At Cogitania’s Saturday Botany workshop fourth graders returned to Brookline to determine the identity of the plants the students observed at the Tower Hill Botanic Garden.

We first discussed methods for identifying plants. We looked at several plant guide books, including wildflower guides with photographs and older wildflower guides with plates showing painted pictures used by botanists prior to the invention of photography.

We learned about an app called “Go Botany”, a plant identification program developed by the New England Wildflower Society. We also looked at an IPhone app called “myGardenAnswers” which allows you to submit a photo and ask a horticulturalist to identify the plant. Since we are learning about basic plant classification we used the guides and Go Botany to identify our plants observed in the field.

The students then searched through the guides and answered questions in “Go Botany” about the characteristics of their plant and through a process of elimination identified their plant. Each student was successful in identifying their plant.

Next week we will delve a little deeper into plant identification using the traditional Linnaeus method for classifying plants.

Instructor: Nathan Emerson