New ways to ID plants

The traditional way of accurately identifying a plant was to ask an experienced horticulturalist or ask a botanist. Sadly, easily accessible experts are thin on the ground so when I have a plant name query I usually fall back on my tried and trusted library of reference books. These technical guides vary in quality from general books such as Stirling Macoby's well-known, What Flower is That? to more technical references such as the five-volume Horticultural Flora of South Eastern Australia written by botanist Roger Spencer. However large the scope of my standard reference books I often frustratingly fail to find an answer to the name or cultivar of the particular plant that is my current obsession. 

The advent of social media sites such as Facebook has seen a new way to ID plants. I must admit I resisted Facebook (FB) for a decade but a couple of years back I signed up. While the diverting pleasures of watching cat videos and viewing my friends holiday pics are distracting I find the pages devoted to horticulture highly rewarding. On FB there are many sites which help answer our collective pleas for help in plant identification. I'm a member of several FB gardening sites and I often enjoy trying to answer a request for an ID posted on these pages.

Plant Identification Australia is one of my favourite FB sites as it has over 2,000 (free) subscribers and its remit is broad in scope. The groups aim  is 'to educate and aid in the identification of any plant found within Australia. If you come across a plant in Australia and don't know what it is, this is the group to ask!' Sounds good, so I gave it a go.

I wish I knew the species name of this winter flowering Sedum

June last year I posted my first appeal for an ID on the Plant Identification Australia group site with a photo of the above plant:

"I have had this winter flowering sedum growing in my garden for ages but don't have a species name. Any ideas?" 

Within minutes I got a reply from a group member called Lewis in Melbourne with the answer Sedum confusum. Double checking on the internet I confirmed that Lewis' identification was indeed correct. After formally thanking him on the site I promptly added the species name to my plant labels.

While my query was quickly addressed I note from observing other requests for help that a proper identification is often open to debate. While someone may assertively ID a plant on the site there is often a quick response from others who offer alternative answers. Often these debates are caused by the questioner not putting up a decent photograph or description, but most times these debates are quickly resolved with a collectively agreed answer.

While Plant Identification Australia is very general in nature, other FB groups are much more specialised, so you can find groups on (among others) cacti, vegetables and native plants. While signing up to these sites won't lead to you throwing out your standard paper references I'm sure they will help you get more pleasure from your garden.

On the naming of plants (part 1)

Like many students before me, I had to learn to identify a large and diverse range of plants during my formal horticulture training. As well as identifying the plants in tests, I had to write down the genus, species, variety and family for formal assessment by our lecturers. Marks were given for correct identification and likewise deducted for spelling and other stylistic mistakes. Although I didn't appreciate it at the time, these exercises taught me to be aware of botanical variations as well as learning the scientific language of botany. Now, many years later, I have learnt to enjoy repeating the many tongue-twisting names invented by scientists from the time of the late 18th century. Two personal favourites are Parthenocissus tricuspidata (Boston Ivy) and Ceratostigma willmottianum (Chinese Plumbago).

Many gardeners are bamboozled
by the scientific names of plants

While botanists and many horticulturists are happy to use scientific names this is not so with most home gardeners who find this elitist technical language as incomprehensible as the artificially constructed 19^th century European language Esperanto. So why do we persist in using scientific names?

The standard response given by horticultural educators is that there is only one scientific descriptor given to a plant while there are many different common names given to the same specimen; this, according to the educators, often leads to confusion. This is indeed the case with the east Asian climber Parthenocissus tricuspidata, which as well as being known in English as Boston Ivy is also called Japanese Creeper, Japanese Ivy and Grape Ivy. On a personal note, my parents once had this plant growing on the front of their home for many years and erroneously called it Virginia Creeper, an epithet given to another member of the genus.

While it is true there is only one official botanical name given to a plant at one time it may have had many other scientifically sanctioned names in the past. Many of these were published in floras and in nursery catalogues and therefore persist to the present day. Many in the nursery world fall in love with a particular name and refuse to change labels whatever the scientists pronounce as correct. One of the few local botanists who have tried to unite the disciplines of botany and horticulture is Roger Spencer of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. Spencer regularly writes articles for the trade press where he updates changes in the botanical names  given to plants.

One organisation that has tried to inform the public of historic changes in scientific names is the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales (HHT). A free access website managed by HHT is the Colonial Plant Database. Keying in the name of a modern plant name supplies a list of variant plant names and the time of introduction to Australia (if the plant was first introduced in the 19th century). http://collection.hht.net.au/firsthht/searchColonialPlants.jsp?linkN=1.3

While most horticultural educators prefer the naming of plants by the binomial name method (genus and species name) there have been some dissident opinions. The Irish-born garden writer William Robinson (1838-1933) had strong views on the naming of plants. While recognising the need for botanists to use scientific descriptors he found little reason to use them in the home garden. Robinson, writing in The English Flower Garden vented his views on the subject:

It is best to speak of things growing about our doors in our own tongue, and the practice of using in conversation long Latin names, a growth of our own century, has done infinite harm to gardening in shutting out people who have a heart for a garden, but none for the Latin of the gardener. There is no more need to speak of the plants in our gardens by their Latin names than to speak of the dove or the rabbit by Latin names, and where we introduce plants that have no good English names we must  make them as well as we may.

While Robinson’s views are thought prevoking, his romantic perspective is somewhat naive. Whether we like it or not the persistent use of scientific naming in the horticultural world will continue well into the future. While it is important for botanists to inform horticulturists and gardeners of changes it is onus on the nursery trade to respond to these changes. If they don’t we might as well follow Robinson’s view and rely on using common names.

In a future post I will write about the good and bad ways to  label plants in the garden.