Plant study week

[Seoras]

Just wanted to see if we were carrying on with this thread?

I am of to Snowdonia next week for a spot of climbing and will be taking my book on Mountain Flowers. Will try and get some shots but my camers is not the greatest.

Thought if I take somme piccies, post them with possible ID's and see what everyone else thinks.

Has anyone got some good pictures from the Moot on plants there? ID'd quite a few and was especially chuffed to ID Wood Sage (thanks to 3Please). No picture I am afraid.

Cheers

George

 

[Pablo]

First time I've seen this thread. I'm certainly keen to carry it on.

Pablo.

 

[rich59]

Was the idea to do this intensive week together or at different times? Or would a day a month be in order?

 

[jasons]

top tread has any one got some pix of meadow sweet

 

[JonnyP]

top tread has any one got some pix of meadow sweet

Have a look here Jas... http://www.british-wild-flowers.co.uk/M-Flowers/Meadowsweet.htm
It looks a bit like ground elder as it comes out the ground and has reddish stems...Got some of my own shots of it on a hard drive somewhere if you need more photos..Just give us a shout mate...

 

[Rebel]

I missed this thread before and now realize that it's an old thread. I thought it was a bit odd to start a plant study week in February but then we are an odd bunch.

I'm working on trees this month. Identifying trees in winter is quite interesting. Can't say I'm very good at it but I'm getting better and that's what counts to me. In fact I'm studying woodlands for the next few months and enjoying it.

 

[jasons]

thanks for the link jon

 

[Jodie]

Rebel - I've been getting some help from the Hainault winter twigs ID site (they have other
sections too, eg summer flowers) - today I spotted hazel, black poplar and willow (to be
honest it was pretty obvious that it was a willow but it was cool to see that the twigs
matched up reasonably well), as well as silver birch, ash, horse chestnuts and London
planes. A couple of weeks ago it was nearly all limes where I went, so it was nice to see
something a bit more varied today.

Hainault winter twigs
http://www.hainaultforest.co.uk/3Winter twigs.htm

I've also got the Collins Field Guide to Trees which is partially helpful - I think it will be
more use, when leaves appear, for the visuals although the written descriptions of things
in winter are very good, and that helped to confirm the hazel for me.

What I want is a website that shows what bark looks like!

I suppose there's a danger of focussing on bits of tree (twigs, leaves, bark, overall shape
of crown) and not seeing the tree for the twigs

Reading the intro to the Collins book the guy talks about the difficulty of identifying trees
as a beginner and how you can be holding twigs/leaves from three similar species and
struggling to distinguish them but after a while you could spot each of the trees as you
whiz past on a train hehe.

It would be nice to look at a tree and recognise it, in the same way that I could recognise
someone I know from a distance but at the moment there's a lot of peering, squinting and
consulting sheaves of paper printed from the web - and probably attracting puzzled looks
from passersby!

I wonder if I am using consciously the same processes that I use unconsciously to
recognise faces and people or if it's something quite different (but still pattern
recognition). As I'm typing this I am pondering whether or not my bewilderment at trees
is anything like the sort of amnesia where you can no longer recognise people (by which
I don't mean to belittle amnesia, just considering the processes involved).

 

[JonnyP]

Jason....I was up in sussex this weekend and saw this, so I got Kieren to take a photo... This is a young meadowsweet plant. This is what your looking for at the moment as they start to emerge out the ground...

 

[Rebel]

Hey Jodie funny you should mention Hainault, I was in there just two weeks ago with my tutor doing tree IDing and looking for ancient woodland indicators.

It was a great day out and we all enjoyed ourselves. I'm getting better at this ID business and maybe in a few years I'll be an old hand at it, who knows.

I was in a country park recently with an arborist who seems to know his stuff and he mentioned the difficulty in identifying conifers. He loves his subject and can rattle off all kinds of information and Latin names but he couldn't tell us with total certainty (without a book) what some of the conifers were. He did mention certain things to look for (in conifers) and about the smells of some of them that aid recognition but I'm afraid I've forgotten a lot of what he said. At least even I could ID the Sequoia trees.