Alabama Audubon at Home: Native Tree Identification

Pre-registration is required by 12 p.m. CDT Monday, March 21st. For more information and to register, visit alaudubon.org/event/2022-03-22.

Spring is an excellent time to learn to identify native trees by their leaves and flowers, branch and bark patterns, and site and soil preferences. Join Henry Hughes and Michelle Blackwood for this spring-focused class on native tree identification! Our class will begin just as leaves are starting to emerge for the 2022 growing season. We will visit native forests in rural and urban settings through photographs taken by the instructors and will learn the common and scientific names of over sixty prevalent native tree species. An easy to use identification key with verbal descriptions and line drawings will be provided. The class will be organized around the beautiful book Trees of Alabama by Lisa J. Samuelson and photographs by Michael E. Hogan, a 2020 University of Alabama Press Gosse Nature Guide. Each class meeting covers a different aspect of tree ID for the beginner.

Where and when do we meet? This online course meets on five consecutive Tuesdays (3/22, 3/29, 4/5, 4/12, and 4/19), from 6–7 p.m. CDT. It will be a one-hour online class with some time at the end for questions.

Cost: Your one-time registration fee of $50 covers all five meetings.* (While you are not required to attend each class, do note that we cannot refund individuals for partial attendance.) We will be recording the webinar and making it available to participants for a week after the class. *We understand there are economic barriers that many are facing during this time. If you live in Alabama and would like to request financial assistance, please email us.

Registration: To register, visit alaudubon.org/event/2022-03-22.

About the instructors: Henry Hughes and Michelle Blackwood share a lifelong interest in the natural environment and have been instructors at Audubon Mountain Workshop for many years, most recently co-teaching “Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds” and “Rivers, Floodplains, and Watersheds,” with versions for both children and adults. They have worked together for twenty-three years on protection of the Cahaba River and Shades Creek watersheds through Friends of Shades Creek. Both currently serve on the board and stewardship committee of the Cahaba River Society. “Audubon at Home: Native Tree Identification” came about from weekly hikes throughout the Cahaba-Shades Creek Watershed during 2020 and 2021. They shared in locating, researching, and photographing the native trees of Alabama’s forests and teaching the course for the first time in October 2020.