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Flora identification

I grew up in Sacramento, and took my first two years at UC Davis. Berkeley was a game changer/eye opener for most of us middle class kids from the suburbs. But I found it to be politically/philosophically challenging and interesting.

In an effort to completely derail this thread:
I've recently started reading some Joan Didion who was also from the Sacramento area and, as I'm sure you know, wrote a lot about it. Just curious if you've read her writing and what you think of it, being a fellow Sacramenton and all. I believe she must have been one generation older than you?

Alan
 
In an effort to completely derail this thread:
One of my favorite things about this forum is that threads often evolve in much the same way that a conversation would around a table or a campfire. Threads tend to drift here and there and then (usually) return to topic... along the way we get to know one another a little bit.
 
Just after high school I had a girlfriend that was studying botany. I hoped that some of it would rub off on me, but for as hard as we rubbed, it never took.

Now I am in the market for a good guide book for trees if anyone has a recommendation.
 
In an effort to completely derail this thread:
I've recently started reading some Joan Didion who was also from the Sacramento area and, as I'm sure you know, wrote a lot about it. Just curious if you've read her writing and what you think of it, being a fellow Sacramenton and all. I believe she must have been one generation older than you?

Alan
Alan,

My father, from when I was very young, took me to the library on a weekly basis. I read mostly classical fiction growing up: Defoe, Melville, Poe, Hawthorne, Dickens, James Fenimore Cooper, Jack London, Fitzgerald, Hemingway. I did read lighter material later on from Ian Fleming. I was certainly aware of Didion, but rarely read opinion or observational works. Although I did read, and enjoy books such as Carson’s Silent Spring and Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, which I loved. Interestingly, when at Berkeley, I took a graduate course in wildlife ecology from A. Starker Leopold, one of Aldo Leopold’s sons. I thought it was just ok, but not up to the standard of his father. But then, what do I know?

In an attempt to put this thread back on track, I wonder how people approach identifying flora. Do you use both common and scientific names? When I was a student, the mantra was that scientific nomenclature knowledge was essential, because they never changed and were ubiquitous. On the other hand, common names varied widely for the same plant. It turns out that the opposite has been true. Common names have remained relatively constant, while scientific names have changed substantially. At the University of British Columbia, I taught grassland ecology and range management. The most important climax grassland plant was bluebunch wheatgrass (Agropyron spicatum). It is still known as bluebunch wheatgrass, but its scientific name is now Pseudoreoegneria spicata. I didn’t know there was a roegneria, let alone a pseudoroegneria. Many, many more examples exist. I am too old to learn new scientific names.
 
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Do you use both common and scientific names?
The overwhelming majority of people in my experience use common names when discussing flora and fauna, whether they are canoeists or otherwise. When I got interested in planting trees on my property 20 years ago, I bought the best texts available on the subject, all of which naturally specified the Latin binomial nomenclature. I became fascinated by it, because I have always loved words, and began to use it.

I think I sounded like a pompous arse to most folks, except when I was talking to the owners of tree farms and nurseries from whom I was buying trees and shrubs. There, the name tags had the scientific Latin names, and I often would inquire whether the vendor had, or could acquire, a different species, sub-species or cultivar by using the proper scientific names.
The most important climax grassland plant was bluebunch wheatgrass . . . .
The kinky references to grass, fungi and other stimulating flora keep getting smuggled past the AI censor algorithms. Well, nothing's perfect.
 
Scientific names solve controversies. Some trees have 5 or more common names. For scientific writing the Latin nomenclature and the common names are usually given.

Pitt, One of my favorite habitat types of all time is definitely ppines and Ag spic. Eastern BC has lots of it. For people not familiar with botany short hand that is ponderosa pine/bluebunch wheatgrass. It is unfortunate that botanists continue to change scientific names.

I don't get along with botanists that well. They seem stuck on over doing everything. They are splitters and like to agonize over sub-species and cultivars. I am a lumper. For all practical purposes ponderosa pine and Jeffrey pine are the same species, but botanists will tell you other wise. Then they hybridize.

I got a new truck but the license plate is still PPINE.
 
I don't get along with botanists that well. They seem stuck on over doing everything. They are splitters and like to agonize over sub-species and cultivars. I am a lumper. For all practical purposes ponderosa pine and Jeffrey pine are the same species, but botanists will tell you other wise. Then they hybridize.

ppine,

I share your unhappiness with extreme splitters. Undoubtedly you are familiar with the following common distinction between ponderosa and Jeffrey pine:

“The best test is probably examining the pine cones beneath the tree. The Jeffrey’s cones are larger, more compact and the barbs point inward. The cones of the Ponderosa are smaller, loose spacing between the scales, with barbs that point outward.”

The outward pointing barbs are why you should never play barehanded catch with a ponderosa pine cone, unless you want to identify the species. Assuming that ponderosa and jeffrey are the same species, however, how did you decide to call yourself ppine and not jpine? Perhaps because Jeffrey pine is not actually a species? 😄
 
Same applies in geology/paleontology. I’m a lumper. Just cause local environments promote minor differences in morphology does not mean the critters are different. They’ve also been dead for too many years to comprehend. Lithostratigraphic codes says to define / describe formations by their lithology, not with bio markers. So why agonize over the dead bugs?
 
One man's syncline is another man's anticline.
I keep pine cones in the house, in the bathroom, on the dining room table. There are wonderful forms and beautiful to look at. They remind me of forests and that Nature is God.
I always have ppine cones around and usually sequoia, lodgepole pine, and impressive ones like sugar pine and Coulter pine.
 
sugar pine

I loved driving around and paddling in California's Sierra Nevada mountains and looking at the huge trees. Stunned by the size of the sugar pine cones, we once stopped on some mountain road and collected a bunch. We kept them in a wood barrel on our front porch in many houses as we moved around the country. They have now disappeared. I miss them . . . and the Sierra Nevadas.
 
Spring is coming to southeastern PA!

Eastern Skunk Cabbage; Simplocarpus foetida: Emerging spathe rising above the leaf litter.
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Snowdrop; Galanthus nivalis: It has escaped gardens and naturalized in this environment. A hundred years ago these woods were cultivated fields with several stone homes and barns, now in ruin.
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I have retired from hunting, and don't fish that much anymore. But every time I go outdoors I am looking at the vegetation. Forests are still totally fascinating. Its why I get up in the morning.

Spring is a long way off in the West.
 
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