How to Identify Plants
Thursday, August 19th, 2010There are all kinds of plants in nature that you can learn how to identify: flowers, weeds, trees, even cacti. Each plant has defining characteristics, like the shapes and colors of leaves or flowers, and also what kind of root system a plant has. The best way to get started learning how to identify plants is by using a book of some kind.
A few good guides to how to identify various kinds of plants include:
- American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers by Christopher Brickell, Trevor Cole, and H. Marc Cathey
- Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary by James G. Harris
- Photographic Atlas of Botany & Guide to Plant Identification by James L. Castner
A good place to begin a horticulturist hobby is by learning how to identify wildflowers. Flowers found in nature are one of the most common types of plants anyone might ever be interested in learning how to identify. Wildflowers are identified by the shape, color, and size of the plants.
Being able to tell the difference between weeds and other plants is another handy skill for an amateur horticulturalist to have. There are no real guides to picking out weeds, because a weed to one person is a flower to another. It’s just a plant that’s growing somewhere that you don’t want it to be growing.
For more information about how to identify plants, visit HowToIdentify.net, which is a new guide to identifying all kinds of different things: people, plants, animals, places, etc.