identification of local native plants.
The next course will be a special three day residential course, held in the highland retreat of Paluma, near Townsville, from 28-30 November. Spaces for this course are limited. For Cairns locals, courses will be run at James Cook University Cairns Campus in June 2015
For more information, or to be put on the mailing list, please contact the Australian Tropical Herbarium 4042 1837, or by email: enquiry@ath.org.au. Course brochures and enrolments are available at alumni.jcu.edu.au/PIC2014
