SO YOU WANT TO TEACH YOURSELF BOTANY…

I frequently get messages from people who really want to teach themselves botany and learn exactly where the fuck to start identifying plants and learning about them. The field is full of intimidating words (as well as some powdery stiffs, like much of Academia) and a confusing lexicon that can be a turn off to the layperson. I’m telling you this though - don’t be intimidated. With the internet, you have 24 hour access to the library. Use it. Ask questions. See a word you don’t understand? Look it up. Read about a concept that doesn’t make any sense to you (ie “what the shit does ‘monophyletic’ mean and why is it important)? Figure out what about it is confusing and ask the damn google.

That said, there are some key concepts you should understand that will make things a lot easier. They are:

Latin terminology - why do we use Latin? Well, because some dead guy named Linnaeus realized we need a universal system that scientists from multiple different cultures could use (at the time, he was probably mostly thinking of “white European cultures”, and while we can acknowledge how backwards and fucking goofy this is now, we can still admit that Linnaeus’ ideology was simply flawed like his time and NOT throw out the baby with the proverbial bath water. The fucker created a beautiful system, and it works. And that’s why we still use it. I say this because a few unthinking “performative leftist” nitwits as of late have decided to attack the science of taxonomy itself). Common names simply don’t work on a large scale. One common name (ie “cedar”) can refer to 8 different totally unrelated plants, where as Cedrus refers specifically to the genus which contains the species C. libani, C. deodara, and C. atlantica. When botanic names (or any organism’s name) is written in scientific nomenclature, the genus name is capitalized and the species name is lower case, and the name itself is usually written in italics. If you write a species name “Cedrus Atlantica” it is a dead give-away that you don’t know what the fuck you are doing. I was politely corrected on this point more than a decade ago, and I never hesitate to politely correct others. It’s like being courteous enough to tell somebody that they have a booger on their face.

Taxonomy : IS THERE A METHOD TO THE MADNESS? WHAT GIVES? - In short, yes, there is, absolutely, and it is so FUCKING cool. Why is it cool? Because we now group things according to how evolutionarily related are, and how they evolved. Once you learn the key concepts and traits that unite a family or a genus or a tribe, you can now identify members of that evolutionary grouping that you have never seen before. This is how I can see a plant that I have never encountered before and automatically know what other plants its related to, what family or genus it is in, and thus know what taxonomic group to search for it under (on inaturalist using the “explore” feature or with a key (flora), etc).

  • Plant Systematics by Michael Simpson

    This is the seminal textbook to use if you are deciding to take the deeper dive into botany. Plant Systematics is the study of plant evolution, and furthermore is the study of plant identification as it relates to plant evolution via an understanding of SYNAPOMORPHIES. This textbook by Dr. Michael Simpson lays out why botanists were able to tell how closely related certain plant families and orders were BEFORE the advent of DNA analysis, as well as why some of those prior assumptions were found to be wrong. This is a family-by-family, and order-by-order way to become familiar with plant morphology and evolution. This is also an excellent way to one day be able to see new plants that you have never seen before and automatically know what families or genera they might be related to simply by observing them. At present, the third edition is the most current and it is a book that you will use as a reference for the next ten years (at least) of your life.

  • Raven's Biology of Plants

    This textbook covers many of the basics of plant biology as well as getting into the nuances of plant evolution, with excellent examples of some of the more charismatic and curious plant species out there. It also does a great job of explaining what botanists know so far about how plants evolve and how selection pressures work to cause all the “variations on a theme” and “endless forms most beautiful” that got Darwin all horny. What is an ecotype you say? What is the Hardy-Weinberg theorem? What are allele frequencies? What is convergent evolution? All these concepts are explained, in depth, in this excellent text book.

  • Additional Texts

    It’s always great to be able to support authors by buying their books, but sometimes the cost of self-education can prohibitive. It is my firm belief that any of the authors listed below (unless they’re dicks) would not want anyone to be prohibited from reading their work. This is why sources like www.libgen.is and www.sci-hub.se and other book sharing websites exist. In this case I suggest purchasing a cheap android tablet and becoming acquainted with the idea of reading textbooks in pdf form. A half pound electronic device can store upwards of half a million pages or more worth of textbooks.

    Phylogeny and Evolution of the Angiosperms by Pam and Doug Soltis

    The Tangled Tree by David QUammen - A Good pop-sci explanation of molecular phylogenetics and understanding evolution

    Plant Evolution : An Introduction to the History of Life by Karl Niklas

    Botany Illustrated by Janice Glimm-Lacy

    Annals of the Former World (geology) by John Macphee

    Botany for Gardeners by Brian Capon

    The Ecology of Plants by Jessica Gurevitch

    A Botanist’s Vocabulary by Susan Pell

    The Rose’s Kiss by Peter Bernhardt

    Flowering Plant Families by Wendy Zomlefer

    How the Earth Turned Green by Joseph Armstrong

    The Origin, Expansion, and Demise of Plant Species by Donald Levin

    The Ecology of Seeds by Michael Fenner

    The Fungi by Sarah Watkinson

    Biogeography : An Ecological and Evolutionary Approach by C. Barry Cox

    Evolution Making Sense of Life by Carl Zimmer

    Cacti Biology and Uses

    An Island Called California by Elna Baker (a great text due to it’s explanation of ecological relationships even if you don’t live in California)

    Serpentine Geoecology of Western North America by Earl Alexander

    A Natural History of California by Allan Schoenherr

    Ecology of Desert Systems by Whitford

    The California Deserts by Bruce Pavlik

    Plant and Animal Endemism in California by Susan Harrison (again - great explanations even if you’re not into California. IT is a great case study)