I am an Environmental Scientist from North America studying native, introduced, rare, and endemic plants all over North America.

I am currently working on a series of books on plant families of North America. I am also posting the individual plant families online on my website.

The idea behind the books and the website is that most people, when wanting to learn about plants in their area, reach for a field guide that they then key out to find species. However, species are ever-changing due to introductions and extinctions, and species can be so variable, even in the best of circumstances, that I think it would be more useful if people started to learn about families and genera first.

There are a few reasons for this: one, they simply learn more about plants this way because they learn the general characteristics about all of the plants in their region instead of details of just a handful of species; also, knowing general characteristics of all plants allows them to take that knowledge and apply it anywhere, and finally once you understand families and genera identifying species becomes a much easier task anyway.

My hope is that if people learn more about plants and how to identify the plants around them, they will learn to love them as much as I do. If they learn to love plants and understand why they are so important to us (plants do rule the world, after all), then they will learn to protect rare and endangered species, to promote the preservation and use of native species in our towns and cities, and to identify introduced or invasive species so that they can help to reduce or eliminate their negative impacts.

If you can help or know someone who can, please check out my gofundme page here: https://gofund.me/6f60c37e