How do I start to identify plants?
The variety of plants around us wherever we are is amazing. They are beautiful and fascinating, but if you want to identify which ones are which, how and where do you start?
Grouping plants
All living things are classified scientifically into groups and named. The science of doing this is called taxonomy.
The species is the basic taxonomic unit. A species is an individual type of plant e.g. Ranunculus repens, creeping buttercup. Members of a species are very similar to each other and can interbreed, but cannot usually interbreed with another species.
Closely-related species are grouped into genera (sing. genus), and closely-related genera are grouped into families based on characteristics that they share. Buttercups belong to the Ranunculaceae family. Getting to know plant families is great way to begin plant identification. There are many plant families but some are small or not important in the British Isles, so it is best to start by focusing on the large families of flowering plants that are well-represented in Britain. As you get to know their distinguishing characters you will find you have only to glance at a plant and you will know its family.
Plant names
Each species (individual type) of plant has been given a scientific name and most also have a common name; many plants have more than one common name. The scientific or botanical name has two parts: the genus and the specific epithet. Together these make up the species name.
In our buttercup example, Ranunculus is the genus, the group to which all buttercups belong and repens is the specific epithet; Ranunculus repens is the species name. Creeping buttercup is the English common name.
Names can often tell you something about a plant – for instance, ‘repens‘ means ‘creeping’. Plant names do sometimes change from time to time, reflecting the latest research.
Images in this section by Heather Forbes
