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Tools of the trade
1) The Person
Some people are satisfied with admiring
the beauty of a plant; names are unimportant to them.
Some people
admire the beauty but also want names. Some people are content with
common names,
some want more accurate scientific names.
Whatever our interest level is, if we want to understand and appreciate plants we need curiosity, perseverance, an unhurried pace, a
discerning eye,
and a good dose of caution and self-doubt.
The more deeply we delve into botany, the more we also need the ability to deal with conflicting viewpoints, multiple plant names, and continually updated knowledge.
I hope this workshop gives you some
new tools to use
in appreciating and identifying plants.
2) The Helpers
Take wildflower walks with someone who knows
more about plants.
As you walk with others or on your own, repeat the name of a plant to yourself every time you see it along the trail. When you forget the name (don't we all!), ask the leader to repeat the name. Don't ever feel that you are asking too often. If the leader gets tired of repeating the name of the plant, the leader is not really a good teacher!
Over and over again, browse wildflower photo books, field guides, and websites.
3) The Books
Four Corners states botanical books
Colorado
William Weber. Colorado Flora, Western Slope & Colorado Flora, Eastern Slope.
Ken Heil and Steve O'Kane. The Flora of the Four Corners.
Sue Komarek. Flora of the San Juans.
Jennifer Ackerfield. Flora of Colorado.
H. D. Harrington. Manual of the Plants of Colorado. 1964.
Janis Huggins. Wild at Heart. Award winning excellent natural history of Colorado mountain flora & fauna.
G. K. Guennel. Colorado Wildflowers, 2 volumes. No key, has photos and paintings.
Jack Carter. Shrubs and Trees of Colorado. Excellent key, photos, and drawings.
New Mexico
Allred & Ivey. Flora Neomexicana III.
Martin and Hutchins. A Flora of New Mexico. 1981.
Jack Carter. Shrubs and Trees of New Mexico. Excellent key, photos, and drawings.
Arizona
Springer et al. Field Guide to Forest & Mountain Plants of N. Arizona.
Kearney and Peebles. Arizona Flora. 1960.
Epple. Plants of Arizona.
Utah
Stanley Welsh. A Utah Flora.
Lesica and Fertig. Spring Wildflowers of Utah's Red Rock Desert.
Fagan. Canyon Country Wildflowers.
Regional botanical books
Cronquist et al. Intermountain Flora (The best flora for much of the West.)
Flora of North America (The best flora of the U.S. and Canada. Keys available free online.)
Ricketts. Wild Flowers of the United States. (3 volumes
cover our area.) Keys and photographs.
Niehaus. Southwestern and Texas Wildflowers. Key and drawings.
Warren. Wild About Wildflowers.
Robertson. Southern Rocky Mountain Wildflower.
Craighead. Field Guide to Rocky Mountain Wildflowers.
Wingate. Rocky Mountain Flower Finder.
Wingate and Yeatts. Alpine Flower Finder.
Excellent Reference Books
A superb illustrated glossary: Harris & Harris. Plant Identification Terminology. I consider this book essential.
Meaning of plant names: Borror. Dictionary of Word Roots.
Plant Lists
Consult the plant lists posted on every national park website.
Plants of Southeast Utah
Click to see the numerous plant lists
4) The Websites
Four Corners Wildflowers
Specific for the flora of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah within 150 miles of the Four Corners.
Many plants shown are also found throughout the Rockies and the
West.
5,000
photos of 1,000 species, plant descriptions, a special characteristics key as well as color key,
common and scientific names,
biographies, bibliography, glossary, meaning of scientific names, links, etc.
Biota
of North America Program
This site provides all of the plant distribution records on my website.
BONAP
gives county by county records of all plants found in the United States and Canada.
You can search
and list plants for any area by family, genus, species, or common name.
Click to see a most special section of BONAP.
Over 150,000
photographs. Keys. Maps.
Superb for amateurs and professionals.
Nearly fifty years in the making.
CalPhotos
Forest
Images
Google Images
(You will find some misidentified images on Google Images.)
USDA
Plants Database
(Frequently not kept up-to-date. BONAP is much better.)
For more websites see the links section of Four Corners Wildflowers
5) The Apps
Load the following on your phone or tablet and you will have at your fingertips 600 species
that grow from the foothills to the alpine in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico:
"Colorado Rocky Mountain Wildflowers".
