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Take a Native Plant Master courseBy D. Bruce Bosley CSU Extension Agent, cropping systems Have you always wanted to learn more about the beautiful plants that grow in nature? Would you like to learn how to use them in your landscape? Would you like to learn how to distinguish natives from noxious weeds? Take a Native Plant Master course. Participants learn identification, ecology and human uses of Colorado plants. Courses are held outdoors on public and private lands. Courses include use of a botanical key with an emphasis on scientific names and families. This award-winning program is sponsored by Colorado State University Extension in many Colorado counties including Logan, Morgan and the Golden Plains Area. Three courses will be held on Saturday mornings. The first will take place near Sterling, in Logan County, Colo. Later courses will be located according to participants in the Logan, Morgan, or Washington County, Colo., area. The 2008 course schedule includes the following courses: --April 26, May 3 and 10; Sterling; 8 a.m. to noon. --May 24 and 31, June 7; location to be determined; 8 a.m. to noon. --August/September; dates and location to be determined; 8 a.m. to noon. There is a fee for each course and each course consists of three, four-hour sessions. The cost is reduced for participants who agree to teach at least 20 people per year per course about Colorado plants. Participants who pass three courses and satisfy the teaching requirement become certified Native Plant Masters. Registration is limited. Applications are due by March 15. Project BudBurst Those of you interested in garden plants may also want to participate in a national project collecting important climate change data on the timing of leafing and flowering in one's own area through Project BudBurst. This national field campaign targets native tree and flower species across the country. Project coordinators will be compiling valuable environmental and climate change information around the United States. People of all ages working in the Project BudBurst team take careful observations of the phenological events such as the first bud burst, first leafing, first flower, and seed or fruit dispersal of a diversity of tree and flower species, including weeds and ornamentals. The citizen science observations and records are entered into the BudBurst data base. As a result of the 2007 pilot field campaign, useful data was collected in a consistent way across the country so that scientists can use it to learn about the responses of individual plant species to climatic variation locally, regionally, and nationally, and to detect longer-term impacts of climate change by comparing them with historical data. Project BudBurst is a web-based system for people wanting to input their phenological observations. Please contact me, Bruce Bosley about these or other cropping systems or natural resource topics at 970-522-3200, ext. 285 in Sterling or 970-542-3540 in Fort Morgan. 3/17/08 Date: 3/12/08
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