10:00 – 2:30 pm at the Wellesley College Botanic Gardens.  Winter is a great time to identify trees based on their overall structure and twig and bud characteristics. Close observation can also reveal clues to the adaptive strategies of various tree species. You will begin indoors at the Botanic Garden’s Visitor Center, discovering family and genus similarities and examining indicators of the growth cycles of deciduous trees. After lunch Carol Govan will lead you through the Wellesley College Botanic Gardens to identify trees, observing both large- and small-scale details. Bring a lunch and hand lens and dress for cold weather.  $50 members of Arnold Arboretum or Wellesley Friends of Horticulture, $65 non member.  For details call 781-283-3094, x. 4.

The Visitor Education team at the Arnold Arboretum invites you to learn more about a brand new volunteer opportunity: The Arboretum Interpreter.  Log on to www.arboretum.harvard.edu/programs/volunteer.html for details, or contact Julie Warsowe, Manager of Visitor Education, at 617-384-5253, or email her at Julie_warsowe@harvard.edu.

New England Grows is one of the largest and most popular green industry events in North America, known for its progressive educational conference and world-class exhibition.  It is an educational partnership between the New England Nursery Association, Associated Landscape Contractors of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Arborists Association, and Massachusetts Nursery and Landscape Association.  Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.  Wednesday noon to five, Thursday 8 a.m. to 5, and Friday 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.  For details log on to www.negrows.org.

Artist Anne Schmalz creates illustrated interpretive signs that encourage travelers in the Bussey Brook meadow to look closely at this unique urban wild within the Arnold Arboretum landscape.  The seasonally rotated signs along the Blackwell Footpath iinvite visitors to notice wildflowers, seed pods, animal tracks, and signs of ecological change in a reclaimed urban landscape.  Hunnewell Building Lecture Hall, Arnold Arboreum.  For more information log on to www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

Pack your passports, bags, cameras and binoculars. Get ready to discover a side of nature you’ve never seen before, at the 16th Annual Rhode Island Spring Flower & Garden Show. “Gardens of the World,” is the Show’s theme, which takes you on a journey through distant and exotic places. Your show “passport” transports you through 30 gardens and an expedition into the Australian Outback, over to Mexico and South America with Mayan and Incan ruins, and into Tuscany, Spain and more. Don’t miss your ticket to a horticultural melting pot that brings adventure, warmth and beauty, all with a promise of spring.Thursday through Saturday 10 – 9, Sunday 10 – 6.

Discount tickets to Mass Horticultural Society, American Horticulture Society, Tower Hill Botanic Garden and Rhode Island Horticultural Society members. Present your card at Box Office day of Show

Location: Rhode Island Convention Center
Link out: Click here

Dollars raised through Daffodil Days fund ground-breaking cancer research, programs and services for patients and their caregivers, prevention and education efforts, and advocacy for health policies that prevent cancer and protect those fighting it.  Fresh bouquets include 10 daffodils for $10, potted bulbs have three multistem bulbs in each pot for $15. For more information, log on to www.cancer.org/daffodils.

Photography exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History by Amanda Means.  The dramatic photographs are a monument to the remarkable diversity and beauty of nature’s botanical forms. Means’ fascination with botanical images over the last twenty years is, in part, scientific. The leaves she works with reflect lives lived in the wild, whether in the rain forest or in Central Park. Some show cracks. On others you can see the pathways of insects as they ate their way across the surface. Some reflect the evolutionary history of plants, from the Peacock Plant’s more primitive pattern of parallel leaf veins to the leaves of later plants with brancing veins – relecting how the plants evolved a more efficient way to transport water and nutrients through the leaf’s surface.  26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, open 9-5. Admission $9, seniors and students $7.  For more information log on to www.hmnh.harvard.edu.