Making Field Notes
Why write field notes?
Field notes give all the information about a plant that cannot be preserved with the specimen.
Things like whether the plant was a tree or a shrub, how tall it was and what color the flower was when it was picked are all things that cannot be guessed at later from the specimen. Descriptions of the locality and the community of plants around the specimen are also things that you can't get later. Remember, it might be someone else looking at your specimen, not just you, and it might be 100 years after you collected it.
How to write good field notes
Write your field notes BEFORE starting to collect.
Train yourself to write neatly and clearly. Dream of the day when you become a botanist or botanical collector and your field notebook is used by someone else to type up your labels.
DO NOT RECOPY YOUR FIELD NOTES. Field notes are notes taken in the field. Remember, a few days (or weeks) later, what you think you saw may not actually be what you did see. Field notes can become a legal document for botanists so think of them that way from the start.
There are four parts to your field notes:
This site was designed by Kathan
Last updated June 2000