Grass Class

[Thomas Lammers]

At 02:52 PM 4/12/00 -0400, you wrote:

>         Our Department will be offering a new course in the fall (2000)
> called
>"Taxonomy of the Grasses (Poaceae)", designed for undergraduates and
>graduate students, and worth 3 hrs of college credit.
>
>         Does anyone out there have ideas/suggestions for a course outline
> or syllabus? I expect that we will be making heavy use of pressed (and
>fresh) material for keying grasses to tribes, genera, & species. Also--
>suggestions for textbooks?

When I took such a class from Dick Pohl at Iowa State 25 years ago, much
time was spent keying herbarium specimens using his "How to Know the
Grasses", which is still in print.  Lectures dealt with structure and
function of grasses, esp. flower/fruit and the anatomical correlates of
C3/C4 photosynthesis; grasses role in ecology (prairies, steppes, etc.);
classification (the then-new revision of the traditional Hitchcockian
classification, genomic aspects of classification, etc.); and  of course
economic aspects.  I think I wrote a term paper on hybrids in the Triticeae.


Thomas G. Lammers, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor and Curator of the Herbarium (OSH)
Department of Biology and Microbiology
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Oshkosh, Wisconsin 54901-8640 USA

e-mail:                     lammers at uwosh.edu
phone (office):         920-424-7085
phone (herbarium):  920-424-1002
fax:                         920-424-1101

Plant systematics; classification, nomenclature, evolution, and
biogeography of the Campanulaceae s. lat.
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"Today's mighty oak is yesterday's nut that stood his ground."
                                                 -- Anonymous