About the Course
Get to know the cacti of Joshua Tree National Park and its surrounding desert environs. Students will learn all kinds of fascinating facts about cacti in this immersive two-day lecture and field course, and will be taught how to identify cacti species in the Mojave and Colorado deserts using common field identification techniques. Students will begin the course on Friday evening with a classroom lecture that will introduce the basics of cacti identification, the main types of cacti in this part of the California desert, and the individual species we will come across in the field the following day. Saturday’s exploration will take students to various areas throughout Joshua Tree National Park with the intent of seeing every single species of cacti that grows within its boundaries.
- Teach students tools for field botany and cacti identification.
- Teach students about the common cacti communities of the Mojave Desert.
- Teach students family, common, and scientific names of Cacti.
- Teach students how to upload and identify species on iNaturalist