The Variegated Thumb

Seeing that the 100th post is kind of a monumental occasion, I decided I should probably have a good one.  I’m not sure what constitutes a good post in your mind, but I consulted with my wife and we agreed that this topic is one where I have focused a lot of attention.  Also, this topic shows how far I’ve come since I began writing this blog.

Some people I encounter assume I know everything about plants, simply because I know their names.  While this is a huge exaggeration, knowing the names of plants seems like a good place to start - at least for finding more information about a particular plant.  And the names themselves can often tell you some interesting things about the plants, but that’s for another post.

As someone who desires to know the botanical name (genus and species) of every plant I have, I must admit it is sometimes hard to do this.  Many times plants that I buy are without a label or contain a label with only a common name.  Worse yet, sometimes the plant contains a generic label that says “Tropical Plant,” “Foliage Plant” or “Annual.”  These kinds of labels have some degree of helpfulness.  They can help you get a feel for where to grow the plant or how long you can expect it to stick around, but they’re not so helpful when it comes to honoring the plant by calling it by name. :)  When I purchase a plant with one of these labels, it is usually at a large store like Lowe’s or Wal-Mart, where the employees have little or no knowledge of the plants.  It’s unlikely they will be able to identify the plant for me.

To be honest, I don’t even bother asking employees the names of plants most of the time.  I actually enjoy the hunt.  It’s an educational experience to track down the botanical name of a new plant.

Other times, I bring plants home that were not purchased, but collected.  In these cases, I have very little information to go on, other than the location where the plant was collected and the usual physical description.

The Hunt

My methodology for discovering a plant name depends on the plant.  If the plant is what I would consider an average Joe plant that is widely grown (and I am just unfamiliar with it), I will usually try to find the common name first and then look up the correct botanical name with wikipedia or Dave’s Garden.

At this time let me be clear that neither of these two sources are guaranteed to have correct information.  Both contain errors - some that are easy to see and others that are very well disguised.  However, I think most of the time there are enough eyes looking at these two highly-trafficked websites that the information is pretty good.  On davesgarden, I check to see that the images associated with this botanical name match the plant that I have on hand.  Usually all of the images on one page will match, but I have seen some cases where completely different plants were posted to the same page - ech!

There are a number of other websites with more accurate information.  Sometimes I consult those websites, but usually only when I think the plant is commonly misidentified.  I have a short list of these websites on the Suggested Links page under the Identification section.

After gathering the genus and species name from one or both of these sites, I usually do a quick Google image search for that particular pair of names.  This is just for good measure.  It also provides me with an idea of other plants that are commonly mistaken with this plant and plants that are closely related (in the same genus).  By this point, I am usually pretty satisfied that I have captured the correct botanical name for my average Joe plant.

The Hunt becomes difficult

For more unusual plants, I am a little more careful.  In most cases these plants do not have common names.  In many cases I am able to guess a genus or a family, based on the physical characteristics and other plants that I have which are similar.  If I don’t have any similar plants and can’t recall any names of similar plants I have seen before, one method is to post pictures to a variety of different websites.  One such site is the “Name that Plant” forum on gardenweb.  That forum is specifically dedicated to identifying plants by physical descriptions and pictures.  Another potential forum is a family, type or region specific forum (i.e., Cacti Forum, Tropical Plant Forum, Houseplant Forum, Tree Forum, Oklahoma Gardening Forum).  Many times the members who frequent these forums are very helpful, very friendly and you can learn a lot from their responses.  Often it is a group effort to narrow the search to the specific genus and species.

I have used the “Name that Plant” forum dozens of times, but I really like to try to struggle with a plant’s identification for several days before I break down and ask for help.  That’s just because I like to do it myself and I have fun with the process.  If you’re not so inclined, that’s fine.  The forum is there specifically for this purpose.

If you’re a person who likes the challenge of identifying plants, you might find yourself becoming one of the regulars who helps others identify their plants on the forum.  I have helped just a couple of people identify a plant when I have logged on to submit one of my own mystery plants.

I can now say with confidence that I know the botanical names (genus and species) of nearly every plant I own.  There might be a plant here or there that I will forget, but most of them come to me quickly.  It’s just like learning the names of people - except I have more trouble with that.  I imagine if I went home and entered people’s names in a database after I had met them and categorized the database by families, I wouldn’t have so much trouble.  I’m sure those steps are helping me learn the names of my plants.  But “Epipremnum pinnatum” is so much more fun to learn and recite than “John Brown,” don’t you think?

I wanted to call attention to some new features on The Variegated Thumb.  On the sidebar, under “Pages” you will notice a number of links, including About, My Plant List, Photo Albums, Some Vocabulary, Suggested Links and Suggested Reading.  Most of these are new and some are in progress.

My Plant List is nearly a complete list of the plants I have at home - whether in pots in the house or planted out in the yard.  I know there are some missing items (a couple of trees, some unwanteds, and just some overlooked plants), but most all of my plants are on the list.  The list contains 137 distinct plant species/varieties/cultivars, categorized by family.  I’m not sure that categorizing by family is the best way of looking at my plants, since I only have one plant from many different families.  But, it is kind of interesting, because it shows where my interest is most invested.  I have far more Araceae (Aroids) than I do any other family.  In compiling the list, I had to look up almost every plant to see what family it is in.  So, my own collection held many surprises for me.  I was surprised to see that I had 8 plants from the family Ruscaceae.  And I guess I had forgotten that I have 4 species from the genus Ficus.

