Weeding the Gems

Friday film: Botany consultant on Avatar

Professor Jodie Holt from the University of California UC Riverside was the consultant botanist on Avatar. In this video, she gives a lecture to middle school children on the plants in the film and where the real world inspiration for them came from – she has lots of interesting examples from the film which could easily be translated to plant science teaching, and outreach projects. This is quite a long video, but it is fascinating. The Avatar stuff starts at about 15 minutes in, and Jodie takes questions from the children from 36 minutes onwards.

Credit: UCR College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences

If the video is not working, go to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-l9fuumJ8w