Botany 4 Herbalist Part 2 Using the Key How to Use the Keys As can be seen in the reading, even though plant identification and classification can be very useful for a herbalist, many of the reforming that have happened over the 20 40 years have changed many names. This can be somewhat problematic as both names and keys found in books written more than 10 years ago might be now wrong. As seen in the video and the reading, this could even end up with huge problems as some medicinal plants have moved around enough to be place right beside poisonous ones, confusing the new comers to get to know a particular species. This is usually only a short-term problem; as once you know the plant, get familiar with it and start to use it as part of your materia medica, the classification doesn t matter anymore. Read pages 22-24 in BID "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" as written in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet seems to argue that it does not matter that Romeo is from her family's rival house of Montague, that is, that he is named "Montague". 1
This does not change their properties or your relationship with them. Your relationship with the plant and how you use it is our ultimate goal. Fungi Kingdom As a herbalist you might want to use fungi or mushroom that are outside the plant kingdom. This would take a completely different type of key. The Fungi Kingdom is made up of unicellular microorganisms like yeasts and molds that might create community as well as multicellular fungi such as mushrooms. They are separate from both the animal and plant Kingdom, having similarities to both. Herbal examples: Reishi, Shiitake and many others Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) 2
Shiitake (Lentinula edodes) Plant Families We of course are not going to go through all of the plant families, just some of the major ones. We have already looked at the most common 9 families and we will be using a key to find the rest of the families in the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG). But before we get to the Angiosperms, we will look back a bit at some of the more important nonflowering plants. 3
Thallophyta This is now a defunct division of Plant Kingdom but we wanted to include it as once it contained fungus, lichens and algae. You might find it still cropping up in older writings. In your reading assignment, you saw that nonvascular spore plant is limited to the text on page 8. The primitive vascular spore plant, such as ferns and horsetails was found on page 38 to 45. Some of these have both medicinal value and interesting stories, so refer to the bonus video on these. Algae Is now considered an informal large group of photosynthetic organisms The two of most interest to Herbalist are: a) Green Algae(s) (Chlorella) b) Blue Green Algae(s) Green Algae 4
Blue Green Algae Bryophyta Mosses & Liverworts Liverwort Moss Pteridophyta 1. Ferns 2. Horsetails (Equisetum) Fern line drawing Fern life cycle 5
Horsetails (Equisetum) Bonus Videos On Horsetail As you might have realized with the tutorial and on page 14, there is an order to the patterns of plants, especially flower plants. Spermatophyta The seed-bearing plants have most of the medicinal plants. In this section, we will look at gymnosperms and angiosperms. In the angiosperm section, we will be discussing some of the major families from an herbalist's point of view. 6
On pages 46 49 in BID you can find a key and description of Naked Seed plant of the Gymnosperms. Gymnospermae Female cone Male cone Gnetophyta Family Ephedra sp. Ephedra sp. line drawing 7
Ginkgophyta Ginkgo biloba Ginkgo biloba line drawing Bonus Video On Ginkgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bszzmf0xm3c 8
Coniferophyta Pine Tree Pinus sp. Bonus Video On Pine Pollen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9pimnqbu54 9
The conifer naked seeds, (such as Pine family) was found on page 46 49. If your specimen is a flower plant and not one of the nine (9) family then you already know and you will have to follow through with the keys to narrow down your choice. The first place to start: Is your plant a monocot or a dicot? 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 three 10
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 Monocots If your plant is a monocot, then use the key to Monocots on p. 34. You can see you have two major sections, with Showy Flowers in the top section like; Irises and Orchids. Monocot with Non-showy Flowers like: Grasses and Cattails in the lower section. Don t worry if you don t get it immediately, lots of times there appears to be more than one answer. Try both, or all possibilities. Turn to the family description(s) and see if your plant fits in. At first there might be lots of back and forth, but once you start to both see and even feel the family description, it will become almost automatic. I know it doesn t always seem that way at first, but trust me, the back and forth action is just developing the neural nets in your brain to train you to be a field botanist. Once you have it down to the family, you go through the same process to get it down to the genus. You are almost there. Once you have the genus you can find out many things about it uses, some of which can be found in your text. At this stage, you might need to use other local guides or even the internet to find out the species that grows in your area. I must admit the first few times it might seem a bit difficult, but does feel kind of great, like finding an Easter egg treasure, once you get the reward of knowing a plant. You are now on your way to owning the plant, to have the right to wild-craft the plant and use it. Congratulations! 11
Grasses (Gramineae) Grass Family Sweet Grass (Hierochloe odorata) Common botany among grasses Bonus Video On Sweet Grass (Cyperaceae) Sedge Family Carex sp. Carex sp. 12
Lily Family (Liliaceae) Tiger Lily (Lilium montanum) Madonna Lily (Lilium candidum L.) Canada Lily (Lilium canadense) Fig 1.58 Wood Lily (Lilium philadelphicum) 13
Orchid Family (Orchidacea) Lady Slipper Orchid (Cypripedium parviflorum) Bonus Video On Lady Slipper Orchid If your specimen is a dicot, the same process is done, but before you go through all the details, check out if it is in the Aster family. The Aster family is the largest family of flowering plants in the northern latitudes. So, it only makes sense to determine if it fit into this family first. It is equally as important to make sure you are looking at a single flower of a plant and not a plant with a flower with many stamens. Remember the Teasel family has many similarities of the Aster family so you will have to learn to separate these. 14
Aster Family (Compositae/Asteraceae) Echinacea sp. If it is not in the Aster family, then you will have to delve deeper into keying out which family the specimen is in. Don t forget you also know eight (8) other families. If it looks like it might be one of those, go to that family and see if it fits. If so, you are more than 50% of the way there. If you need to delve deeper, Botany in A Day has a form to profile your plant. Your job is to fill in as many empty blanks as you can. We have reproduced a copy here, with a few copies at the end of this lesson. You can just print them off, or use it digitally; remember, you start from the bottom of the form and move up. 15
Form on page 24 of BID 16
Choose the Correct Dicot Key Now that you have profiled your dicot flower in detail, you have the major tools to know what family and maybe even the species name by going through the key. Of course, BID does not include every plant, but most plants you will come across, at least in the wilds. You might have noticed at this level the author has only used line drawings without colored pictures. This is intentional, as people tend to try and match shades of colors rather than looking at the details. For keying, we need the details. Are you ready to get down to being able to identify thousands of plants across North America? Remember that all the descriptions come with the phrase mostly so, or usually. Plants can vary a lot from their norm. For this key, we are going to use the flower types to start with. You will see it starts with six (6) different types: Key to Regular Dicot Flowers with Numerous (more than 11) Petals Key to Irregular Dicot Flowers Key to Regular Dicot Flowers with 0, 3, or 6 Petals Key to Regular Dicot Flowers with 4 Petals Key to Regular Dicot Flowers with 5 United Petals Key to Regular Dicot Flowers with 5 Separate Petals As you can see after this, following this group the is: Key to Dicot Trees and Shrubs by theirs. Well that was easy, just match the pictures and see if the description fits. I know, the first few times are a bit of a challenge, but the more you use it, growing those neural nets in your brain, the easier it becomes. So, take every opportunity you have at the beginning to build those networks. These networks usually build up on a 3, 7, 21-day process. At 3 days, you have built familiarity. At 7 days, you created the pattern and 21 days the networks are in place, with less maintenance to keep them functional. This means the next stage is up to you. Put in the time now and you will have a functional system in your brain to be able to use for the rest of your life. In our next lesson we are going to look at more of the most prominent families used by Herbalists. 17
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