Plant Identification

Plant Identification
Plant life is incredibly diverse and that makes identification complicated.  If you are landscaping your backyard you only need to know a few basic things.  If you find a plant and want to identify it, you may wish to visit http://www.colby.edu/info.tech/BI211/PlantFamilyID.html Here you can input the plant characteristics and get a group of families.  Then you will need to do some further research to get the appropriate cultivar. Unfortunately, the site won’t help you much unless you have a pretty good idea about plants already.

For landscaping your yard, most people won’t want to know about the taxonomic classification system.  We mostly want to be able to recognize the basic types of plants to choose from.  We are providing you a basic way to identify the most common landscaping plants.   

Maple Trees
They have large leaves and most of us already know the shape of the maple leaf.  Maple leaves are very large.  Maples seeds have little “helicopters” on them to help them float in the wind away from the tree.  Basically, look for a large leafed tree that looks pretty normal.

Quaky Aspen
The tree bark is white.  The leaves are small and round.  The tree will often have dark black bark spots among the white.  They grow by sending out runners and you will see smaller ones growing nearby.

Ash Trees
The most commonly planted are white ash and green ash.  The leaves are green and medium sized.  Branches and buds are opposite with a single budding leaf at the end of each branch.  The bark is light gray or brown and is not waxy.

Willow Trees
Willows have branches that hang down to the ground.  They have longer and very skinny leaves.  The leaves are in abundance.  The branches that hang down are thin and flexible while the trunks are large and sturdy.

Evergreen Trees
Pine trees have needles instead of leaves.  They grow in shades of blue and green.  They grow very tall and live a long time.  Their seeds are contained in a pine cone.  Pine tree needle length can vary a lot by species; some are quite long and others short. 

Vines
Evergreen vines tend to be a darker green and have smaller leaves.  The most common evergreen vine is the Ivy.  Deciduous vines are lighter green in color and tend to have larger leaves.  In addition, some non evergreen vines will bear fruit.  Fruit vines, like Grape, tend to have giant leaves.

Shrubs
In general, larger growing shrubs have cone shaped flowers or large cup shaped flowers and lower growing shrubs have smaller flowers and small cup shaped flowers.  You can look at smaller plants and compare flower size to determine how tall the plant might get.  This, however, is not a substitute for reading the description of the plant. 

Evergreen shrubs
Evergreen shrubs, like trees, have needles and are darker in color.  Some evergreens, like Euonymous, have a leaf that has a waxy “wet” look.  You can usually tell it’s an evergreen because the leaf looks like it’s out of the rainforest.  

Deciduous shrubs
Deciduous shrubs are lighter in color and the leaves are more dull in appearance.  You will have more choices to choose from when you get deciduous shrubs.  One great thing about deciduous shrubs is that they turn red in the fall.  Ivory Halo Dogwood is one of my favorite.  The bark on the stems actually turns red with the leaves.

Perennials 
Perennials are so diverse you can’t tell by looking at one.  You need to know about the individual plant.  One easy way is to remember what the annuals are because there aren’t that many annuals in the nurseries.  And, of course, it depends a lot on your geographic area.

Annuals  
Most people plant Pansies, Marigolds, Geraniums, Purple Fountain Grass, Salvia, Zinnia, Petunia, Impatiens, and many others.  Consider annuals that are self seeding so you don’t have to replant them every year.  For a longer list of annuals, please visit http://plantfacts.osu.edu/plantlist/annuals.html

Grasses
Grasses can be identified without further discussion.  Most of us already know what they look like.  Once you have seen one, you have seen them all. 

Desert Plants
Desert plants tend to have smaller flowers.  They are often more prickly, like cactus, than other plants.  Their color is usually light green or various shades of light silver or blue.  They also tend to produce a lot of seeds that travel well in the wind.  For example, dandelion seeds.