As children, most of us wander in the woods and see trees and leaves, and have little sense of species, lifecycles or plant relationships with animals. Most people I meet remain at this level of knowledge throughout their adulthood and assume they can never become familiar with the diversity of wild plants. Four years ago, I was such a person. Now, when I wander a local meadow or forest, the book of plant diversity opens up in front of me, through a combination of learning and useful identification tools. I believe everyone has the capacity to learn our native Maryland plants, and get more enjoyment from wild places as a result.
A few centuries ago, almost every person knew scores of local plants. They lacked identification apps, scientific books and even comprehensive nomenclature, yet they learned their local plants, despite variation in aptitude and learning styles. I believe this fundamental human skill requires repetitive pattern recognition and stories.
To develop pattern recognition through repetition, I recommend two options: walking trails and joining online plant groups.
At this time of year, you can visit many local woodland trails. Passing through these gives you the opportunity to see not only canopy and understory trees, but also the diverse plants along the forest floor. When you’re starting out, just observing the number of tree species, different leaf shapes and different textures of plants is enough. Your brain will begin cataloging the different identifying details for later use, even if it mostly seems like noise at first.
While walking a trail, you can use an identification app, such as PlantNet or iNaturalist, which will usually help you narrow a plant down to a group of options, if not immediately identify the plant. I will caution that this identification may not stick in your mind without an anchoring story, which I’ll describe shortly.
Local and regional native gardening Facebook groups are great options to get more exposure to native plants throughout the year. If you join the largest one, Maryland Area Gardening for the Environmentally Conscious (MAGEC), Facebook will begin inserting plant pictures into your general feed, often accompanied by some identifying information. Plus, the pictures are usually recent, so you’ll receive live updates about milestones like emergence, blooming and fruiting.
Building up your pattern recognition will only get you so far. I recommend you seek out, and eventually create, tiny stories about each and every plant you see. That may sound impossible, but when people ask me how I remember all of these plants, usually it’s because there is a special fact or event that I’ve tied to that plant’s identity.
For example, I often have a hard time identifying beech trees (Fagus species), but if I suspect a tree might be a beech, I scan the trunk for black oval scars contrasting against white bark. The scars resemble eyes and I remember how clusters of beeches can look like a forest of eyes. I first saw this phenomenon at our nearby Patuxent Research Refuge.
Sometimes stories have little to do with the appearance of the plant. Blueberry bushes (Vaccinium species) have a subtle leaf and branch structure that I cannot put into words. However, blueberries excite me when found in the wild because they have an edible fruit and are one of the most valuable shrubby species for wildlife. I think I’m good at identifying them because when I suspect I’ve found one, I stop and tell people about them, and that has helped me memorize the pattern of the leaves.
Many plants have a distinctive feel or, even better, a scent. When I see a leaf that resembles a delicate paper snowflake, I know it’s likely either ragweed, mugwort or bidens. They’re very different plants, but for most of their lifespan, they look very similar. I usually grab a few leaves to crush and smell. Most of the time they smell like a rich perfume, telling me it is invasive mugwort. While the scent counts as a story alone, I also recall that the plant’s medicinal and aromatic qualities drove us to introduce it here in the first place. It’s now a menace along the banks of the Patuxent River.
You’ll notice that I have hardly mentioned traditional botany terminology. I do find it useful to have a language to describe plant anatomy sometimes. The large, opposite, ovate leaves of an American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) help me differentiate it from the nonnative Asian beautyberries. However, I only learned the plant by comparing Callicarpa species over several years.The scientific language helps me put words to what I can now recognize automatically.
I have only skimmed the surface of subtle techniques you can use to learn the plants you encounter. As your experience and knowledge grow, you’ll make new stories that may only make sense to you, and they’ll deepen your connection with the plants that define so much of our world.