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Plants,
Agriculture and Humans |
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Plants,
Agriculture and Humans |
Dr. Steven J. Wolf
Office: Science 145
Phone: 667-3489
Email: swolf@arnica.csustan.edu
Office Hours: MWF 9:00 - 10:00 a.m. You may also make an appointment or visit
anytime your instructor is in his office (except just before a class).
Lectures: MWF 8:00 a.m. - 8:58 a.m. in S-235.
Lab: W 2:30 - 5:30 p.m. in S-134.
Text: Economic Botany: Plants in our World, 3rd Edition by Beryl Simpson and Molly Ogorzaly. If you still have it I suggest you also bring your Raven introductory botany text to lab.
Course web page: http://arnica.csustan.edu/boty3050. Consult it often for important, up to the minute information about the course.
Course background: The importance of Agriculture to the United States, California, and particularly the Central Valley can not be overstated. The US is the largest agricultural exporter in the world, California leads the US in state agricultural production, and about 25% of the jobs in the central valley are agriculturally related. Human existence on this planet depends on plants and plant resources. We use plants and plant products in almost very aspect of our daily lives. Plants provide food, shelter, energy, clothing, flavors, beverages, drugs, medicines, and decoration. To fully understand all of the various ways plants are used requires a diversity of biological, scientific, and general knowledge, as well as specific knowledge about plant biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, genetics, cytology, evolution, systematics, biogeography, and ecology. The study of economically important plants cannot be done in a cultural vacuum; linguistic, geographic, and historical knowledge is necessary to understand many events. The desire to obtain certain plant resources has had a profound influence on human history, economics, and politics. This course will add an interdisciplinary dimension to your biological education.
Student objectives:
To learn the diverse human uses of plants and plant products;
To learn the taxonomic diversity of useful plants;
To learn the biological reasons why certain plant resources are important;
To acquire an increased awareness and appreciation of plants and plant products encountered in everyday life;
To recognize geographic, historical, and cultural differences in the uses and importance of plants;
To relate diverse aspects of human cultural endeavors to plant resources, and to gain a better understanding and perspective of the origins, histories, and roles of important plants and plant products to the development of human culture.
Teaching philosophy: "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime" - Confucius. Your instructor is here to teach you to fish, i.e. think. Therefore, a question may sometimes be answered with a question, or your fellow classmates may be called upon to help answer it. As long as you make an honest effort to answer the question you need not be embarrassed. However, if you are not keeping up with the material then you may indeed be embarrassed.
Grading: Grades will be based on three exams (100 pts. each), field trip reports (5 @ 10 pts. each) and a PowerPoint presentation (50 pts.). The instructor reserves the right to give unannounced quizzes if it becomes apparent that students are not keeping up with the material, there are an unacceptable number of absences and/or if students show up late for class. If you happen to be absent you will receive a grade of 0 for that quiz. The instructor also reserves the right to reduce your grade due to excessive absences and/or tardiness. You will receive only one warning.
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Grading |
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Exam 1 |
100 pts |
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Exam 2 |
100 pts. |
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Exam 3 |
100 pts. |
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PowerPoint |
50 pts. |
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Field trip reports |
50 pts. |
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Total |
400 pts.* |
*
Additional points for quizzes and short assignments may increase the total.PowerPoint presentation: Topics are limited to plants that are used by humans and the topic must be pre-approved by your instructor. The presentation should include, but is not limited to: classification, evolution, natural history, methods of cultivation, origin(s), distribution, related wild species, uses, economic importance (past and present), associated human cultures, folklore and information unique to it. Here are the guidelines.
Field Trips: As one of the leading agricultural areas in the world, the central valley has an abundance of world class ag-related businesses and laboratories. Field trips will introduce you to several aspects of plant centered agriculture, from small farms and nurseries to giant agribusinesses, and from traditional methods of plant breeding and propagation to the latest in plant biotechnology.
