“The world is a green blur for you right now. My job… is to erase the green blur from your mind”.
That was what my plant taxonomy professor said at my first Introduction to Plant Taxonomy course at Humboldt State University. Botany 350 or “Plant Tax”, as it was more commonly known, was a “make or break” class for people from the wildlife department. It was a class that tested peoples fortitude as they endeavored to learn more than 350 species of plants by their taxonomic classification.
I was nervous about entering this unfamiliar world of botanical terminology and taxonomic classification. But tremendously excited at having the opportunity to poke around in the college greenhouse several days a week.
What on earth did he mean by the “green blur” comment though?
Most of us, especially people lacking botanical background, rarely see individual plants when we look at the world around us. For the most part, we would only see an expansive green blur of vegetation.
Some people would probably be able to recognize more familiar and common-place plants such as roses, dandelions and apple trees. If pressed, many of us could divide up the plants we saw into categories based on physical appearance.
Appearances alone however, do not tell you the whole story. Possessing the ability to recognize physical characteristics certainly goes a long way towards assisting with identification.
Without that information we couldn’t begin to recognize what characteristics were unique or shared within a particular family of plants. Without a baseline of taxonomic knowledge however, we would never be able to access all of the information that could be provided through the identification of a particular plant.
That is the beauty of plant taxonomy, described by David Beaulieu in his article “Why We Use Botanical Nomenclature: Learn the Language of Plant Taxonomy” as “the discipline underlying the system of classification used by botanists and horticulturists to organize plants and identify them clearly.
Through plant taxonomy, people can recognize individual traits that illustrate evolutionary relationships between individual plants and shared characteristics that are common amongst individual plant families or groups”. In other words, plants that have a shared evolutionary history are likely to possess many of the same traits that help to separate them from other plant groups.
These physical characteristics, such as whether or not the plant possesses stipules or is able to fix nitrogen in the soil (two common characteristics of the legume family), help scientists to understand what type of environment the plant has adapted to thrive the best within.
If I am being honest, I was not sold on my professors “green blur” theory. As an undergraduate, I was more concerned about surviving my upcoming semester and passing my courses with passing grades.
Why did I need to change the way I looked at the world around me?
I wasn’t a botanist; I was destined to become a future wildlife manager or game warden. Despite my initial skepticism however, my professor’s words stayed with me.
Slowly, as I began to familiarize myself with botanical terminology and the methods used to differentiate plants, I began to change. To my amazement, I became able to look at an unknown plant and correctly hypothesize which plant family it belonged to. I would find myself walking to school, look down at a yellow flower with heart-shaped leaves and wonder if it was related to violets.
More often than not, I would be right. All of a sudden, I could not stop looking at plants and trying to figure out what they were. At some point, I no longer experienced the green blur. Anywhere I went I would recognize individual plants, or spend long periods of time determinedly trying to identify an unknown specimen.
Before long, I began to connect my newfound botanical passion with my passion for conservation as I transitioned into the field of habitat restoration and ecosystem mitigation. It dawned on me one day that through taxonomy, I could recognize that the plants provided the foundation for successful habitat restoration efforts throughout the world.
Plants and vegetation communities compose the ecological landscape of the world around us. More importantly, they are a keystone element in supporting healthy ecosystems. One cannot support a biologically diverse population of wildlife if the vegetation communities they rely on are not present.
In the five years that have passed since I took Plant Taxonomy, I still find myself endeavoring to identify all of the plants that I see whenever I am outside. Not only does it enable me to keep my botanical methodologies in practice, it helps me get a better sense of the world around me.
More importantly, when I am helping my fellow co-workers increase their botanical knowledge and speaking to members of the public, I stress that knowing what plants you are seeing can open up a new world of ecological wisdom. That in order to truly restore the planets natural landscape, we as habitat restorationists must know more than just a plant name. We need to understand how this plant plays a part in the bigger picture. How it can help support our efforts to rebuild the natural world.
It is my pleasure to take you on a journey into the world of botanical identification.
Each week, I will select a plant and provide information about the selected plants taxonomic classification, ecological and cultural habits. I will talk about how these plants are utilized within some of the habitat restoration projects I work upon or how it might impede the establishment of native plants. I will provide personal experiences and first-hand knowledge relating to the plant in question and how the plant interacts with other flora and fauna within the ecosystem.
Welcome aboard fellow botanical friends.
