Karen GoatKeeper's Blog - Posts Tagged "identifying-plants"
Creating Plant Pages
Winter has arrived. I'm not a lover of cold weather. There is no snow, only cold. The plants are dead dry stalks or cold green leaves hunkered down waiting for spring.
That makes it time to go through the pictures I took last season. It's time to start assembling plant pages which may eventually end up as a plant identification book.
Notice that word eventually? Notice the erosion of confidence about my botany project?
I have met the plant identification keys. I have met the lists of plants. I am discouraged but am not willing to quit - yet.
The pages themselves aren't so bad. I may actually have a standard format for them now.
Page one has the scientific name, blooming time, native or introduced letter and scientific family. Pictures and descriptions of flowers, leaves, stems, sometimes roots (if interesting) and fruit. Habitat, edibility or poisonous round out the page.
Page two has the common name(s), a picture of the plant and a short essay about the plant.
The difficulty lies with identifying the plants. The first inkling was the wild petunias. I thought there were two. There are three. Now I've found the two mountain mints are not two but a half dozen.
This means tackling the plant keys only a botanist could love. It would help if the plants were still growing, maybe. It would help if I read botanese.
Will I quit? Not this year. When will the project get done? That timeline just got a lot longer.
By the way, I am putting a version of some of the pages up on my website and asking for feedback on them.
That makes it time to go through the pictures I took last season. It's time to start assembling plant pages which may eventually end up as a plant identification book.
Notice that word eventually? Notice the erosion of confidence about my botany project?
I have met the plant identification keys. I have met the lists of plants. I am discouraged but am not willing to quit - yet.
The pages themselves aren't so bad. I may actually have a standard format for them now.
Page one has the scientific name, blooming time, native or introduced letter and scientific family. Pictures and descriptions of flowers, leaves, stems, sometimes roots (if interesting) and fruit. Habitat, edibility or poisonous round out the page.
Page two has the common name(s), a picture of the plant and a short essay about the plant.
The difficulty lies with identifying the plants. The first inkling was the wild petunias. I thought there were two. There are three. Now I've found the two mountain mints are not two but a half dozen.
This means tackling the plant keys only a botanist could love. It would help if the plants were still growing, maybe. It would help if I read botanese.
Will I quit? Not this year. When will the project get done? That timeline just got a lot longer.
By the way, I am putting a version of some of the pages up on my website and asking for feedback on them.
