Flowering plant taxonomy and systematics

This five-day intensive course will introduce flowering plant families to committed amateurs, undergraduates, graduates and professionals. The aim is to help you develop an understanding of the evolution and systematics of the major plant families, and the practical skills needed when approaching the identification of plant material. Teaching will be through a combination of practical sessions and lectures covering exemplars of major flowering plant families, with an emphasis on those of North Temperate regions. The course will make extensive use of plant material and the living collections across the Botanic Garden and includes a visit to the University’s Herbarium, housed in the Sainsbury Laboratory. A lunch on the final day is included in the price.

Dr Ángela Cano is the Deputy Curator of Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Ángela studied Biology at the University of Los Andes (Bogota) graduating with a BSc degree in 2009. She did her master’s research in plant systematics and biogeography at the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève (Geneva) from 2010 to 2012. She gained a PhD degree in 2018 from the University of Geneva. Her doctoral thesis was titled “What can palm evolution in time and space say about the historical assembly of diversity in the Caribbean and Central America?”. Ángela has done intensive fieldwork in ten countries, exploring biodiversity hotspots as the Amazon, the Andes, the Caribbean, and the Richtersveld. Other than collecting plants in the wild to enrich the collections of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, she oversees verifying the identity of the plants grown there. She also participates in the optimisation of curatorial processes involving living plants labelling and auditing, herbarium management, seed bank development, and databasing. She additionally teaches Tropical Botany and Plant Systematics. Her research topics include plant systematics, macroevolution, and biogeography, and she is a member of the Palms Phylogeny Working Group.

Ros Bennett is a freelance botanist and ecologist whose work has taken her to many parts of the globe. Her expertise lies principally in the native floras of Europe.   She runs plant taxonomy courses for professionals and amateurs in many branches of botany.  Her regular clientele includes professional ecologists, amateur naturalists, ethnobotanists, postgraduate students, and trainee gardeners.   She works on behalf of many organisations – in particular the Field Studies Council, Kent Wildlife Trust, various ecological consultancies, and universities (most recently – Birmingham, Kent, Manchester Metropolitan and Cambridge).