Isle Royale Botany Workshop June 14-19

BOTANY WORKSHOP INFORMATION: This special botany workshop, sponsored by the Isle Royale & Keweenaw Parks Association (IRKPA), and taught by botanist Janet Marr, is open to anyone with beginning/intermediate knowledge of plant identification and who is interested in learning to identify the early summer native flora of this species-rich Lake Superior island. 

 

Workshop participants will spend four days on Isle Royale learning native plant species, using such tools as a dichotomous key and hand lens to identify plants. Other topics will include discussion of island plant communities, rare species, ecology, and invasive species.  

 

Workshop activities will take place mostly outdoors. Optional evening sessions will also be offered to review plants learned earlier. Field trips will include Tobin Harbor, Scoville Point, and Raspberry Island, places that are all located in the vicinity of Rock Harbor. 

 

Workshop attendees will meet in Houghton, Michigan, on Monday (14 June) afternoon and travel from Houghton to Rock Harbor (on Isle Royale) on the Ranger III boat on Tuesday (15 June). Participants will return to Houghton on the Ranger III on Saturday (19 June).

 

REQUIREMENTS: Workshop participants should be able to hike up to 7 miles in one day with a daypack on rocky, sometimes steep, trails and bedrock, sometimes slippery, shoreline. 

 

INSTRUCTOR: Botanist Janet Marr, the workshop instructor, has had many years of experience studying plants across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Isle Royale. Janet taught the 2007 - 2009 Isle Royale botany workshops as well as many botany and aquatic plant workshops in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. She is co-author of the Isle Royale Natural History Association's Island Life, an Isle Royale Nature Guide. 

 

ENROLLMENT IS LIMITED TO 12 PARTICIPANTS. Last year’s botany workshop filled up very quickly so sign up soon! Contact Jill Burkland at 906-482-7860 for more information or to register for the workshop.

 

PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP: A four-day long photography workshop taught by professional photographer and IRKPA Board President Bob Guiliani immediately precedes the botany workshop.   Contact Jill Burkland at 906-482-7860 or jburkland@irnha.org   for more information on the photography workshop. 

 

For more information on the Isle Royale & Keweenaw Parks Association, click here.

For information about Isle Royale National Park, click here or call 906-482-0984.