The Virginia Master Naturalist program is a statewide corps of volunteers providing education, outreach, and service dedicated to the beneficial management of natural resources and natural areas within their communities.

Jared Diamond (2005), in his book, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,” defines landscape amnesia as one of the primary mechanisms for the decline and ultimate collapse of societies. This phenomenon occurs when people lose knowledge of how the natural world once was, with each succeeding generation accepting a degraded environment as the status quo. Carried to its end, a society remains unconcerned until it reaches the point of no return.

Plants can be defined as multicellular, photosynthetic organisms with reproductive structures that are more complex than single cells. By this definition, algae are not considered plants because they are either unicellular or their reproductive structures are essentially unicellular. Fungi, too, are excluded because they are not photosynthetic. At least 400 million years of diversification have resulted in a wide diversity of taxonomically distinct major groups of plants. Some of the most important groups of plants found in Virginia are described below.

Plants can be defined as multicellular photosynthetic organisms with reproductive structures that are more complex than single cells. By this definition, algae are not considered plants because they are either unicellular or their reproductive structures are essentially unicellular, and fungi, too, are excluded because they are not photosynthetic.

This report summarizes the findings from a strategic planning process conducted by the Virginia Master Naturalist program in 2013-2014. The process involved three steps: a comprehensive needs assessment to identify program needs, strategic planning workshops to identify initiatives for addressing those needs, and online voting to prioritize proposed initiatives.