There is no required text for the course.
Recommended supplementary texts:
Botany in a Day, by Thomas Elpel.
Woody Plants of Utah, A Field Guide with Identification Keys to Native and Naturalized Trees, Shrubs, Cacti, and Vines. Van Buren et al. 2011. Utah State University Press.
There are about a zillion other field guides you can find either for our area or for the western U.S. in general. Often these focus on the floras from one of the multiple distinct ecosystems of our area: Mojave desert, Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, or Wasatch Mountains. This is both the advantage and disadvantage of where we live – there are many cool ecosystems close by, but they all have slightly different floras. For the spring semester class, a field guide focused on the Mojave is probably most useful.
A Utah Flora, 5th edition, by Welsh et al.
If you really want to get into plant ID using dichotomous keys, this book is the standard for Utah. Not for the faint of heart – there are no pictures and botanical jargon abounds – but ultimately very rewarding.
Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West, by Gregory Tilford
A great resource if you are interested in the ethnobotanical side of the plants we will be seeing.
Web resources:
Very good coverage for our area and taxonomically up-to-date. An excellent resource.
A cool website that can generate plant lists on the fly for a given locality and time of year. Another awesome resource.
iNaturalist is a social media website for naturalists. You can upload photos of your observations and help ID observations from other users. A great way to get to know your local flora and fauna.
Also highly recommended: a 10x or higher hand lens (“jeweler’s loupe”). Note there is a trade-off between strength of magnification and diameter of field of view, so that higher magnification isn’t always better. I use a 10x and it works great. You can find a decent one on Amazon for under $10.