I'm doing now, what you did then; it's fantastically absorbing and interesting!

Studying what grows without human assistance here is really helping me to make better choices of garden plants, as well as with where to put them once I get them.

Great article!

Thank you!

I'm glad you enjoyed the article. I have to get going on fungus and I'm not as good with trees as I should be. It is a life-long search.

Fantastic article Kathleen - thank you so much!

I started learning the names of all the "stuff" in our woods and on our property over 20 years ago when we lived in OH. Now that we're here, there are lots of new things to learn

I'm not good with trees either. If they are in leaf, I'm better but dh is able to identify by the bark. Maybe someday I can do that

Great article!I know a lot of names for plants...at least, when I can remember them! I even know some botanical names! Seem like every two years they go and change the botanical names, however. It's really irritating when I know one...and then find out they changed it!

I just loved this article.

I have been on an extended road trip through Oregon, Calif., Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and now headed through the top part of Nevada, bottom of Idaho and back home to Dallas, Oregon.

On this trip I am amazed to find that most people don't seem to know the names of the native plants blooming all around them on the deserts and meadow lands. Even people that have lived in the area all their life.

As I have been taking photos I have been working at identifying them. What a task it has been, but a fun one for sure.

So true! It's very rare to find someone who actually knows more than a few kinds of wildflowers. I used to be like that once. As far as true wildflowers, I knew while young a "buttercup", a "dandelion" and a "bluebonnet". Later I found out that what I called "buttercup" was actually a primrose, not botanically a buttercup at all . And the "dandelion" I knew was actually a Texas Dandelion, not the plant that just about everybody else calls dandelion. At least the last one really was a bluebonnet! When late in my life I decided to get serious about college, I eventually ended up at a university that offered three kinds of plant courses that had field trips. I took the wildflower course and afterward the woody plant course. By that time, I had already been working on learning the wildflowers and had one book on Texas wildflowers. Those courses were the most enjoyable courses I've ever taken! With our copies of Wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country in hand, we'd pile into the van most weeks during those courses and we'd go somewhere to look at and identify plants growing wild and collect plant specimens. It was an adventure! Some of my other courses might be horrendously difficult, tedious and boring, but not those! I don't think I ever missed one of those plant classes! I might mention that they weren't blow-off courses at all. There were quizzes every week and you really had to study hard to make that A or B! Then there were plant specimens that had to be pressed, dried and pasted into a notebook...with labels you had to make and fill out with info...those were turned in for grades. I heard years later that the university would no longer provide vans for the classes and the professor and students were just getting around in private vehicles for the field trips. It was after those that I joined a chapter of Native Plant Society of Texas and the Master Naturalists. Some of those people really know the native plants...and a lot of nonnative plants also!

We live near Jamestown NY, the home of the Roger Tory Peterson Institute. RTPI occasionally gives a wild flower class, which I took several years ago. It turned out that I knew almost as much as the educator about local plants, but it was fun going around the county and seeing them in different settings. And, he knew a spot where the Ladie's Slippers were quite abundant, which was a nice thing to see.

I think what I like most about knowing the plants is that it centers you in a place. My daughter is moving home with her family from several years in Kentucky, and while she was there, I made an effort to know what was growing around her. It made her place more real to me. Now, we'll have their new property, which is about 4 miles from us, to explore. It is often remarkable how much difference a few miles and a change in elevation can make.

Lynn, one year when we were going down to KY to visit, I kept a catalog of sorts of the roadside flowers. The changes from north to south were very interesting.

Kathleen, I found that from one desert area to the next. It was amazing the changes we saw in just a few miles of travel. It was so intriguing to me.
I probably have over 500 photos of plants just on the desert. Can't wait to get home and start adding them to the database. Some I will still have to ID.

An excellent article Kathleen! It is also good to know the difference between poison oak and Virginia creeper!

yes indeed!