San Juan Mountains Association

Please consider joining CoNPS and SJMA.

Introductions
Tools of the Trade
The Naming of Plants
Plant Parts and characteristics of Plant Families
The Use of Plant Keys
Hands-on Examination of Specimens Throughout the Workshop

Tools of the trade
Our ability to identify and appreciate plants 
depends on our personal interests and on our use of botanical tools. 

1) The Person

Some people are satisfied with admiring the beauty of a plant; names are unimportant.  
Some people admire the beauty but also want names; 
some of these people are content with common names that they hear or make up, 
some want to identify plants to the family level, some to the genus, some to the species.

Whatever level we are at, curiosity, an unhurried pace, a discerning eye, 
and a huge dose of self-doubt are requisites for learning about plants.

We 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. 
Attend Colorado Native Plant Society workshops and field trips.

3) The Books
Over and over again, browse through field guides at home.

The Most Important Books:
THE flora books for Colorado are by William  Weber. Colorado Flora, Western Slope and Eastern Slope
THE flora of the region is by Cronquist et al.  Intermountain Flora. 
THE flora of the U.S. and Canada (the keys are available free on-line):  Flora of North America

Local area books:
Excellent key, photos, drawings:   Komarek.  Flora of the San Juans.
No key, has photos and paintings:  Guennel.  Colorado Wildflowers, 2 volumes.
Fagan.  Canyon Country Wildflowers.
Carter.  Shrubs and Trees of Colorado.
Huggins.  Wild at Heart. 
Wingate. Rocky Mountain Flower Finder. 
Wingate and Yeatts.  Alpine Flower Finder.

Regional books:
Key and drawings:  Niehaus.  Southwestern and Texas Wildflowers. 
Warren.  Wild About Wildflowers. 
Robertson.  Southern Rocky Mountain Wildflower.
Craighead.  Field Guide to Rocky Mountain Wildflowers.
Ricketts.  Wild Flowers of the United States. (3 volumes cover our area.)

Excellent Reference Books:
Drawings and definitions:  Harris.  Plant Identification Terminology.
Meaning of plant names:  Borror.  Dictionary of Word Roots.

4) Web sites

www.swcoloradowildflowers.com 
(Specific for the Four Corners area. Many plants shown are also found throughout Colorado and the West. 
3,300 photos, plant descriptions, keyed by color and scientific name, biographies, bibliography, 
glossary, meaning of scientific names, links.)
USDA Plants Database 
(All plants of the U.S., site receives 1 million hits/month, has some mistakes in names, some problems in searching.)
CalPhotos 
USFS: Forest Images 
Google Images

For more web sites see the links section of www.swcoloradowildflowers.com 

More Tools of the trade

5) Notebook and pen 
6) Hand lens (Kooter's Geology Tools) 
7) Collecting bags 
8) Camera 

9) Two special botanical tools that will soon be available: 

Heil, O'Kane, Clifford.  The Flora of the Four Corners.  
This complete flora of the Four Corners, the culmination of eleven years of field work, will be 
available at the end of 2008. Click for further information.

B)  "Synthesis of the North American Flora",  
a DVD that will be available at the end of 2008.  
The DVD shows all plants found in the United States and Canada.  The DVD allows you to make a list of which plants are found in any county. 
You can search and list plants by common or scientific names.  
Over 100,000 photographs. Keys. Maps. Herbarium records.
Superb for amateurs and professionals.
Thirty years in the making.
See Biota of North America Project.

What is the purpose of identifying plants and 
what do we mean by "identify"?

What's in a name?  That which we call a rose 
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Shakespeare

As if to name a thing were to know it.
Thoreau

"I am the very model of a modern Major General
I 'm very good at integral and differential calculus
I know the scientific name of all the flora-alculus."
Gilbert and Sullivan, Pirates of Penzance

"The naming of cats is a difficult matter ... 
A cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES...."
T. S. Eliot

Without names, no knowledge.
Linnaeus 

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 attached to the original dried specimen of the plant.  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 determines which name is correct.  Most plants have had several scientific names given to them.  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.
The aceae was added to all names and there are grand-fathered names.

