Wild Rose College of Natural Healing Part 2: Plant ID Part 2...Wild Rose College of Natural Healing BONTANY 4 HERBALIST Part 2: Plant ID Wild Rose College of Natural Healing Terry

Wild Rose College of Natural Healing BONTANY 4 HERBALIST

Part 2: Plant ID

Wild Rose College of Natural Healing Terry Willard Cl.H PhD. ©2018 1

Dandelion

Line drawing

Part 2

Plant Identification and

Classification

Carolus Linnaeus: Eighteenth century Swedish botanist, who initiated the system of plant

Classification used worldwide today.

The knowledge of plant identification is a valuable tool for a herbalist,

however not always necessary if you are working in a dispensary, clinic or

herb shop. The products they use may always come in labelled bottles. The

need for these people to have a sophisticated knowledge of plant

identification is nowhere as important as it is for the wild-crafters. A wild-

crafter is a person that harvests botanical medicine in the ‘wild’. We want

you to take this lesson as far as you feel your needs suggest. Remember,

you can always come back and study it further in the future, if the need

arises. If you want to delve deeper into this subject you can find books in

your local library, maybe courses from a community college, university or

even a horticulture club.

For this section of the course we strongly suggested you aquire the book: Botany

in a Day: Herbal Field Guide to Plant Families by Thomas J. Elpel (ISBN

1-892784-02-5) www.hollotop.com, or obtain it from Amazon or local

provider. We will be relying heavily on this book for this section. It could

help a lot to be able to read along. Many people have found the children’s

(9 – 99) book: Shanleya’s QUEST also very useful. You might also want to

check out: Patterns in Plant Card Game from the same provider.

Dandelion

(Taraxacum officinale)

http://www.hollotop.com/


Part 2: Plant ID


One of the main reasons we are using Botany in a Day: Herbal Field Guide to Plant Families (BID) as the text for this section of the course, is not only

is it the best we have ever found, the simple approach that is used is more

user friendly than the ones found in academia. We have used various

editions of this book for over 10 years at Wild Rose College and the

students have loved it. The best part of this book is the packaging of the

material. To put this in the words of the author: “One principle I have

learned while writing and teaching is that the ease or difficulty of learning a

subject is not so much a factor of the complexity or volume of the

information, but rather of its packaging. . . learning a thousand differ plants

and many of their uses can be a snap when presented with the right

packaging.” He goes on to say that it is a matter of recognizing patterns

among the plants that is beneficial instead of learning lists of hard to

pronounces names. He has put the material together in a way that has

shortcuts to study botany and herbology.

Using the four-step tutorial process that he has outlined has been a simple

process for many students to get a handle on the material. We will go into

this in more detail in the next lesson.

Plant Classification

The purpose of plant classification is to help define one species from

another. Plant classification builds on the material we have already learned

in earlier lessons, aiding us to see the difference between species. This

process is called taxonomy.

Think of plant classification like Russian dolls.

There is a big one, with a smaller one inside it,

and a smaller one inside it, and so on and so on.

Practically speaking as a Herbalist, we usually

only deal with the names of Genus and species.

But knowing the family can be quite useful. This

helps us know related plants, while easing

identification through patterns. For the most part,

we deal with scientific names like Arctostaphylus uva-ursi (Bearberry or Uva ursi) though.

There are many reasons why we want to know the scientific (Botanical,

Latin) name for a plant. Probably the most important one is for being able to

communicate with other people and so we all know which plant we are

talking about. You might want to work with the common name in day-to-

day life and that is your choice, but you will be surprised how fast those

hard to pronounce names will start to creep into your life with ease and

confidence.

Look at BID Tutorial:

on pages 1 of book

Read pages 2 - 4 in BID


Part 2: Plant ID


The biggest problem with common names is of course the name often

changes from location to location and most definitely between various

languages. By having a standard name, we can have confidence that we

have the right plant. This is particularly true for Herbalists, as you are using

these plants to aid in the healing process of people’s ailments. Something

that most people take very personally.

As stated earlier, plant classification is the area that has undergone great

change in the last 20 – 40 years. In fact, in some ways it only has a bare

resemblance to the botanical system I learned in University in the early

1970s.

As a Herbalist, you will be straddling both the old and the new systems. For

this reason, we want you to be at least familiar with both the older system

and the newer one. As you study Herbalism, you will come across both

written and verbal material taken from each of these systems.

The main reason for the rapid changes over the last 20 – 40 years is that the

tools of identification have changes. Originally since Linnaeus’ time in the

eighteenth-century, classification was done from physical observation of

nature. Now identification is done from knowledge of molecular Biology

and most specifically DNA. This new information along with several newer

scientific insights has changed what was once thought to be true from

observation when delved into deeper.

Three Domain and Six Kingdoms

One of the biggest changes is the changing of what has in the past been

called Kingdoms. In the 1970, we basically only considered the two

Kingdoms of Plant and Animals. Yes, in 1894 Ernst Haeckel did add a third

kingdom of one celled organism call Protists, but it was not much of a

concern for botanists. In the 1960s and early 1970s, most textbooks

considered Fungi as part of the Plant Kingdom, but now they have their

own Kingdom. They then divided up the bacteria into two Kingdoms.

