Managers of native ecosystems must be able to identify the components of the landscape and the role they play in the complex system. A manager without this knowledge is like a coach who doesn’t know the names or capabilities of the players on his team. When I walk, I like to call up the names of the plants I’m seeing. If you do this often enough, the identification comes naturally as you scan the landscape. It’s like looking out at a crowd and having all the names of the friends you see come automatically into your mind. To gain that kind of familiarity with plants, you first have to learn some special identifying characteristics, so you can readily identify what you are looking at. This is more difficult during the winter, but there are many features that are readily observable. One of my favorites is the catkin, a type of long, pendulous flower cluster. There are only a few woody plants that produce catkins, so seeing this one item has instantly narrowed your choice of plants. In this case the catkin belongs to the Hazelnut,
Corylus americana.
Once you can identify a species, you need to spend time with it until you construct a mental image that means to you just one specific type of plant. We do this with people all the time. At a glance, most people can identify someone they’ve just met in passing, like a store clerk or customer or annoying guy from the basketball game. They may not be able to give any descriptive detail, but they have that mental image that allows them to make a positive ID. My mental image tells me this is a clump of Hazelnut.
Buds are a good thing to key in on. This is a rather distinctive bud of the Blackhaw,
Virburnum prunifolium. Determining it to be a Viburnum is fairly easy. I can only call it to species because I’ve examined it through leaf, flower, fruit and winter.
When I see thick, tangled and pointy, I automatically think Viburnum. The instant recognition brought on by a mental image is good, but following that, you still need to know some basic characteristics in order to confirm your first impression. The image is just a good tool for quickly narrowing your choices.
Spines make tood identifiers. Your most likely choices when a bud is flanked by a pair of thorns are Black Locust or Prickly-ash. Remember that the Prickly-ash has the rusty bud and you’ve arrived at your identification.
The Prickly-ash shrubs are fairly openly branched and the branches always remind me of something with a slightly arthritic bend.
Again we have some distinctive buds. These are destined to form the early spring blooms of the Fragrant Sumac.
Fragrant Sumac seems to be a shrub trying to be a vine. Branches will fall to a horizontal position and often root where they touch the soil. Looking inside the tangle of branches reveals the larger horizontal stems. Plant identification can be difficult, but if you take the time to really get to know the plants you see regularly, the whole process will become easier. Remember that is supposed to be an enjoyable activity.
Fall is a time of asters. Most are tolerant of a few frosts, so it’s not uncommon for them to dominate the October fields. Some species are so easy to identify that they shout their names from across the field. Others maddingly share common characteristics that sometimes make them almost impossible to sort.
Blue Jay Barrens has a lavender colored aster that thrives in the dry prairie openings. I visited this particular plant several times when I first began teaching myself plant identification. Each visit left me frustrated. It seemed that I could run the plant through the keys six different times and come up with 6 different answers. This cluster of species all showed a wide variation in characters and those variations broadly overlapped across multiple species. I got so I would hurry past these plants just so I wasn’t tempted to waste more time on fruitless identification efforts.
Two things happened to improve the situation. One – I began to learn plant identification techniques and terminology. Two – Improved identification texts became available. My frustration level decreased as I was able to identify more plant species. That doesn’t mean I’m not still baffled by some descriptions of plant parts. The green shape shown here at the tip of the phyllary is one that I’m still not comfortable with. In some species it’s referred to as a diamond shape and in other species it’s referred to as rhombic in shape. If you check the definition of rhombic, you find that it means diamond shaped. So how does this help in sorting out the species?
One thing I learned early on was the fact that you seldom identify a plant on the basis of a single characteristic. Someone took the time to create a short paragraph describing the various features of a particular species, so it pays to check all of the features, including habitat requirements, before coming to a final conclusion. When I saw this aster for the first time, I remember thinking that these leaves alone should be all I needed to tack a name to the plant. A thick, rough leaf with a winged petiole couldn’t be a common occurrence. What I didn’t pay attention to was the fact that the leaves growing from the lower part of the stem were heart shaped and did not have a winged petiole. Now, that’s something I should have paid attention to.
Then there’s the stem itself. I was so fixated on what I thought had to be the key characteristic that I overlooked other vital clues. Plant identification is like solving a mystery. You have to keep adding pieces to the puzzle until the picture becomes clear. In this case the hairy stem helped to separate this aster from others with winged petioles.
Finally we have a third type of leaf growing from the upper portion of the stem. The clues eventually lead to Aster undulatus, an aster that typically grows in dry soil of open woods and clearings. One last source of aggravation is the frequency with which plant names seem to change. The genus name Aster is no longer used for this plant that took me so long to identify. I guess you have the choice of learning the new names, or doing what I’ve done and stop buying any more new botany texts.
