I hear how formative these classes are all the time, even from people we randomly meet while traveling. We were spotted at our hotel by a retired oncologist from back east. He got into birds in college and passed that love to his kids, who were taking him to Organ Pipe.

This year’s class was really great. Teaching a traveling field class is the most exhausting and rewarding thing I do.

I had my desert class there last weekend- there were snow showers in the area and the light was just wonderful.

I always wanted to pretend to be an architect…

Actual botanists don't feel like they need to lie to their neighbors about their jobs.

Red Camellia flower

Camellia season.

Odontonema tubaeforme?

Anisophyllea is a great example this, though I don’t think it pulls off the illusion of compound leaves quite as successfully!

Outside of Phyllanthaceae, what else has phyllanthoid branching?

A still from Jurassic World: Rebirth showing the head of a Dunkleosteus on top of a pile of normal-sized fish. We're looking at it mouth-first, and its jaws are almost as big across as the man standing next to it. They're also filled with huge irregular "teeth" (actually bony projections of the armored plates that cover the front part of its body).

This is probably a minor thing to fixate on in the whole mess of nonsense that was Jurassic World: Rebirth, but I can't get over the Dunkleosteus head pulled up by fisherman in the beginning. Where the hell did inGen or whoever get its DNA from? 🧵 1/

Those are completely bizarre. I had no idea they turned into pads with wax fingers.

Whitefly…

Same.
I also try to indoctrinate them into holding their hand lenses up close to their eyeballs, instead of holding them at arm’s length.

Rays on Ray Day, right?

(That's a wild pattern BTW, messes with my brain)

Ask Winfield Joad.

Did you see it here in Gainesville? We saw a bunch at Selby Garden in Sarasota last month. Cycad feeders…

We must all hang together or we will all hang separately.

Thunderstorm got me trapped in my little greenhouse with two dogs and a beer.

Now $5,900. That’s 3X the growth of median household income.

University of Arizona was ~$950 per semester in-state when I started in ‘91.

Atala, Eumaeus atala, at Selby Botanical Garden in Sarasota. Larvae feed on cycads!

"If you don't know anything, you don't have a problem."

Measuring biodiversity and ecosystem health is crucial to knowing how rapidly decline is taking place and if anything we are doing is helping to mitigate our impact. If this passes, we will be flying blindly into oblivion.

As a Norm, this is officially the end of an era.

I love this account.

That’s neat.

this is the way

Making woodpeckers is the main thing Quercus hemisphaerica is good for.

iNat says this is Ammophila pictipennis. How does this waist make any sense?