May, 2024 Plant Identification & Ecoliteracy Course
May 18th, 2024. Central Virginia
All Day: 8am - 6pm.
This intensive is for any farmer, regenerative agrarian, and land steward!
Do you know the difference between Tall Fescue and Orchardgrass? Can you identify the 30+ forbs, legumes, sedges, and rushes that grow amongst them? How about what quackgrass or hairy panicum is telling you about your soil?
In this 1-day, hands-on intensive, you will learn how to identify vegetative and woody plants around Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic ecoregions using basic botany terms and concepts! By the end of the day, you should be able to walk and talk to the plants around you, calling them by name so that you can begin your journey to relating with them.
May 18th, 2024 in Central Virginia
Learn plant identification and develop a relational ecoliteracy!
Regeneration and rewilding is relationship, but to have relationship we must also have language.
While we, modern humans are far from embracing complete reciprocity with our vegetative, two and four legged cousins, learning the language of rewilding and regeneration and ecological evolution through plant identification is a wonderful and NEEDED first step.
Do you:
- Know the difference between cool and warm season grasses and what this difference is telling you about the land around us, the way we manage, and more?
- Know how to identify the common grasses, forbs, and legumes that live and inhabit the world around us?
- Know the difference between beaked and hairy panicum grass and what this difference says about your soils?
- Know how to identify mineral deficiencies in plants?
- Know how to determine soil structure and health through smell and taste?
- Know how to identify tree species based upon bark, growth location, or leaves?
If not, or not fully, then this course is for you!
In this 1-day, hands-on intensive, you will learn how to identify vegetative and woody plants around Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic ecoregions using basic botany terms and concepts! By the end of the day, you should be able to walk and talk to the plants around you, calling them by name so that you can begin your journey to relating with them.
What we will learn in this intensive
We will start first thing the morning of May 18th, at 8am. If you are staying on site, please plan to arrive the night prior so that we can get you settled in, meet one another and prepare for the start of the course!
If you are staying elsewhere, please arrive by 7:45am May 18th.
For this intimate, completely hands-on, and small-sized course, 1 ticket is: $150. Lodging is optional and additionally charged. No food will be provided for this course to keep cost down and ticket prices accessible.
All experience levels are welcome! This course does not require or even recommend previous experience and is so constructed to provide everything you need to learn the skills and art of plant identification.
Meet Your Teacher
Daniel Griffith
A renowned storyteller, educator, rewilding pioneer, and author of award-winning books Wild Like Flowers and Dark Cloud Country, Daniel’s work focuses on regenerating relationship—that is, relearning what it means to be human.
He is the co-founder of Timshel Wildland, a pioneering rewilding and relational conservation project that is leading the modern convergence of ecological restoration and wildly autonomous living yet harvestable systems, and is the founder and lead educator of the Robinia Institute.
Allan Savory called Daniel the “poet laureate of Holistic Management."
