Knowing how to precisely catalog the vegetation in your understory is a prerequisite for making smart forest management choices. To give landowners a firm technical foundation, the Mountain Top Arboretum is hosting a dedicated field taxonomy workshop led by professional botanist Claudia Nagy.

This hands-on outdoor educational session skips generic guidebooks and focuses on practical field identification strategies using structural plant keys. Participants will walk the diverse habitats of the Arboretum to practice identifying native shrubs, herbaceous plants, and indicator species. Claudia will demonstrate how to look closely at leaf arrangements, stem geometries, and fruit configurations to correctly spot complex plant families.

Landowners will discover how mapping these understory communities helps reveal underlying soil moisture levels, historical land use patterns, and deer browse severity on their own land. This class is ideal for property owners who want to confidently separate native ecological assets from invasive problems.

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This event is hosted by Mountain Top Arboretum. The Arboretum serves as an outdoor classroom, focusing on high-elevation conservation, native mountain flora preservation, and public environmental literacy.

Can't make it to this event? Check out related MyWoodlot content here: https://mywoodlot.com/interests/nature-wildlife/identify-weeds-and-wildflowers/