r/botany • u/Inevitable-Ad801 • 5d ago

Ecology Any Botany Online Self-Paced course? - UK

Really keen to do an online course. Would love some recommendations!! I’m currently housebound so cannot partake in field trips or in-person courses. Also limited funds, so I’m wondering if there’s any free or cheap courses (even if they’re not as amazing in quality just to get started). I’m not fussed about getting accreditation, just want to keep learning whilst I’m physically limited

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u/compotedeseum 5d ago

Hey, I don't know of any online courses in english. If for some reason you speak french, check out Tela botanica. If Id is your goal the best wayt to get good at it is to go outdoors and see live plants. But if you can't right now I'd read about traditional plant knowledge around your area (I suggest reading Braiding sweetgrass). And I'd also read biology textbooks. Simpson's Plant systematics fir example. Or, perhaps more accessible, how the earth turned green by armstrong. You can find such books on Anna's archive

Professor Dave explains has a good intro series on plant biology. It's the only free class I found... There are also a few podcasts that might be interesting to you :

  • crime pays but botany doesn't
  • in defense of plants
  • completely arbortrary

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u/Inevitable-Ad801 5d ago

Ooh thanks so much! Unfortunately I don’t speak French. I absolutely love braiding sweetgrass, I’ve binged a lot of ethnobotany based books. Though haven’t found as many which are Europe or uk specific. Thanks for the biology textbook recommendation- I really wanted something like that but didn’t know where to start. Love the podcast recommendations!!

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u/compotedeseum 5d ago

My pleasure ! Thanks for asking that question I'm interested in the other ressource that people will point to !

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u/wild_shire 5d ago

https://saveplants.org has several! I haven’t had time to go through many, but I was able to watch their video on collecting seeds to preserve the gene pool of rare plants.

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u/luyc_ 5d ago

The BSBI often runs free webinars, more so over winter.

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u/WerewolfQuick 4d ago

While not botany per se You can try the intralinear Latin for Botanists course with extensive reading from the Latinum institute which is at Substack. This is free. It will teach you quite a lot of botany too.