There have been and continue to be attempts to standardize scientific plant names.
Linnaeus
Wikipedia: International Code of Botanical Nomenclature 
The actual code: St. Louis Code of 1999 
(More about the history of botanical nomenclature.)

Which names should we use?
Stay with one system: NPS.  USFS.  Weber.  FNA.  USDA.

Weber's nomenclature
 1) Weber's Catalog of the Colorado Flora and his field guides to Colorado flora are without equal for Colorado flora and they are the basis of many other floras of Colorado.
2) Weber's plant names are, in a number of cases, controversial.  
We need to consult more widely accepted sources, such as, the Flora of North America, 
to find the more widely accepted name. 
3) Weber makes up very few plant names.  
He often reverts to names given by botanists a hundred years ago. 
4) 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 into one species.
5) 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.

A number of Weber's plant names and classification ideas are widely accepted 
and are becoming increasingly accepted.

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.

We can demystify scientific names and make ourselves much more comfortable using them if we learn about their pronunciation and meaning. 

The most important pronunciation suggestion: 
Relax and just say it.

Other suggestions:

I. Learn some basics of Latin (Greek) pronunciation.
  A. Pronounce vowels as 

ah  a  ee  oo  ue (as in "blue")
not    a  ee  ii   oo   uu                         

There are exceptions: Asteraceae: No one says Ah steer ah cee ee

  B. Pronounce all vowels. 
  C. Family names end in "aceae", often pronounced "a c ee"  or  "a c a".
  D. Pronounce proper names as the name normally would be pronounced 
       and then add the ending. 

Pursh ia
King ii
James ii
Gray i
Nuttall iana 
Nuttall i
Gambel ii
Missouri ensis
Hayden  ii 
Wislizenus    Wislizen ii

(The International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, Tokyo, 1993,
recommended making the double "ii" into a single "i".  The pronunciation would therefore be "e", as in "King e",  but you will often here "e i", as in "King e i".)

Alice   Aliciella
Boecher a
Castillejo (Castilleja)
Gilii (Gili a) This genus was named for an Italian clergyman and 
should be pronounced "Gee lee uh".

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 name meaningful and the plant memorable.  You will also be fascinated with the lives these folks led as politicians, climbers, adventurers, and teachers.

Fremont, Fendler, Engelmann, Parry, Nuttall,
Eastwood, Torrey, Gray, Brandegee, Hayden, James

Sources for biographies of botanists and explorers: 
www.swcoloradowildflowers.com 
www.calflora.net/botanicalnames/index2.html 
 Weber.  Colorado Flora
Welsh.  Utah Flora (Good source for full name of authors of plant names and descriptions.)

  B. Learn some basic Latin (Greek) word meanings: 

scopulorum = rocky places
pumila = dwarfed, small
grandiflora = large flower
parviflorum = small flowered
speciosus = showy
alpina = of the alpine
montanum = of the mountains
arvensis = of the field
vulgaris = common 
officinale = official, as in, accepted as medicine
umbellatum = umbrella shaped
scaposum = no leaves on the stem (the scape)
glaucous = blue-gray
glabrous = smooth
ciliata = with small hairs (usually along the margins)
phila = loving
angustifolia = narrow leaves
incana (canescent) = gray (usually from hairiness)
hirsute = hairy, rough
latifolia = large leaves
latiflora = large flowers
-oides (Populus deltoides, Chaenactis stevioides, Chaetopappa ericoides)
-aceae = group, family

   C.  Sources for scientific name meanings:

www.swcoloradowildflowers.com 
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, which is not capitalized.  Both are italicized.
Senecio serra 

   E.  Writing common names.

  In many botanical books common names are often capitalized thusly: 
Eastern cottonwood
Scarlet gilia, 
but I capitalize both words since they are proper nouns:
Eastern Cottonwood
Scarlet Gilia