This program fosters the skills needed for field work in the fields of floristics and plant ecology particularly vegetation studies. Students will learn how to use Hitchcock and Cronquist's Flora of the Pacific Northwest, a technical key for identifying unknown plants. We will spend time in the field and laboratory discussing diagnostic characters of plant families. Seminar readings will be focused on floristics, biogeography and vegetation ecology. Students will learn how to collect and prepare herbarium specimens and apply this knowledge to a collaborative research project. Students will also learn about herbarium curation.

A multi-day field trip to the Columbia River Gorge will give students an opportunity to learn about Pacific Northwest plant communities in the field, including prairies, oak woodlands and coniferous forests. Students will be expected to maintain a detailed field journal and will be taught basic botanical illustration skills to support this work. Through the field trip, students will learn qualitative vegetation sampling methods and how to analyze their observations. The field trip is required.

Students who successfully complete the course will earn 16 units of upper-division science credit in field plant taxonomy, vegetation ecology of the Pacific Northwest, and floristic research.