Medicinal Plants of the Southern Appalachians by Patricia Kyritsi Howell

For example, if you’re using Newcomb’s Field Guide, first you’ll look at the flower. Look at the features as they’re organized in your field guide. While some garden herbs might be featured in a wildflower guide if they’re known to exist in the wild or escape gardens, most cultivated plants will not be covered.ģ. Also, keep in mind that most of your field identification guides are limited to wildflowers, which means they won’t include flowering shrubs or trees – you’ll need a tree or shrub field guide for those. It’s almost impossible to key out a plant with 100 percent certainty if it’s not in flower. This works best if you physically have your field guide(s) and the actual plant in front of you so you can inspect finer details. Got that? It needs to be wild, in bloom, and a wildflower (which means it dies back in winter, usually with no woody growth). Be sure to read each book’s introduction to get a sense of how it’s organized this will help you flip through the pages muchĢ. Try looking it up a few wildflowers in various field guides to see which guides work best. If you live elsewhere, see “Books Our Botanists Use” on the USDA website, and ask your local native plant society, Audubon center, naturalist, and/or herbalist.

Here in the Northeast, by far my two favorite resources are Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide and the New England Wildflower Society’s GoBotany website, but I keep others on hand (see the Recommended Reading page of for a full list). Books use illustrations or photographs, and these are only as good as the quality of the image and how well it really represents the plant.

Some are arranged by flower color (which might seem appealing until you realize that what you think is “purple” could be considered white, blue, or pink by a botanist), leaf arrangement, the number of flower petals, type of flower, and/or plant family. These can be organized in different ways. Pick up some field identification guides. A new plant that you don’t already know becomes “the next Great Plant Mystery,” and the process of sleuthing out its identity helps you look more closely at and connect with each plant. Most of us did not grow up learning to identify plants, so we rely on field guides to help us figure it out.įortunately, learning how to identify plants can be incredibly fun. But (to quote Spiderman), with great power comes great responsibility. Nothing is quite as powerful and healing as picking a plant yourself, turning it into a remedy, taking it, and feeling that plant infuse you with its vital energy. Can you identify wild plants with 100 percent certainty? If you plan to ingest it or give it to someone else, you need to! The ability to “key out” and identify plants is a crucial skill for any herbalist or wild food forager.

Medicinal Plants of the Southern Appalachians by Patricia Kyritsi Howell