More Tools of the trade
6) Notebook and pen
7) Hand lens
Recommended: 10x by Bausch & Lomb,
or Belomo, or Fire Mountain Gems
8) Collecting bags
9) Camera
A Couple of Fun Botany Websites
Plants are Cool, Too!
Doodling in Math: Spirals, Fibonacci, and Being a Plant
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Names:
Common
and Scientific
Click
for more information about common and scientific plant names.
Common
names originate with anyone. They sometimes are very descriptive,
sometimes whimsical, sometimes a translation/rearrangement of the
scientific name
(Phacelia sericea = Silky Phacelia; Penstemon whipplei =
Whipple's Penstemon). They are easy to pronounce and comfortable to
use. There are few, if any, records about who gave
the common name, when, or why -- or, most importantly,
exactly which plant the name identifies. Common names vary from country to
country, state to state, and even within small areas.
Scientific names originate with a botanist -- amateur or professional. The names may be descriptive or they may honor a person or
place. To be accepted as a valid name, they must be published with a full
plant description and a dried specimen must be placed on file with details about its location, time and date of collection, etc. If another person
later believes the name to be incorrect, they publish what they think
should be the new name and internationally accepted botanical standards
determine which name is correct. Many plants have had several scientific names given to them over the years. One name is presently accepted;
the others are called "synonyms".
The original plant that was described and
named is called the "type specimen". It is
preserved in an herbarium and plants thought to be the same must be compared with this
type.
Scientific plant names change for a number of
reasons:
1) The name given was already in use.
2) Another name had already been assigned to the plant.
3) The genus name assigned was too encompassing: Gilia
is an example of a very large genus that has been broken into a
number of smaller genera.
4) New techniques (better microscopes, DNA) provide sharper
distinctions among species.
5) There is not agreement on what a species is. How much variation
does there need to be between two plants before you call them distinct species?
Family as well as genus and species names can change.
By international agreement, "aceae" was decided on as a suffix for all family names.
There are also a few grand-fathered family names.
There have been and continue to be attempts to
standardize scientific plant names.
Linnaeus is credited with our present method of naming plants and standardizing their names.
Wikipedia: International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants
The actual International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants: Melbourne Code, 2011.
(More
about the history of botanical nomenclature.)
Which names should we use?
Stay with one system: BONAP is excellent.
Weber's nomenclature
1) Weber's plant names are, in a number of cases, controversial.
Consult more widely accepted sources, such as, BONAP or the Flora
of North America,
to find the more widely accepted name.
2) Weber makes up very few plant names.
He often reverts to names given by botanists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
3) Weber is a "splitter"; he believes in making species as
distinct from one another as possible. In a number of cases, Weber
gives a plant a unique species name when other botanists lump this
species with others.
4) Weber has a world-wide view of plants and accepts or rejects some
plant names because they do not correspond to the names assigned in
Europe/Asia.
Examining why one botanist places a plant in one family
or genus and another disagrees,
teaches us much about how the science of botany works.
It is not really difficult to know several different names for the
same plant.
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Pronouncing and Understanding Scientific Names
Authority: William Stearns. Botanical
Latin.
Borror. Dictionary of Word Roots
We can de-mystify scientific names and make
ourselves much more comfortable using them if we learn about their
pronunciation and meaning.
You will find some significant disagreements about how scientific plant names should be pronounced.
I have found the following suggestions supported by a number of highly respected botanists,
and I try to follow their suggestions:
1) The most important pronunciation
suggestion:
Relax and just say the name of the plant as best you can.
(If anyone guffaws at you or belittles you,
they, not you, are good candidates for
the dummy hats.)
2. Pronounce proper names as
the name normally would be pronounced and then add the ending.
Pursh i a
Fendler i
Fendler i ana
Nuttall i ana
Missouri en sis
3. Keep word roots together: Oe no thera, not Oe noth era Hetero theca, not Heter oth eca
4. Latin vowels are not pronounced with the same sounds as English vowels.
For Latin (scientific) names pronounce vowels:
ah a ee oo
ue (as in "blue").
There are exceptions: I have never heard anyone pronounce Asteraceae, "Ah
steer ah
cee ee".
5. Pronounce all vowels, except for those making up diphthongs.
6. Family names end in "aceae", pronounced either "a c
ee" or "a c a".
