Plant Recognition

by Matthew A. Jenks

Introduction

The objective of this web site is to help you learn basic skills for recognizing plants based on visual morphology. This information provides an important foundation for future learning about landscape plants. As an introduction to plant recognition, links to diagrams are included that show important leaf, flower, and twig structures. Spend time putting this information to memory before moving on.

Plant Recognition

Learning to recognize different kinds of plants in the nursery and landscape is an important skill that requires close observation and knowledge of plant parts. Landscape ornamentals vary greatly in overall shape and habit, ranging from upright grasses to sprawling groundcovers, to upright to mounding shrubs, to columnar to weeping trees. Even when the general shape is similar, landscape plants can differ in numerous other traits, including the shape, color, and size of leaves, flowers, and fruits, and the color and texture of bark and twigs. Notwithstanding, knowledge of these characteristics alone may not be enough to clearly separate one type of plant from another, especially when environmental or cultural factors like pruning have altered the plants natural form and growth, or the plant is very young or old. For these reasons, additional morphological features often need to be examined for accurate plant identification, like leaf arrangement and type, and leaf shape, and leaf apices, leaf bases, leaf margins, type of leaf venation, shape of leaf scars and vascular bundles, terminal and lateral bud shape, size, and color, and flower and inflorescence morphology. Provided in these links are diagrams showing important recognition features that will help connect written plant descriptions, such as those found in keys and manuals, with the morphological features of the plant whose identity is in question. For more information on using keys to identify plants, see Curtis et al., "Vegetative Keys to Common Ornamental Woody Plants", or Stidd and Henry's "Key to Common Woody Landscape Plants in the Midwest".