A Neotropical Savanna

Three beginning botany books arrived in the mail this week. Two of them are general books about how to identify plants and one is a glossary.

Of the two books on identifying plants, one emphasizes from the very beginning that identifying plants is hard work, very hard work and it takes patience and practice. The other book emphasizes that identifying plants can be much easier than you think, and it takes practice.

From what I’ve read so far in each, and from the practice I’ve begun with each, I believe they’re both right.

The book How to Identify Plants by H.D. Harrington is a classic introductory book on plant identification, first published in 1957. He wrote, with grace and clarity, for the botany student. Chapter numbers are in Roman numerals, even in this current edition, lending a sense of traditional serious-mindedness to the book. On page 3 begins a section titled “Why Plant Identification Cannot Be Made Easy.” Despite the formidable heading and content of this section, I found myself thirsting to learn how to identify plants properly. It was as if Harrington had thrown a gauntlet at my feet – “do you really think YOU can learn how to do this?”

Starting with the fourth chapter, drawings by L. W. Durrell illustrate common botanical terms of plant parts – flowers, the inflorescence (the complete flower head), roots and other below-ground features, stems, and leaves. The drawings commonly are not of any particular plant but are simplified to show the parts being defined. Stamens and pistils, for instance, may be shown without petals or sepals. Yet even this section is written gracefully and raised questions in my mind such as why would a flower have a sterile stamen along with other, pollen-holding stamens?

Harrington taught in a classroom and his stated purpose is to present commonly used botanical terms so the student can learn them right away. After the student is familiar with these terms, the less common ones can be learned on an as-needed basis.

A completely different approach is used by Thomas J. Elpel in Botany in a Day.

I can imagine that Harrington, the man who listed the reasons why plant identification cannot be made easy, would be horrified at a title that promises to teach botany in one day. Yet, yet, as a teacher, he would surely appreciate Elpel’s approach.

Elpel, who loved identifying plants from childhood on, describes a field trip he took with an herbalist that opened his eyes to an entirely different way of looking at the plant world. Rather than learning plant names one by one, the herbalist introduced the field trip participants to plant families, showing key features that the plants in each family had in common. The herbalist, like 16th century physician-botanists, was interested in plant uses, and plants in the same family are likely to have the same use. So it’s valuable to recognize the various plants that might, for instance, be astringent, or cathartic.

In Botany in a Day, Elpel first gives a very readable overview of plant evolution and classification. I already knew much of the material he covered in the introductory section, but I enjoyed the everyday metaphors he uses, some of which I wish I’d thought of when I was teaching general biology. Elpel is a naturalist who runs and outdoor school and has written on sustainable living. The quality of his book reminds me of Eric Sloane’s Weather Book – a book that years ago taught me how to read the clouds as a way of predicting weather. It feels like a practical guide based on experience.

In a “tutorial” section, Elpel devotes one page to each of seven families common in the area of the Montana where he lives. These families are widespread in the US and Canada. For each family, he gives memorable key features so that, after a day of practice, one should easily be able to recognize a plant belonging to any one of these families.

After the tutorial, Elpel presents a key to more families so that with the techniques one has learned in the tutorial, knowledge of other families can be added.

The third book that arrived is, as I said, a glossary. It is Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary by James G. and Melinda Woolf Harris. One could use Harrington’s book as a glossary, but his approach is to help the beginner learn the most common terms. I see the Harris book as a more complete reference and expect to use it after I’m more knowledgable in the basic terminology. It’s certainly not a book I’ll sit down and read right through, as I am doing with Harrington’s book.

In the first joy of receiving the new books, I thumbed through all of them, lingering over this page or that illustration. Then I sat down and began reading Harrington, I think because it was the smallest of the three. Immediately I began to see flowers differently, paying attention to the finest detail I could see.

During the next two days I read the first section of Elpel’s book and took his tutorial (Yes, two days. I suppose it can be done in one, but I paced myself differently, took my time, and used a few hours in each of two days.) After the first reading, I walked through our orchard and found a yellow flower on the ground that I instantly recognized as belonging to the Pea Family (or, botanically, Fabaceae, synonomous with Leguminosae). Now, the pea flower is distinctive, and I’ve certainly recognized it for years, but now I had terms for the parts – banner, wings, and keel – that I could point to and identify. The feeling was reminiscient of the feeling I had the first time, as a child, I identified a bird I had just seen (a meadowlark) using Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds.

In our flower bed near the house we have some coleus plants, which I learned through my reading is a member of the mint family (Lamiaceae). I told myself I should have thought of that because of its square stems, but in fact, my mind just had not yet taken that turn. I now am looking at all the plants I see in a new light. What family might that plant be in? What does it have in common with other plants I’ve seen?

On the second day I took a stroll down our road and collected flowers from the ditches alongside, being careful to check that there were plenty of other identical plants before collecting a sample. I came home with six flowers, and not one of them fit into any of the seven families covered by Elpel. So! It is time to learn more families.

My plan now is, for each specimen I collect, to use Elpel’s key first to try to identify the family. Whether I can identify the family or not, I’ll photograph or scan the specimen and then write out, as best I can, a botanical description of the flowers, leaves, and stems.

Meantime, I need to learn the characteristics of the major families of tropical plants. Of course, I must first learn what the major families of tropical plants are. Once I learn those, or have them compiled in one place, I can make a stab at placing my specimen in a plant family.

Then I can proceed to what has up to now been my first step – start looking for pictures of the plant. I have a few books on tropical plants and what I’ve been doing is getting as close as I can with those pictures and then going to the internet and searching (google images) for images. Once I find a promising image, I read descriptions to see how closely the plant matches my own.

I’ve been going down blind alleys and “wasting” a lot of time this way, though it’s been fun. Maybe now I can move beyond baby steps.