PFS – Tropical Asia

Why take a course on the flora of Southeast Asia?

Southeast Asia is one of the hottest hotspots of global biodiversity. There are over 40,000 vascular plant species, with a species density ten times that of the European flora, and the region is home to many well known and economically important plant taxa, such as rice, rattan, bananas, rambutan, nutmeg, meranti and yam. Being able to recognize plants is an essential skill for many aspects of ecology and conservation biology, but is problematic when the species diversity is so high, only a few plants are flowering at any one time, and regional floras are incomplete.

This course will arm students with an ability to identify plants in the field, thereby enhancing the quality of observations they may make in the course of their research. It is a course for non-plant taxonomy majors. Everyday we will collect plant material from the field and learn the field characters for identifying them. As we are collecting plants directly in the field, we will be dealing mainly with sterile material and sterile characters. This is deliberate since this is how plants are most often encountered. In the afternoons, we will review the day’s collecting, look at herbarium material, and arrange our observations within a systematic framework. In addition, we will have a series of lectures relating to the field study of plants, on topics ranging from DNA-barcoding to plant ecophysiology. The course also benefits from its location: XTBG has a phylogenetically diverse ex-situ collection of over 12000 plant species, including many thematic collections, a herbarium with over 100000 specimens focused on tropical China and Indo-China, and research laboratories studying plant genomics, plant resources, plant geography, plant-animal co-evolution, ecology and conservation.

This course is targeted at senior undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in the botanical wealth of Southeast Asia. Participants will learn how to make good quality plant collections, how to describe field characters, and how to recognize the important plant families and genera. By the end of the course, participants will have learned to identify over 90% of the individuals in a forest to Family or Genus level. No prior knowledge of botany or biology is assumed, and at the beginning of the course all the necessary botanical terms will be explained. The course is also, therefore, appropriate for anthropologists, environmental scientists, or conservation practitioners, as well as biologists, who wish to improve their ability to recognize plants.

Course structure

The participants will learn to recognise c. 50 economically and ecologically important plant families with the help of generative (flower and fruit) and vegetative (leaf and bark) characters, with the emphasis on the latter. Generally, three to four plant families, and three to four genera per family, will be treated per day. Jim LaFrankie and Ferry Slik two renowned tropical Asia ecologists and botanists will lead the course. Jim has over 25 years experience in the region and has probably identified more plant species in the field than anyone. He is author of the authoritative guidebook to the trees of the region – “Trees of Tropical Asia“, meanwhile Ferry is Professor of Plant Geography at XTBG and an expert on regional plant distribution patterns. Other guest lecturers from XTBG and elsewhere will teach components on their focal taxa or subjects.

During the mornings plant material will be collected in the field and their characters will be discussed on the spot. In the afternoon this plant material will be available for making more detailed notes, sketching, and pictures. An important aspect of the course is that we will score several characters of the plants each day to produce a large matrix of diagnostic characters. This will eventually be used to produce a key to all treated plant families and genera. Lectures on all aspects of plant sciences will be given each day so that the students will gain a good insight into the current research areas of the field. There will be field trips to see different forest types so that the students will learn to appreciate the variability in vegetation structure and composition. We will also establish a plot and do a complete inventory of the plants as a practice exercise.

The course ends with a examination, where the students have to recognize 30 plants and explain the characters that they used to come to their identification. Participants will be awarded certificates with their grades indicated.

Program