First, a content warning: mosses are beautiful and dangerous plants. The closer you get, the lovelier they are. Look at them close enough and long enough, and you can lose your heart.

That accepted, this is a five-day course in looking and thinking about mosses. There will be some liverworts too: they are strange and ancient and Sue and Jerry like them. It will start at the beginning; focus on field study; be taught as a series of exercises involving examination, drawing, description, comparison, and diagnosis; and have, addition, short daily lectures on moss history, abilities, relations, collaborations, and accomplishments.

The course will start with large common species and then work, carefully, towards smaller and rarer ones. Designed incrementally to introduce about a dozen characteristic species from each habitat each day, and emphasizing drawing and description throughout. To learn to see, you need to draw; to understand what you have seen, you need to describe.

Offered jointly by the North Branch Nature Center’s Biodiversity University and the Northern Forest Atlas Project.