How to identify plants

In this blog I will post an example of identifying the plant. It constantly amazes me to see books on plants where the plants are subdivided into groups based on the colour of the flower. Yes, I know it might be easier for the novice but chances for the novice to identify a plant is pretty small. Most common reason being that the plant is usually not in the book. Anyway, the proper way to subdivide plants should be by families as plants of the same family share certain structural resemblance that allow for identification with much greater degree of certainty. We all know Aster family and immediately see resemblance between, say, sunflowers and daisies. It's not always that easy but it is much better than just enlisting all blue or all yellow flowers. The nice thing about division by families is that you don't have to be a botanist to start noticing family resemblance.

Anyway, in this article we are going to identify a plant that took me a while to identify. It grows at the marsh right next to the waterline so here we immediately see the habitat: salt marshes and brackish marshes. Here is the picture of our subject:

Unidentified plant

So I am not going to give away the name yet. I have another picture, so let's look at it from a slightly different angle:

Unidentified plant

So, what can we see about this plant? We already determined the habitat: it's useful when we try to pin the plant down to the species but first let's decide on the family.

I have list of the plant that are supposed to grow at this particular marsh but the list has been compiles 10 or so year ago and by now is hopelessly obsolete. Anyway, none of the plants on the list fitted. Okay, we don't really need a list.

What does it look like? Actually this plant resembles the one that lots of people know as it grows everywhere, namely lamb's quarters. The same reddish and striped stem and even the shape of the leaves is similar but the leaves of our plant look bigger. So let's check it out.

The Latin name for lamb's quarters is Chenopodium album and it belong to Amaranth family (Amaranthaceae) so let's check if if it fits the Chenopodium genus. It can be done with the internet or books. It does not always work but it sure beats trying to identify a plant randomly without having the slightest idea. Anyway after some research I decided that it was not a Chenopodium genus after all. But I still think it belongs to Amaranthaceae family. After checking more I found out that it resembles the genus orache, in Latin Atriplex. The leaves look really close. So it's probably some kind of atriplex. Let's see if we can pin it down to the species. After another check we find out that the plant it resembles the closest is Atriplex prostrata or hastate-leaved orache. So we identified our plant.

Hastate-leaved orache (Atriplex prostrata)
Family: Amaranthaceae

Not all the cases are that clear-cut, lots of time you'll be lucky to pin it to the genus but anyway it shows the importance to look for structural similarities. Right now I am writing a book on the plants of the marsh and I subdivide plants by families. I think it makes more sense than doing it by color of the flower. Notice that in our example we don't even have a flower, we only have leaves and stem.

Now go and identify some plants!