Woodland plant identification day

Spend a whole day exploring the rich plant life of Quarry Wood and sharpen your woodland plant identification skills. This woodland plant identification day is designed to help you refresh or improve your ability to recognise common and less familiar woodland species using practical field techniques. You will work with hand lenses, identification guides and keys, mobile phone apps and by collecting specimens to aid accurate identification.

This course is one of three habitat-focused plant identification days run during the year and is suitable for anyone who wants to build confidence in identifying wild plants. You are encouraged to bring your own wildflower books, a hand lens and a phone. Recommended reference works include Francis Rose's Wild Flower Key and Fitter, Fitter and Blamey's Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland, which will be useful during the practical exercises.

The classes are led by Alex Lockton, a botanist and ecologist with thirty years of experience. Alex teaches botany evening classes in Maidstone and Canterbury, runs the Plant Identification in the Field summer school and is the author of The Flora and Vegetation of Shropshire (2015). His experience ensures clear, practical tuition suited to amateur botanists, naturalists and anyone keen to improve their field identification skills.

Whether you are refreshing long unused skills or deepening existing knowledge, this full-day woodland workshop provides hands-on practice and expert guidance in a real woodland habitat.