Occasionally, legislation at the state or national level is proposed that will benefit or adversely impact on our natural areas. We need individuals to monitor legislation, in several ways:

• to identify State and/or Congressional legislation being proposed, and to inform the Advocacy Committee of the pending legislation;
• to monitor the status of the pending legislation, and provide regular status updates;
• to add their voices to support or oppose the passage of that legislation.

Places at risk are environmental areas that are in need of immediate protection from enroaching development. If we work together to act now, these places can be put into conservancy, whether through legislation to protect the areas or to add them to the park systems, or through agreements with private landowners. The Society has knowledgeable individuals who lobby for protecting these areas. You can help by adding your voice.

If you know of a site that should be added to this list, please contact info @ mdflora.org.

In addition, we want to expand our conservation advocacy efforts into every county in the State. Our conservation advocates stay on top of local legislation affecting sites within a county, and write and/or provide testimony supporting or opposing that legislation. If you are interested in learning more about becoming a county conservation advocate, please contact info @ mdflora.org.

The conference planners are always looking for volunteers! See the Annual Fall Conference information page for contact information.

Because most people tend to care more about things in their "backyards", the Society has been working to get local chapters established that will focus on education and conservation efforts in a given geographic area. This, of course, requires determined leadership. All chapters are looking forward to having more local volunteers.

If you are interested in volunteering to assist a chapter's steering committee, contact the individuals listed for each chapter.

The Field Trips and Workshops are important components of the Society's educational programs. These provide opportunities for attendees to have hands-on exposure to native plants.

The Society needs volunteers to:

• plan and lead a field trip; the leader needs to be knowledgeable about the area being explored (e.g., know how to not get lost) and particularly with plant ID, because attendees will ask questions about everything;
• conduct a workshop; in the past, we have had workshops on fern identification and on plant propagation.

Various organizations around the state have restoration project activities, which offer opportunities to learn more about a specific habitat and to identify non-native invasive plants that are having a detrimental impact on the native community. There will be plenty of plant ID opportunities, plus you will learn some management strategies and tactics, and meet other people with similar interests.

To find a project to help with, visit Invasive Species Removal Projects.

The Society needs volunteers to:

• speak on a related topic;
• find a speaker for a meeting; this can include the Society-wide monthly meetings and/or local chapter meetings;
• provide refreshments for a meeting;
• donate one or more door prizes for a meeting; door prizes can consist of material of interest to the members, such as native plants, books, gardening tools, posters, etc.;
• find a sponsor for one or more meetings who can donate door prizes.

The Society needs volunteers to:

• e-mail twice-monthly announcements;
• distribute membership recruitment brochures;
• have membership information available at meetings and events (regular trip leaders should have a bunch on hand to bring to outings).

We have a new Membership Brochure (PDF, ~205KB) available on our web site. Feel free to download, print, and distribute!

The Society receives requests for speakers and booth displays. The Society can always use volunteers to:

• man our booth at a variety of events around the state;
• speak at garden clubs or nature centers, or invite a speaker to talk to your organization.

MNPS has started a project to produce lists of plants seen in parks and other places where we do field trips. These can be posted on our web site as a record of the walk and as a service to our members and other people who wish to visit these places. A long-range goal would be to monitor the changes in populations of sensitive plant species.

We are looking for volunteers who want to take part in this interesting and useful activity. You don't need to be a botanical expert. If you are on a field trip, the leader will be able to give you the names of the plants seen. You can write them down in the field, print them up as described below, and send them to Cris Fleming (cjfleming@aol.com). Please use Word (not Excel) and make a simple list with just two columns, the first one containing the scientific name and then second containing the common name. We plan to follow the familiar nomenclature as in Gleason & Cronquist, Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada until newer nomenclature becomes more commonly used. Be sure to note the location of the field trip, the county, the date, the name of the leader, and your name as recorder. Take a look at the lists on our web site (Field Trip Plant Lists) for examples of the type of lists we want to produce. You can ignore printing the general information; we have a template for that. Please help us move along with this project on your next field trip. Our goal is to keep records of all MNPS field trips. Thanks so much for your help!

The Society needs volunteers to submit articles to Marilandica: stories on meetings, conferences, and other timely tidbits of interest to our readers; book reviews; event photos, etc.; and articles that document both the unique and common aspects of Maryland's native habitats.

To submit articles to the Marilandica editor, send e-mail to info @ mdflora.org.

Mailing Parties

The Society needs volunteers to:

• distribute flyers, send announcements (by mail, FAX, or email) to newspapers and publications;
• distribute flyers and other items to local libraries where they have information sections;
• write articles and/or press releases for local papers;
• photograph our events.

The Web Committee could use volunteers to help maintain different areas of the web site. As of June 2010, the MNPS web site is hosted in a content management system, with an editor that works like a word-processing program. No HTML coding knowledge is required, but it is helpful to understand it in case something looks funny.

If you are interested in volunteering for any of the above web site activities, or have a suggestion on what you would like to see (and work on!), please contact info @ mdflora.org.