USU Range Club offers students more than a chance to recognize plants
In a musty basement corner, Utah State University students research, study and examine plant specimens from around the world.
The students are members of the Utah State Range Club and are making use of USU’s Intermountain Herbarium. The herbarium is located below the Junction cafeteria and boasts a collection of some 241,000 plant specimens.
The Range Club is a chapter of Society for Range Management, and consists of about 20 students with a variety of majors including rangeland resource management and wildlife science.
James Stuart, a junior majoring in rangeland resource management, is president of the range club this year.
“The goal of the range club is to have fun while learning and preparing for our futures as individuals and professionals in land management and also to obtain hands on experience,” Stuart said. “We don’t have a membership fee. You can come and go as you please and participate in what you want. We’re relaxed.”
Some range club members recently returned from a trip to Fort Worth, Texas, after participating in the 58th annual SRM international meeting. Students from the United States, Canada and Mexico test their knowledge of rangeland plants against one another.
A big part of the competition is the plant identification contest. Students have a little more than two hours to identify the scientific Latin name, family, genus and species of 100 plants in various stages of growth. The students are also expected to know whether the particular plant is perennial or annual and if it is introduced or native to the North American continent.
“The students from Mexico kick butt in the plant ID contest,” said Mark Ewell, a junior majoring in rangeland resource management and vice president of the range club.
Other competitions that club members participate in include a poster contest, a speech contest and an undergraduate range management exam.
Club members are already looking forward to next years SRM meeting which will be held in Vancouver, British Colombia.
“Natural resource management is a lot of people working with people,” Stuart said. “It is very important to be able to communicate with people from different backgrounds.”
The range club meets at 3:30 p.m. each Wednesday in the natural resource building’s atrium. Anyone interested is welcome to come to one of the meetings or contact Stuart at jastuart@cc.usu.edu.
-nnaylor@cc.usu.edu