Louisiana's native plants topic of summer course
Contact: Rene Abadie
5/6/11
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Native plants course offered this summer – Southeastern Louisiana University biologist Rick Miller examines a sumac plant in the woods located near the university. Miller will conduct a course this summer on Louisiana native plants.
HAMMOND – The native plants of Louisiana will be the topic of a Southeastern Louisiana University course this summer session that is open to students and members of the community.
“Our focus will be on learning about the exciting local Louisiana flora,” said Rick E. Miller, associate professor of biological sciences and instructor for the course. “The course will include frequent field trips to habitats in our area as well as lectures and lab activities.”
The class will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 7:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. in the Biology Building from June 7 to July 26.
“We meet early to beat the heat for our field trips,” Miller explained.
Although an upper level biology course, he said the course may be taken as an elective by Southeastern students or for enjoyment by community members who can enroll through Southeastern’s Special Program for Adults. Louisiana residents 60 years of age and older can take up to three credit hours per semester tuition free.
Application deadline for the summer session is June 1. For information on the process, contact the Office of Admissions at 985-549-5636 or 1-800-222-7358 or visit the Web site, selu.edu.
“This is a very popular course and in the past we’ve attracted students with varying backgrounds,” Miller said. “We try to immerse them into our fascinating world of Louisiana’s native plants.”
He said field trips involve learning the characteristics and names of 25 new plants on each excursion as he lectures on important plant families and an overview of flowering plant systematics. Labs cover the different parts of plants, especially flowers, use of herbarium specimens for identification and examining representative specimens of plant families.
For additional information, contact Miller at 985-549-5556 or via email at rickmiller@selu.edu.
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