The Suggested Reading list is just a couple of plant books from different genres that I have read and enjoy - books that I would recommend to a friend.  I have only read a limited number of books on gardening and plant care, so it is certainly not a list of the best plant books on a given topic, but it does represent the best books I have read on each topic.

The Suggested Links list includes most of the websites that I frequent concerning plants.  In fact, since I compiled that list, it’s like I have a bookmarks away from home.  I can just go to The Variegated Thumb, click on Suggested Links and have all of my favorite websites at my fingertips.  It’s kind of handy for me, and hopefully you can find something useful there as well.  The real trove of information is kind of hidden in the links to the GardenWeb Forums and Dave’s Garden.  There is enough information on those sites (and constantly growing) to keep you busy for hundreds of human lifetimes!  I also compiled a pretty good list of some online plant stores that have plants that interest me (Aroids, aquatics, houseplants, exotics).

Feel free to look at the other links on the Pages tab.  About simply tells about my blog.  Photo Albums is a collection of links to the photo albums I have included in some of my blogs.  I will probably add a new album about once per month.  Some Vocabulary is a list of some words I may use on my blog to talk about plants.  The definitions are nothing fancy - some may sound like a dictionary, while others are obviously my own words.

Enjoy!

Last week I made a stop into a book store and spent some time looking at every title in the gardening section.  One book I stumbled upon, caught my fancy.  It was right up my alley - and also discounted because it was used.  [Who would return this book?]

The book is Gardener’s Latin: A Lexicon by Bill Neal.  It is a dictionary of words used in plant taxonomy.  It is a very informative book (in the classical dictionary sense), as well as having some entertaining  sidenotes and stories about plants.  Being a collector of books, plants and plant books, I naturally bought this book.

The book primarily contains common species names (the second name in a binomial scientific name).  In a general sense, the first name (Genus) is a noun and the second name (species) is an adjective.  In the simplest case, a plant name translated to English is something like “skinny grass” or “blue canna.”  Of course, the more distinctly desciptive a name can be, the better.  Most of the names help describe the appearance of the plant.  Other names describe the smell of the plant, the uses of the plant or even the location of the plant.  Some of the names seem pretty obvious, and you don’t need to know latin to know that filamentosa means “filament-like.”  I was surprised to find that a number of the names were in reference to other plant names.  For instance, agavoides means “Like the Agaves.”

Words that end in -flora deal with the bloom of the plant, while words that end in -phyllum or -folia/-folium deal with the foliage or leaves of the plant.  Words that end with -cladia/-cladium deal with the branch of the plant. Not surprisingly, words ending in -petalum deal with the petal of the plant.

There is an online dictionary of latin plant names here.

Here is a random collection of vocabulary that is somewhat common for describing Aroids - although not always in name.

cordate/cordatum - heart-shaped
fenestrations - holes
hemiepiphyte - a plant that can start in the soil and grow up a tree trunk, or start on a tree and grow to the surface where it roots in soil
pinnate - divided
palmatum - shaped like a human hand (ex/ Japanese maple = Acer palmatum)
pinnatifid - palm (as in palm tree) shapedscototrophism -condition where a plant seeks dark rather than light, presumably to find the trunk of a tree which can be climbed

You can see the book here. By the way, LibraryThing.com is a really cool site.

I started a plant journal (on paper) in the last month.  I decided to start keeping track of my plants as they grow, as well as document any new plants I get.  I have spent most of my journaling time not talking specifically about my plants, but about plant knowledge I have gained recently.  When Russ sent me a box stuffed full of Aroids, I did a lot of image searching of the different plants he had sent me.  A number of these plants have 2 distinct leaf habits, which is common among many Aroids, especially Philodendrons.  Leaves in the first stage - the immature or juvenile stage - are usually smaller and more simple looking.  Although sometimes the juvenile leaves are more colorful.  When the plant matures leaves can become much larger and often develop splits or holes.  This maturation process is usually instigated by the plant beginning to climb high up the trunk of a tree.  The splits and holes in the leaves enable the large leaves of the plant to be more resistant to wind.  The Epipremnum pinnatum v. ‘Cebu Blue’ that I received from Russ has small, lance-like, pale blue leaves.  As the Cebu Blue matures, the leaves can grow to several feet and have large splits in them.  If you are not familiar with this characteristic of many Aroids, you would find yourself trying to convince me that these could not be the same plant.  But they are!

Many plants displaying the ‘immature’ habits are called ’shinglers.’  I found an International Aroid Society article about these.  The immature flat, round leaves lay up close to the climbing surface, sometimes overlapping and looking like shingles.  One of the best examples of a shingler is a Scindapsus pictus.

I just learned today that the characteristic of multiple distinct leaf habits is called heteoroblastic development.  I think the word is a fitting analogy for my hobby with plants.  My hobby has recently gone through a transformation that makes my old hobby look like a different species of hobbies.  But it’s the same me and the same love of plants that’s underlying this hobby.

Here’s some other miscellaneous knowledge that I recently gained.  Several times in picture captions I have seen a Genus name and then the word ‘NOID.’  ‘NOID’ means ‘No Identification’ or ‘Not identified.’  From what I can tell, this can mean that the person does know what species the plant is, or it has literally not been classified yet.

Also, I’ve known that v. stands for ‘variety’ but I had never even seen ‘f.’ before until Russ was identifying one of my Aglaonemas as A. commutatum v. maculatum f. maculatum.  Apparently f. means ‘forma.’