Traditionally, textbooks in North America used a system of six kingdoms (Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, Archaea/Archaeabacteria, and Bacteria/Eubacteria) while textbooks in Great Britain, India, Australia, Latin America and other countries used five kingdoms (Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista and Monera). In the 1990s, Woese originated the concept of Domains showing that Plants, Animals and Fungi belong to the same group, due to their cell-structure being similar to Protista. This gave us three domains, with the elevation of the two bacteria Kingdoms into separate Domains. Some classifications systems have explicitly abandoned the term "Kingdom", noting that the traditional kingdoms do not consist of

See pages 13 in BID

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeabacteria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eubacteria


Part 2: Plant ID


all the descendants of a common ancestor. We are most likely going to see this system change in the future again, but who knows when and how. Since us Herbalists are not consulted in the process, we will just have to sit back and see what the academics come up with next. The take home from this is that there is a system and it works for the most part and it has more advantages to use it than to not use it. The concept behind the Domain and new Kingdom Classification is based

on evolution and DNA markers. This has moved lots of plants around and

changed some of their names.

Evolutional Approach

For the most part, the whole area of new plant classification is based on the

underlying concept of evolution. Even though this is a solid foundation that

most biology, including botany bases itself on; it doesn’t come without its

holes and problems. The clear fact that most likely over 99% of all species

that have ever lived are now extinct, thus next to impossible to examine.

Yes, there is always the fossil records, but plants (with many having soft

bodies), doesn’t produce an abundance of fossils.

Most of the evolutional history of plants have been in the oceans and other

waters of the world. Herbalists do use some water (aquatic) base plants, but

for the most part we us more land based plants. For plants that evolved

floating in nutrient based environment (Mother Ocean) to make the

transition to land; they had to learn to bring that Mother Ocean with them.

Paleontologist Mark and Dianne McMenamin have theorized that this

evolutionary jump was accomplished by plants joining a symbiotic

relationship with fungi. So even though we are going to mostly study the

plant kingdom, the fungi kingdom as we have already seen, does again play

an important role in evolution of a plant community. We now know that

around 90% of plant species are associated with fungi in the soil. To be

more to the point, it appears at least 80% of plant cannot live without an

association with fungi. Even though science likes to split thing up into pile

like Kingdoms and Domains, as Herbalists we still need to realize that it

takes a community to raise a plant.

Today, we have more than twice as many land based species as we do in the oceans. Even more significant, even though the planet is only one third land mass, present estimates are that the biomass (organic matter) is fifty times higher on land than in the oceans.

Read pages 5 - 13 in BID

Read insert on the

bottom of page 7 in

BID


Part 2: Plant ID


Kingdoms are divided into smaller groups called phyla.

We are going to look at four broad groups of plants: Nonvascular Spore plants: represent some of the simplest members of the plant Kingdom and they are the mosses, hornworts and liverworts. These plants reproduce with spores. The size of these plants is limited by the lack of internal pluming (vascular system) to transport water and nutrients around. Vascular Spore Plants: As you can see on the diagram, increase in complexity, with clubmosses, horsetail and ferns. These reproduce with spores, but also have a vascular system for the transport of water and nutrients. This means they can grow much larger, as the carboniferous age attests to.


Part 2: Plant ID


Naked Seeds: Cycads, ginkgo, conifers and gnetums make up this group. They all have vascular system and reproduce by seeds instead of spores. These are called gymnosperm for “naked seeds” because the female egg (ovule) is exposed to the open air during pollination. Flowering Plants: Angiosperms both dominate the world we observe, and are the ones that herbalist use the most. They have ovules containing ovary inside a flower. Pollen (as we have seen) penetrate the ovary to fertilize the ovules. For the most part, the system of classification we will be using in this course is the latest effort based on genetic research and coordinated by a worldwide team of taxonomist known as the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG). You will have seen that in your reading assignment and on the cover (all be it in small letters) of your book. Most of the plants we will deal with are in the phyla Spermatophyta (or

seed bearing plant), which we will look at later, but we will be looking at

other phyla first.

Monocots and Dicots We have been looking at these several times already, but to remind us the monocots have one cotyledon as we can see in the corn diagram and the dicot has two cotyledons. We have also seen that the monocot leaves usually have parallel veins and the dicots have netted veins. Of course, some of them are going to send you around the bend, as they don’t seem to fit like plantain (Plantago sp.). They appear to have parallel veins, but on closer look we see, yes, they are netted. You might also remember that most (not all) dicots have flower parts in multiples of four or five, while monocots are in multiples of threes. Roots of monocots are typically fibrous (like grasses) and dicot often have taproots. You might come across another newer term, that doesn’t influence the type of identification we will be doing, or of importance to herbalists – and that is eudicots, or true dicots. This term splits the dicots almost down the middle and is based on evolutionary evidence. We will go on to learning the families in more detail in our next lesson.


Part 2: Plant ID


COMPARISON OF MONOCOTS & DICOTS

MONOCOT

1. One cotyledons

2. Scattered vascular bundles

3. Fibrous roots

4. Parallel leaf veins

5. Floral parts arranged in multiples of 3

DICOT

1. Two cotyledons by vascular bundles

2. Central core (pith) wrapped

3. Taproots

4. Branching leaf veins

5. Floral parts arranged in multiples of 4 or 5

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Wild Rose College of Natural Healing Part 2: Plant ID Part 2...Wild Rose College of Natural Healing BONTANY 4 HERBALIST Part 2: Plant ID Wild Rose College of Natural Healing Terry