TTC - The Botanist’s Eye: Identifying the Plants around You

During our busy lives, it’s important to remember that old adage: “Stop and smell the roses.” But how sure are you that it’s an actual rose that you’re smelling, and not something entirely different?

Our lives are closely intertwined with the world of plants, whether they are trees, bushes, grasses, vegetables, fruits, or flowers. We rely on them for the very oxygen we breathe, for the food that’s on our dinner plates, for the energy that powers our cars, for the medicine that helps soothe our ailments, and simply for the pure joy and beauty they give to our surroundings.

But the truth is, all too often, we take the importance of plants for granted. Many of us have lost a sense of deep connection with them. We are, in fact, blind to them. So how do we learn to see—and appreciate—the more than 300,000 types of plants around us? The answer lies in training your eyes to see the world like an expert botanist, and in learning how to speak the language of botany, or what award-winning Professor Catherine Kleier of California Polytechnic State University calls “botanese.”

Knowing how to identify plants in the field, as you come upon them, has an immense value that goes far beyond practical skill and knowledge. Naming plants can help you develop a better relationship with the outdoors. This improved connection makes your outdoor experiences richer and can also help you cultivate your own lawn or garden.

Identifying plants is also an experience anyone can have, no matter where they live. And the ability to identify plants doesn’t require a PhD. All you need is some basic knowledge, some practice, and the fascinating insights found in the 24 lessons of The Botanist’s Eye: Identifying the Plants around You. Dr. Kleier, who brings to this course a lifetime of teaching and researching botany, has designed it to help you notice plants, but to also help you to actually see them. You’ll explore over 20 of the most common plant families in North America, as well as some of the fascinating species within them (some of which you can likely find in your own backyard). Along the way, you’ll learn about the history of botanical science, tips and tricks botanists use to identify seemingly similar plants, and the myriad ways plants help define what it means to be human.

Meet Fascinating Plant Families

Rest assured, The Botanist’s Eye: Identifying the Plants around You won’t inundate you with having to learn over 650 plant families—let alone, more than 300,000 individual plant species. Rather, Dr. Kleier focuses on common plant families with a large number of species known as cosmopolitan families, meaning the plant family can be found around the world.

In addition, these lessons focus on flowering plants, with only one lesson devoted to plants that don’t flower. Why? Because there are many more flowering plants than non-flowering ones in the world. In fact, the flora of the Earth is about 90% flowering plants by species.

Some of the many plant families you’ll get better acquainted with in these lessons include:

Nymphaeaceae, or the water-lily family, thought to be the some of the oldest flowering plants alive and which embody many of the findings that modeled what early flowering plants might look like;
Orchidaceae, the second largest family of flowering plants, with 880 genera and 26,000 species, and thought to be some of the most newly evolved taxa of flowering plants;
Fagaceae, a plant family that includes oaks, beeches, and chestnuts, and which is set apart by the scaly bracts that enclose a single, rounded fruit (think an acorn);
Rubiaceae, a huge plant family whose alkaloids can act as emetics, medicine, and stimulants (such as quinine and coffee); and
Apiaceae, a plant family whose members are defined by their hollow stems and include spices (cilantro, celery, fennel, and caraway) and toxic plants (poison hemlock).
When exploring these and other fascinating families, Professor Kleier selects species that are representative of that family’s traits, including species that are beautiful, economically important, and even pestilential.

Get Closer Than Ever to Amazing Plants

One of many joys of The Botanist’s Eye: Identifying the Plants around You is the incredible types of plants you’ll come across—some of which you can pick up at your local florist, some of which you can pluck from your backyard, and some of which you have to wait years and years to see flower.

And in a course packed with vivid photographs and detailed scientific illustrations, you’ll get closer than ever to these amazing plants and their incredible details, from the patterns of their leaves to the eye-popping brilliance of their flowers (and, yes, even the dangers of their thorns and sap). These are just a few of the fascinating and unusual botanical specimens you will encounter:

Poinsettias: These plants were named after Joel Roberts Poinsett, who found a plant with beautiful red flowers in Mexico and brought them back to South Carolina. Except the flowers in poinsettias aren’t flowers at all—if you look closely, the reds parts of the plant are not petals but modified bracts, or specialized leaves.
Exploding Cucumbers: Though it looks like a regular member of the cucumber family (Cucurbitaceae), as the fruit matures, tissues around the seeds inside the fruit begin to break down, which creates mucilage build up. The resulting pressure can launch the seeds anywhere from six to 20 feet away.
Lavender: This Mediterranean plant thrives in hot summers and sandy soils, which makes it a sustainable crop (since it doesn’t require a lot of water). In a 2018 article, two researchers found that lavender oil provided the longest protection against mosquitos—around 210 minutes.
Corpse Flowers: Known as Amorphophallus titanum, the corpse flower exhibits a rotten meat smell that attracts flies, which pollinate the plant. The plant, found in many botanic gardens, blooms unpredictably and only lasts several days. After it blooms, the plant withers and goes dormant for around seven to nine years.
Cacao Trees: The species known as Theobroma cacao grows in forest understory, which is important because the overstory provides a shaded habitat for chocolate to grow. Chocolate pods are borne directly on the cacao tree’s trunk, not on distant branches, which aids in seed dispersal as big mammals can easily eat them.
Learn to Speak the Language of Plants

While The Botanist’s Eye: Identifying the Plants around You doesn’t shy away from the detailed science involved in botany, Professor Kleier takes care to demystify the complexity through her exceptional teaching style and an incredible amount of visual aids and references.

She’s filled these lessons with thorough explanations on how to identify hallmark features in plant families and species, from the arrangement of their leaves to the symmetry of their flowers. She also includes helpful tools and resources for budding botanists (with nothing more expensive than a hand-held magnifying lens), and even takes time to offer pointers on the correct way to pronounce those often intimidating Latin names.

“Botany,” Professor Kleier notes, “is a language. And like any language, if you rarely use it, you lose it. But if you practice it often, then it becomes familiar—and fun—to learn new words.”

There are so many ways to learn the names of the plants around you, and to call them out when you see them. And once you’ve learned the language of plants with help from The Botanist’s Eye: Identifying the Plants around You, you’ll have familiar acquaintances every time you go outside.

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