Plant Detective

I deduce these are actually plastic leaves. Public Domain image.

 Sometimes people send me and Dave photos of mystery plants hoping we'll be able to identify them. Today's email from a student was marked "With High Importance" which made me inwardly groan a little bit. But actually I relish the challenge so I set about looking for clues.

It made me think of the importance of you recording good information in your Field Notebook - out in the field. Some things are really useful to note, and if you forget to, not only might you lose marks, but you're making your life difficult when it comes to identifying your specimens later.

It's a very good thing to take a photo of your specimen in situ - I would feel smug if I ever remembered to do such a thing on one of my lunchtime strolls (I haven't). But it can be hard to capture the habitat with a mere snap. Today's student's blurry plant might have been from the Mint Family (Lamiaceae) - I could just about make out a square furry stem amongst its opposite leaves. But to know whether it was in a damp habitat or a dry one would have been useful - I could have ruled out a number of possible species.  So it's really good if you can describe the habitat in your notebook - what other plants are around? Is it amongst rocks, or in a meadow, or next to a stream, or on the seashore? That would have helped me a lot, and could help you.

Plant with scale (insects, that is). Sorry. CC Gilles San Martin.

 The other thing that irritated me about the photos could have usefully been included was some indication of scale: just putting a pencil or foot in shot gives you a clue to the size of the leaves or other features.

Not always relevant (but sometimes very important) is your sense of smell. Plant-squeezing is one of my go-to clue-finding methods. A mint would be immediately obvious but many plants and flowers smell distinctive. So do some mushrooms (e.g. the ever memorable descriptions of  'wet washing' and 'crab' for certain Russulas). Even some insects exude strong smells which you might later find mentioned in an i-d book.

With "ordinary" plants my first stop is their flowers, and then to look at the shape of the leaves and the pattern they attach to the stem. I read this interesting article by Catherine Stewart describing her own process of identifying mystery plants. But with your own group you'll soon begin to realise their good early diagnostic features. Maybe that'll be behaviour for spiders (is it running across the ground or sitting in a web), or pinnateness for ferns, or general proportions for a snail, or type of fruiting body for a lichen.

This Oil beetle's kinky antennae are a clue to its species. But as with my own photo, there's not enough detail to be sure. CC0 image.

You'll be bringing your specimens home so don't have to worry to much about taking a super clear photo with every detail. Good photos and notes are even more important if you can't. The other week my sister and I found some amazing Oil beetles while out for a walk. I insisted she take some photos so we could report the sighting (there is a dedicated website you know), but I'd forgotten what the beetles' most important features were - so it turned out when I got home that the very bit of the beetle that needed to be in focus was the bit that was blurry. Well, you live and learn.

So when you're out and about collecting, really do take your notebook and note down some clues. Are those lichens only happy on the top of the wall? Are those snails anywhere else but on the tree trunks? Is that grass suspiciously present where dogs wee? (that'll be Wall barley then). Am I repeatedly seeing this seaweed at the same point up the beach? Observations. Think like a detective. You won't remember all this stuff unless you write it down. And the people marking your notebook will love to see it. Every year I read their plaintive calls for field notebooks written actually in the field. They will be desperate to give you some extra marks.

Wall barley (Hordeum murinum) in typically unsalubrious location. CC Stefan Iefnaer.

Gratifyingly, today's Student-with-mystery-plants has just emailed to call me a "bloody miracle worker" for my identifications (let's just hope I'm right).