The 2 Minute Genera project (o Género en Dos Minutos) was originally conceived by the Ferns of Colombia project team leaders (Dr. Alejandra Vasco, Dr. Michael Sundue & Dr. Weston Testo) and carried out by myself and another graduate student on the project, Susana Vega-Betancur. 

This is a grassroots project with a twofold purpose: 1) to help students learn how to identify different genera of plants and 2) to help experts effectively disseminate information to the global audience. Scientific and taxonomic expertise has traditionally only been accessible to the lucky and the privileged who are able to attend higher education courses, but the Two Minute Genera project aims to break down some of those barriers by providing a framework for experts to relay their knowledge in an open-access platform (YouTube) available to anyone with an internet connection. 

My hope is that by making these videos simple and easy to create, we can encourage broader participation from the botanical community and amass videos for all ~17,000 genera of vascular plants. By working together and sharing our videos, we can help more people around the world learn to recognize and appreciate their local plants!