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Why you should learn the names of plants (hexbear.net)

submitted 7 months ago by carpoftruth@hexbear.net to c/gardening@hexbear.net

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Think of a time when you've seen a big group of people you don't know. Maybe you enter a new class, or see a crowd at an event, or there's a team of people building or maintaining something. If you don't know them, your brain might just classify them as "the people in the class/event/construction site" and not go further. But obviously, each one of those people has their own personality, inner life, needs, desires, etc, that is occluded by a casual definition of "they're the crowd in this class/event/construction site".

The same kind of thing happens when you look at a green space that you don't know, whether it's a forest, a meadow, a garden, or just a little patch of growth. It's easy for your brain to just think "it's a forest" and not classify any further.

Naming something is an important part of recognizing it and understanding it as a distinct entity. Once you've put a name to something, it's possible to character it as a unique part of the whole. For a plant, naming it helps you understand what it likes, doesn't like, where it grows, what eats it or doesn't, it's morphology and how it varies over the season. Naming doesn't mean understanding but it is a necessary step that allows understanding.

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[–] junebug2@hexbear.net 4 points 7 months ago

Seek by iNaturalist is a iPhone/ Android app that lets you point your camera at any animal or plant, and it’ll try and identify it down to species. There is some stuff about location tracking, officially to give you a little scavenger hunt for plants and animals near you. A hiking buddy of mine showed it me two years ago, and so far I’d say a lot of times you can only get to genus, but for most plants you can get the common name from the genus.