Once you know what the blooms in various plant families wait like , it becomes easier to cop down specific species .
A few months ago I was essay to identify a beach - side industrial plant I had seen many time before without learning its name or USA .
It was a bighearted , fleshy , purslane - like plant about 5 - 6′ tall in a sprawl clump . The flowers were small and white , but distinctive in bod . They reckon somewhat like half a daisy flower , or like a niggling hand - held fan .
I tried looking up the species using term like “ purslane - corresponding beach flora , ” “ fleshy industrial plant white prime table salt tolerant ” and “ how do you tell if an antelope has rabies ” but my searches were vain . It remained mulishly un - IDed .
In position where you have unknown plant , you may sometimes need around and get a name from a local gardener , then look up that common name and find a Latin name that will nail down the exact coinage and let you know the important facts about that plant , such as “ is it eatable ” and “ is it medicinal ” and “ if I eat this will it countenance me talk to ghostwriter . ”
Where I live , however , the speech communication and regional names usually make it unacceptable to trace back any of the plant names to Latin .
So my plant search stalled and I gave up , until this weekend when I was doing some research on sun - eff tropical groundcovers andcame across this post by Phil Dudman at Garden Drum .
In it , there is a picture of a small blue - flowered plant named “ Purple Fan Flower , ” with the Latin nameScaevola aemulahelpfully provide .
Look at those flowers :
calculate conversant ? I ’d say that was a close relation of my mysterious beach plant .
What I did next was DuckDuckGo hunting “ beach scaevola ” and I instantly find out my purslane - like white - flowered closed book bush : Scaevola taccada .
When someone sends me industrial plant photo asking for ID , I always call for for pic of the blooms as well , if any . They ’re often a dead giveaway on the plant family or genus and take you one gradation nearer to a plant ID .
The bookBotany in a Dayby Thomas Elpelis a good start for this method . Once you start seeing approach pattern , you keep seeing pattern . If you ’ve ever noticed that Solanum melongena , peppers , tomatoes and tater all have the same style of bloom , you ’re well on your way . If you noticed that caesarweed and wireweed both have blooms interchangeable to the hibiscus in your side one thousand , you are a super - sleuthhound . Malvaceae FTW .
Sometimes , it ’s not just the bloom . on occasion , the way a plant looks and grow will remind you of a cousin . I found these plants growing in the landscape gardening behind a restaurant :
I directly thought , “ man , that looks like aGynura ! ”
Here ’s another gibe :
How did I know it look like a Gynura ?
Gynura is the genus of two eatable prickly-seeded spinach - same plant I used to stock in my flora nursery : Gynura bicolorandGynura procumbens , AKA Okinawa prickly-seeded spinach and longevity spinach . We rust them all the time . Here ’s longevity Spinacia oleracea :
After noting the similarity in looks , I did an image search for Gynura and came across my mystery plant .
The blooms are often a dead giveaway on at least the plant family , collapse you a good start on plant ID , but you ’ll notice other thing over time . It ’s fun once you get the knack of it , and Elpel ’s Bible , if not quite teaching you phytology within a 24 - hr period , is a courteous point of departure into the wild world of plant ID .
- Scaevola taccadabloom and seniority spinach delineation courtesy of Forest & Kim Starr ofStarr Environmental . CC license .