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Lecture Topics |
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Text Chapt. |
Topic |
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1 |
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| 1 | Plant manipulation |
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2 |
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| 3 | Fruits and nuts of temperate regions |
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4 |
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5 |
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6 |
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7 |
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8 |
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9 |
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10 |
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11 |
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12 |
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13 |
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14 |
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15 |
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16 |
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| 17 | Ornamental plants |
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18 |
Algae |
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19 |
Plants in the future: biotechnology |
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Laboratory/Field Trip Schedule |
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Date |
Activity |
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9/14 |
Flowers, plant life cycles |
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9/21 |
Duarte Nursery |
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9/28 |
Gallo Winery, Livingston |
| 10/5 | Modesto JC Beckwith Ranch |
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10/12 |
No class, Columbus Day |
| 10/19 | Diamond of California (clothing restrictions) |
| 10/26 | Fruits and vegetables |
| 11/2 | Fisher Nursery, Ripon |
| 11/9 | Rubber, fats, oils and soap |
| 11/16 | Wood |
| 11/30 | PowerPoint presentations |
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12/7 |
PowerPoint presentations |
Useful Resources
Available from your instructor, the web or our library.
A Guide to Medicinal and Aromatic Plants. http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/med-aro/default.html.
AGRICOLA (AGRICultural OnLine Access). http://www.nal.usda.gov/ag98/. A bibliographic database of citations to the agricultural literature created by the National Agricultural Library and its cooperators.
Agriculture Network Information Center. http://www.agnic.org/. A guide to quality agricultural information on the Internet as selected by the National Agricultural Library, Land-Grant Universities, and other institutions.
Alternative Farming Systems Information Center (AFSIC) at the National Agricultural Library. http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/index.html.
American Phytopathological Society. http://www.apsnet.org/.
Anderson, E. 1967. Plants, man, and life. University of California Press.
Baker, H. 1970. Plants and civilization. Wadsworth.
Balick, M. and P. Cox, 1996. Plants, people, and culture: the science of ethnobotany. Scientific American Library.
Botanical Society of America Online Image Collection. http://images.botany.org/.
Chrispeels, M.. and D. Sadava. 1977. Plants, food, and people. W.H. Freeman.
CSU Stanislaus Botany Image Collection. http://arnica.csustan.edu/botany. A collection of more than 800 botanical images.
CSU Stanislaus Library: http://wwwlibrary.csustan.edu/.
Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases. http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/.
Economically Important Plant Families. http://waynesword.palomar.edu/econpls.htm.
Ethnobotanical Leaflets. http://www.siu.edu/~ebl/.
Evaluation of Web Resources from CSU Stanislaus Library. http://wwwlibrary.csustan.edu/lboyer/webeval/webeval.htm.
Heiser, C. 1985. Of plants and people. University of Oklahoma Press.
Heiser, C. 1990. Seed to civilization: the story of food. Harvard University Press.
Hill, A.F. Economic Botany. 1952. McGraw-Hill
Internet directory for botany: economic botany, ethnobotany. http://www.botany.net/IDB/subject/botecon.html.
Introductory botany lecture notes from your instructor. http://arnica.csustan.edu/boty1050.
Klein, R. 1987. The Green World. An introduction to plants and people. Harper and Row.
L.H. Bailey Hortorium.1976. Hortus Third : A Concise Dictionary of Plants Cultivated in the United States and Canada.
Langenheim, J. and K. Thimann. 1982. Plant biology and its relation to human affairs. John Wiley & Sons.
Levitin, E. 2001. Plants and society. Wm. C. Brown.
Moore-Landecker, E. 1996. Fundamentals of the Fungi. Prentice Hall.
Morphology of plants, algae and fungi lecture notes from your instructor. http://arnica.csustan.edu/boty3130.
Native American Ethnobotany Database: Foods, Drugs, Dyes, and Fibers of Native North American Peoples. http://www.umd.umich.edu/cgi-bin/herb.
Plant Pathology Internet Guide Book. http://www.pk.uni-bonn.de/ppigb/ppigb.htm.
Schery, R. 1972. Plants for man. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Schultes, R.E. and Siri Von Reis (eds.) 1995. Ethnobotany: evolution of a discipline. Portland: Dioscorides Press.
Simpson, B. and M. Conner-Ogorzaly. 2001. Economic botany : plants in our world. McGraw-Hill.
Society for Economic Botany. http://www.econbot.org/.
The PLANTS Database. http://plants.usda.gov/.
United States Department of Agriculture. http://www.usda.gov/.
Writeups and illustrations of economically important plants by A. Gibson. http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/.
Zohary, D. 2001. Domestication of plants in the Old World - The origin and spread of cultivated plants in West Asia, Europe, and the Nile Valley. Oxford University Press.
| Contact: swolf@arnica.csustan.edu |
Last updated: 12/06/05 |