Plants Perpetrators: Forensic Investigation in the Botany Classroom

U sually silent and immobile, plants do not appear to offer the action-packed adventure looked for by today’s media-saturated students. As a botany instructor, I hope to help some of those students appreciate the subtle, quiet, yet phenomenal wonders of the plant world. Finding ways to allow students to apply what they learn about plant structure and function to practical situations can bring meaning to the study of botany for those who are not inherently drawn to it. One popular application of biology for today’s students who are so well-versed in crime-based television shows is forensic science. While there have been several papers applying forensic entomology in classroom lab experiences (Carloye, 2003; Miller & Naples, 2002), forensic botany has received less attention. Allowing students to apply botanical knowledge to a forensic simulation provides an opportunity to include more inquiry-based and problem-based learning in the botany class, and to bring botany to life by solving of a pseudo-crime. Scientific knowledge of plants has long been used to solve a variety of crimes (Coyle, 2005; Dickison, 2000; Lane et al., 1990). One of the more famous examples of this comes from the 1935 Lindbergh kidnapping case. In this crime investiga-tion, botanical evidence, based on the wood anatomy of a ladder, helped convict Bruno Hauptmann of kidnapping the baby of famous aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Dickison, 2000; Lane et al., 1990). In many other investigations, botanists have interpreted the anatomy, morphology, chemistry, and systematics of plants in the service of solving crimes including poisonings, assaults