The Van Buren Conservation District hosted its third Backyard Symposium in February 2023. The series is called “Building a Better Backyard: Branching Beyond Your Backyard.”

Abbie Bristol is the Strike Team Coordinator for the SWxSW Corner CISMA. She shares that before learning plant identification, the world around her was a blur of green and brown - only what she assumed to be vegetation. She was blind to plants and never really noticed that their differences give clues to what they are. Michigan alone has thousands of different plants, so how could you even begin to learn all of them?

Instead of learning plant by plant, this presentation will teach you how to pick up on the patterns of plants and provide tips and resources for confirming the species. Whether you’re in your backyard or across the globe, these patterns are a guide to figuring out the identity of any plant.