Registration has filled for the June 2023 Minnesota Sedge Identification Workshop.  Please contact Jason Husveth with inquiries regarding registration details or possible cancellations/openings.  Thank you!

Critical Connections Ecological Services, Inc. is pleased to again offer a three day sedge identification workshop on Wednesday, June 14, Thursday, June 15, and Friday, June 16, 2023.  This intensive course will be taught by Jason Husveth and will focus on the Sedges (Carex) of Minnesota.  Now in its fourteenth year, the workshop is taught within a modern plant laboratory at the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul Campus Plant Growth Facilities, with a full field day at William O’Brien State Park. This three day workshop will be taught 2/3 in the lab/classroom, and 1/3 in the field.  The curriculum will include an introduction to all of the Minnesota sedge genera (Cyperaceae), with a focus on the identification of Carex species using live plant material collected in the days prior to the workshop.  Over 85 Minnesota Carex species were provided as live material at several previous workshops, as well as more than 20 additional species representative of other Minnesota sedge genera.  Year after year, the Minnesota Sedge Identification Workshop proves useful to beginner and experienced field botanists, ecologists, professionals, students, and anyone with an interest in identifying Carex taxa to species. Our purpose is to provide a rare experience, connecting a community of like minded sedge enthusiasts with a broad diversity of Carex species. This course is accredited as 18 direct hours of continuing education units (CEUs) for the MN Board of Soil and Water Resources’ new Minnesota Wetland Professional Certification Program (MWPCP).  An updated and revised taxonomic Key to the Carex of East-Central Minnesota (Husveth 2019) will be provided to all students. We will continue to teach from Welby Smith’s Sedges and Rushes of Minnesota as our primary text and reference (published August 2018).

Students can expect to complete the course with:

1) An introduction and basic knowledge of all sedge (Cyperaceae) genera occurring in Minnesota (15 genera as per The Flora of North America, Vol. 23, 2002),

2) The ability to recognize and identify common and unusual Minnesota native Carex species in the field and in the lab,

3) Knowledge of required specimen collection methods to enable proper Carex identification in the lab, (students can make their own collection of pressed specimens from live material provided at the workshop),

4) The ability to use dichotomous keys to identify Carex to species in the field.   Students will be taught useful Carex field-identification concepts and shortcuts, as described in Voss’s Michigan Flora (Vol. 1.), Wheeler’s Key to the Carex of MN, Husveth’s revised Key to the Carex of East-Central Minnesota, Zager and Norris’ Carex of Iowa, and the Flora of North America (Vol. 23: Cyperaceae), and,

5) In all of the past 13 years, students successfully key live Carex specimens to species by the noon lunch break on the first day of the workshop.

Jason Husveth is a professional ecologist and botanist working throughout Minnesota and the Upper Midwestern United States. Jason has over twenty five years of academic, field, and herbarium experience identifying, collecting, photographing, and documenting sedge species in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest and throughout the Eastern United States. Jason has been trained in sedge identification by Dr. Anton Reznicek (Flora of North America: Cyperaceae and Michigan Flora), Dr. Robert H. Mohlenbrock (Illustrated Flora of Illinois),  Dr. Susan Galatowitsch (Graduate Advisor, University of Minnesota), and Dr. William Norris and Scott Zager (Sedges of Iowa). Jason has taught sedge identification courses in the field and in lab settings, and has lead dozens of plant identification field trips to native wetland and upland habitats throughout Minnesota. Jason not only knows and loves sedges; he knows how to teach others to navigate through sedge diversity to understand the underlying concepts on how to identify, learn, and remember sedge species of Minnesota’s diverse native habitats.

Please look for additional plant identification workshops that we plan to offer in the future, including a Carex: Section Ovales workshop (possibly July 2023), and Rubus of Minnesota (possibly August 2023).  Announcements for additional workshops will be released in late winter/early Spring 2023.