Photos of Bigtooth Maple (Acer grandidentatum), courtesy of the Dale A. Zimmerman Herbarium, WNMUThe Gila Native Plant Society will hold its first evening meeting of the fall season at 7:00 pm on Friday, October 19, 2018, at Harlan Hall, Room 219, on the WNMU campus. The meeting will feature a program by Richard Felger, Russ Kleinman and William (Bill) Norris entitled “Know the Trees: A Workshop”. Richard, Russ and Bill will give tips on how to go about identifying trees both here and elsewhere. In this one-hour, hands-on workshop, attendees will be provided with fresh leafy stems to examine as the presenters review basic leafy shoot structure and tree identification strategies. If you have one, please bring a 10X hand-lens with you.

Richard Felger has been a biologist since childhood. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona.  Subsequently he was on the faculty of the University of Colorado and then Senior Curator of Botany at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Returning to Tucson, the Desert Museum and the University of Arizona, he continued research in deserts worldwide and has published widely in fields of botany, ethnobiology and new arid-land food crops. He has been active in international conservation, including pioneer conservation of sea turtles. Richard is a researcher with the University of Arizona Herbarium and lives in Silver City with his wife Silke Schneider and their many animals and plants.

Retiring early from a career in surgery to devote his energies to botanical exploration, Russ Kleinman was instrumental in creating the website www.gilaflora.com, an invaluable archive of photographs and information on the vascular plants of the Gila Wilderness. He continues to explore and add to the website. He is currently teaching a class in Taxonomy in the WNMU Biology Department.

William (Bill) Norris is Professor of Biology at Western New Mexico University (since 2001), where he teaches numerous botany courses, as well as ecology and ornithology. Bill enjoys collaborating with other botanists on research projects that include monographic studies of sedges (Carex), forest monitoring in Iowa's Paleozoic Plateau, and floristic studies of native vegetation remnants in both Iowa and New Mexico.

Also at this meeting, the winning ticket in the raffle for the Eli Sorenson quilt will be drawn.

All Gila Native Plant Society meetings are free and open to the public. Refreshments following the program. For further information visit our website here.

The Gila Native Plant Society is committed to promoting education, research and appreciation of the native flora of the Southwest; encouraging the preservation of rare and endangered plant species; and supporting the use of suitable native plants in landscaping.

For information on programs, publications and membership, please visit here.