Notes about your surroundings.

BOTANICAL PRINTS: This is the last week to take in “The Art of Botany,” an exhibit of more than 95 paintings and illustrations from the collections of the Library of the New York Botanical Garden. The exhibit, which runs through next Sunday at the Fullerton Museum Center, is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution.

While botanical illustrations have gained popularity in recent years for their aesthetic value, their principal role has been--and continues to be--to document recently identified plant species.

Included in the exhibit are field sketches and pen-and-ink drawings by Isaac Sprague and Arthur Schott, who documented plants of the Western United States in the 19th Century for a series of illustrated reports commonly called the U.S. Pacific Railroad Reports (1836-1859), which sent scientists and artists to survey the virtually uncharted territories west of the Mississippi River.

Expeditions to Latin America are represented by selections from “Flora Brasiliensis” (1840-1906), a record of Brazilian plants by German botanist Karl Frederick von Martius, and “Flora Cubana” (about 1880), a study of Cuban plants compiled by American botanists Francisco Adolfo Sauvalle and Charles Wright.

Also included are some contemporary examples of botanical illustration, including pen-and-ink works by the show’s curator, Bobbi Angell, staff illustrator and art curator for the New York Botanical Garden.

The Fullerton Museum Center is at 301 N. Pomona Ave. Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday. The fee is $2 for adults; $1 for students and seniors; free for visitors under 12 years old and for members of the center. Admission is also free to all visitors from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday.

For more information, call (714) 738-6545.

ROCK TALKS: Geology buffs have two public lectures to choose from this week. Today at the Museum of Natural History and Science in Newport Beach, geologist and author Donald L. Fife will discuss the geology and paleontology of California’s playas (dry lakes).

Fife has been the secretary of the interior’s scientific adviser on onshore federal lands in Southern California since 1981. Admission to his 2 p.m. presentation is free to museum members; general admission is $2 for adults and $1 for students 18 and under. For more information, call (714) 640-7120.

On Saturday, Peter Borella will speak on the geology of Ortega Highway at a meeting of the Caspers Wilderness Park Volunteer Naturalists. Borella, a geology instructor at Saddleback College, will give his presentation at the county regional park at 10:30 a.m.

The program is open to the public without charge. Visitors should inform the ranger at the park entrance that they are there for the lecture. For more information, call (714) 831-2174.

WETLANDS TOURS: Free guided walking tours of both the Upper Newport Bay and Bolsa Chica ecological reserves will be offered Saturday morning.

Tours of the Bolsa Chica wetlands will begin at the reserve parking lot on Pacific Coast Highway, across from the entrance to Bolsa Chica State Beach between Warner Avenue and Golden West Street. The tours, offered by Amigos de Bolsa Chica, leave every 20 minutes between 9 and 10:30 a.m. For more information, call (714) 897-7003.

Meanwhile, tours of Upper Newport Bay leave every 15 minutes from the corner of East Bluff Drive and Back Bay Road in Newport Beach. The tours, offered by Friends of Newport Bay, will be held between 9 and 10:30 a.m.

Both the Bolsa Chica and Upper Newport Bay tours last about 1 1/2 hours and feature talks on the natural and human history of the wetlands reserves. Comfortable shoes and a hat are recommended; a pair of binoculars and a field guide to birds can come in handy.

Amigos de Bolsa Chica and Friends of Newport Bay both offer the last of their monthly winter season tours on March 4.