Plant Walk Maps

Students will spend nearly three hours each week on either the Purdue campus, in Horticulture Park, or in surrounding areas getting hands-on experience with plants and their identification. Being able to touch, smell, hear, and taste plant materials is a more effective way to learn plant identification than simply viewing images in a classroom.

Teaching assistants will lead students to plants from each week's plant group and there discuss each plant's identifying characteristics. Information on plant function and usage will also be provided in the field. The teaching assistants are not professional instructors and so should not be held to such a high standard. Nevertheless, the assistants selected for this course are among the top students in the Agriculture School, and as such, can be expected to perform accordingly.

Importantly, these plant walks are key to performing well in HORT 217. Missing these walks will have a strong negative impact on your final grade.

Three 25 point unannounced "pop" ID quizzes will be given during your plant walk period at the teaching assistant's discretion. These will require you to identify roughly 3 to 6 plants to the taxonomic level set by the instructor.