7. Almost all American botanists pronounce " ii" endings as "e eye". For example, "Kingii" is pronounced "King e i"; "Haydenii" is pronounced "Hayden e eye". I find this "e eye" pronunciation to be obfuscating and, if not ugly, then at least, weird. To my pleasure, I have found that botanists from other countries pronounce "Kingii" as "King e" or "King e e". I use the " King e", "Hayden e" pronunciation, even when I am in the midst of professional American botanists, almost none of whom agree with me. I say almost, because several prominent professional botanists, including Colorado's William Weber, are very emphatic in rejecting the "e eye" pronunciation.
There are many websites that pronounce botanical names for you. Try several and you will get a general idea about the pronounciation and you will also hear how varied the pronounciations are. Try The Botanary at Dave's Garden and Pronouncekiwi.
II. Learn about the meaning of the
plant names.
A. Become familiar with the
people who named plants and for whom plants were named and you will make
the plant names meaningful and the plants memorable. You will also be
fascinated with the lives these folks led as politicians, climbers,
adventurers, physicians, and teachers.
Fremont, Fendler, Engelmann,
Parry, Nuttall,
Eastwood, Torrey, Gray, Brandegee, Hayden, James, Jones, Palmer, Porter
Sources for biographies of
botanists and explorers:
Four Corners Wildflowers
www.calflora.net/botanicalnames/index2.html
Weber's Colorado Flora
Welsh's A Utah Flora (Excellent source for full name of
authors of plant names.)
B. Learn some basic Latin
and Greek word meanings and formations and the plant name will make sense to you and become easier to remember:
-aceae: group, family
alpina: of the alpine
angustifolia: narrow leaves
arvensis: of the field
capitate: head-like
ciliata: with small hairs (usually along the margins)
glabrous: smooth
gracilis: slender
glaucous: with a white/blue-gray coating
grandiflora: large flower (Hmm. Why do some plants with the name "grandiflora" have small flowers?)
incana (canescent): gray (usually from hairiness)
laciniate: cut into narrow, irregular lobes or segments
laevigate: lustrous, shining
lanuginous: downy or woolly
latiflora: wide flowers
latifolia: wide leaves
lentiginous: scurfy, covered with small scales
montanum: of the mountains
officinale: official, as in, accepted as medicine
-oides = similar to, as in Populus deltoides, Chaenactis
stevioides, Chaetopappa ericoides
parviflorum: small flowered
phila: loving
pumila: dwarfed, small
rami: pertaining to branches (ramos + issimus: very branched)
scaposum: no leaves on the stem (the scape)
scopulorum: rocky places
speciosus: showy
umbellatum: umbrella shaped
vulgaris: common
Click for a very good list of more basic botanical Latin words
(and an excellent introduction to plant parts and nomenclature).
Also see:
Dictionary of Botanical Epithets
Botanical Latin Pronunciation Guide
Diminutives (small, smaller, smallest)
-lus, -la, -lum (ramulus: small branch, branchlet)
Diminutive suffixes may appear as:
-olus, -ola, -olum
-ellus, -ella, -ellum
-illus, -illa, -illum
-culus, -cula, -culum
-cellus, -cella, -cellum
-cillus, -cilla, -cillum
Calceolus, Gentianella, Campanula, Ranunculus, Dodecatheon pulchellum, Mitella
Comparatives (bigger, longer)
-ior, -ius (longior and longius)
Superlatives (biggest, longest, very, most)
-issimus, -issima, -issimum (longissimus)
-errima, -errimum, -errimus,
(pulcherrima means most beautiful)
C. Sources for
scientific
name meanings
Four Corners Wildflowers
Stearns. Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners
Borror. Dictionary of Word Roots and Combining Forms
Weber. Colorado Flora
D. Writing scientific
names.
The name of a species is made up
of two parts, the genus name, which is capitalized, and the specific
epithet (often incorrectly called the "species"), which is not capitalized. Both are italicized.
Senecio serra
The genus is "Senecio" but the name of the species
is not "serra". The name of the species is
"Senecio serra". "Serra" is called the
specific epithet or the specific name.
E. Writing common
names.
There is absolute agreement on how scientific names should be written. There is absolutely no agreement on how common names are written. They are capitalized
in various ways:
EASTERN COTTONWOOD, Eastern cottonwood, eastern cottonwood, eastern cottonwood;
SCARLET GILIA, Scarlet gilia, scarlet Gilia, scarlet gilia.
I am definitely in a botanical minority; I capitalize the first letter of both words since they are proper nouns:
Eastern Cottonwood
Scarlet Gilia
Interestingly, scientists writing about birds, mammals, insects, etc. treat names as proper nouns
and
capitalize the first letter of each name. Why don't botanists do the same?
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