Budding Botanists

Designed to accommodate classes, grades, or groups with 15 to 500 students. Students will not be visible to the museum educator or other students, but they will be able to submit questions in writing through the Q&A, and interact through polls. 

Designed to accommodate classes of 15 to 35 students. Students will be visible to the museum educator and their classmates, and will have the ability to raise their hand to ask and answer questions. In order to participate in this format, those registering will need to provide proof of parental permissions to participate in onscreen programs. If you would like to register for more than 35 students you will need to book a second slot. 

Designed to accommodate individual students or small groups with less than 15 students. Students will not be visible to the museum educator or other students, but they will be able submit questions in writing through the Q&A, and interact through polls. Homeschool Days are available the first Monday of the month, April 1, May 6, and June 3, 2024. Learn more about Homeschool Days and register. 

Finding Lichens in Washington, D.C., with Scientist Manuela Dal Forno

[Music]

Manuela Dal Forno: 

So what you're seeing here are mostly very common species that you can find in the city. The yellow one is called candle flame lichen because of the color and you can also see some lighter gray ones. And this is called mealy rosette lichen and I'm pretty sure that they're very common throughout this area. And you can also see sometimes when you look even closer a couple lichens that are a lot darker in color like olive and brown and those are shadow lichens.

So here again we can see some of the same candle flame lichen and the mealy rosette lichen, but we can also see this much bigger foliose lichen known as the rough speckled shield lichen. A couple more of the shadow lichens are here too. So you can take a look, that is they are much darker and then they are surrounded by this free living algae in bright green.

Second speaker: 

Do lichens hurt the tree?

Manuela Dal Forno: 

No, that's a question that I usually get asked and a lot of people when they see lichens they try to scrape them off. But lichens do not harm the tree or wherever they're growing at all, because remember that they get their nutrients from one another or from the air so it's not doing anything for this. Oh, well we actually have another lichen here, another foliose. So this is the common green shield lichen right here.

• Virtually Explore the Museum’s Butterfly Garden
• Virtually Explore the Museum’s Garden Lounge

Now that you have learned about and witnessed the astounding collection of 5 million plant specimens housed in the National Herbarium located at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History ... are you interested in starting YOUR own plant collection? Use the videos below to follow along with Botanist Erika Gardner as she shows the steps to making a plant press to create beautifully pressed plant specimens to be filed away in your collection or to be used to create beautiful botanical artwork!

• Video: Make Your Own Plant Press – Erika Gardner from the museum’s Botany Department shows how to create a plant press, a tool for preserving flowers, leaves and plants that you may collect while in your yard or out in your neighborhood. She also talks about best practices when pressing plants, and why preserved plant collections are important to science.
• Video: Pressed Plant Projects – During this program, Erika Gardner from the museum’s Botany Department shows how to use dried and pressed plants for art projects, such as greeting cards and bookmarks, and shares best practices for keeping your own pressed plant collections. 
• Don’t have a lot of time? Watch this 2 minute video of How to Build a Plant Press