The Spring 2011 issue of Smithsonian in Your Classroom is dedicated to plant conservation and the role botanical illustration plays in the documentation of plants. This issue features interviews with Dr. Gary A. Krupnick (Head of the Plant Conservation Unit) and Alice Tangerini (Staff Scientific Illustrator). The Smithsonian provides many resources teachers can use in their classrooms. The materials provided at Botany and Art and Their Roles in Conservation are designed for students in grades 3 – 12. Visit the Smithsonian Learning Lab to view and download the following resources:
- Botany and Art and Their Roles in Conservation. This booklet contains background information about how Dr. Krupnick and the Plant Conservation Unit classify plants as being threatened, likely threatened, or not threatened. It also outlines how illustrator Alice Tangerini works with botanists to document plants. This booklet contains two classroom activities. The first activity introduces plant conservation to students and engages them in the type of decision-making process Dr. Krupnick and his colleagues must engage in when studying the world’s flora. The second activity calls on students to collect plants and to create a botanical plate using the same techniques Alice Tangerini uses when illustrating plants at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
- Activity Materials for Lesson 1. This document contains the photographs, plant specimens, and botanical paintings used in the first activity described above.
- A Natural History Approach to Plant Study and Conservation – A video recording of a presentation Dr. Krupnick and Alice Tangerini made in January 2011.
- To the Drawing Board – A recorded interview with Alice Tangerini.
- Losing Paradise? Endangered Plants Here and Around the World – A link to the online exhibition hosted by the American Society of Botanical Artists (ASBA), in collaboration with the Smithsonian.
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