Podcast 279: Plant ID Apps vs Your Brain 📱🧠

Plant ID apps are helpful (when they’re accurate), but there is one drawback – they make it harder to learn plant ID for yourself. But there are ways to combat that so that you get good at plant ID – without having to memorize a ton of stuff.

It’s summer! Now is the time to be out there practicing with your plants. Yes, there are lots of apps that will try to identify plants for you, but this is about skill development – because when you know, you know. Working through the process of observation and identification isn’t just a one-time thing, like sending a photo through a plant ID app – it builds and strengthens the pathways in your brain that you use to do the job. So let’s get out there and be really looking at plants!

In the Olden Times, when you wanted to identify a plant, you’d need a guide book. Each one is a little bit different, but usually there’s a “key” to help you sort through all the possibilities and narrow in on a target. These start with distinct patterns, like opposite vs alternate leaf arrangement. Then you might look at the leaf edges, to see if they’re serrated, smooth, or something else. At some point you’ll look at the flowers, too: are they symmetrical? How many petals, and what color? All these details will help you to exclude some plants (or groups of them), so the set of plant descriptions & pictures you need to look at gets smaller and smaller, until you have a manageable number to work with.

So that’s how you’d use a plant ID guide, but notice something here: it all starts with observation. Even if you don’t know what “pinnate” or “glabrous” means, you can observe features of your plant and recognize its patterns.

In this episode, we’ll demonstrate the observation process for you, and you can play along! We go outside and describe a plant we know and love, starting with its leaves, stems, flowers, and other clear features. But we won’t show it to you until the very end. Can you figure out who we’re talking about, before we show it to you? Notice the timestamp when you have a guess.

Even if you don’t recognize it until we show it to you – or even after we do – it’s the process, the attention, and the habit of close looking that we really want to instill in you today. The more you practice observation, the better you’ll get at plant ID.

Wanna learn more techniques to help you with plant identification, as well as with learning herbalism in general and retaining the stuff you’re studying? Grab the free Herbal Study Tips course! This fun course is designed to make all your learning – whether that’s with us, from other teachers, from books, or from the plants themselves – more exciting and effective.

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Episode Transcript

Katja (00:17):
Hi, I’m Katja.

Ryn (00:18):
And I’m Ryn.

Katja (00:19):
And we’re here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ryn (00:22):
And on the internet everywhere thanks to the power of the podcast.

Katja (00:25):
Woo-Hoo.

Ryn (00:26):
Yeah.

Katja (00:27):
I’m so excited we’re together today on the pod.

Ryn (00:28):
Here we are. We exist.

Katja (00:31):
We exist. We exist together. Today I want to talk about those plant ID apps. You probably have one on your phone right now or maybe more than one. You’ve probably used one at some point, because you’ve probably been out in the world and said what plant is that?

Ryn (00:51):
Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. But we do have some thoughts on the limitations of apps. And not only in the sense of sometimes they’re wrong, which is true. It’s true, yeah. But actually we’re thinking about something on kind of a different level today.

Katja (01:10):
Yeah. And that is like use the app if you want to. We’re not going to tell you not to do that. But the thing is that the apps, the plant ID apps, having that in your pocket all the time takes away your opportunities to get really good at plant id. And so how do we solve that problem? It’s a handy tool when they’re right. They’re not always right. But the better you are at plant id, the easier it is for you to know whether they’re right or not, right?

Ryn (01:46):
Yeah. The better you’re able to use the tool effectively.

Katja (01:49):
Right. Right. Right. So, yeah. Well, you know, before we just launch off too much, because I have so much to say about that, let’s just get our reclaimer in here real quick so that we don’t forget it.

Ryn (02:01):
Yeah. That’s where we remind you that we are not doctors. We are herbalists and holistic health educators.

Katja (02:07):
The ideas discussed in this podcast do not constitute medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the United States, so these discussions are for educational purposes only,

Ryn (02:18):
And we want to remind you that good health doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. Good health doesn’t exist as one objective standard. It’s influenced by your individual needs, experiences, and goals. So, please keep in mind we’re not attempting to present a single, dogmatic right way that you need to adhere to.

Katja (02:34):
Everyone’s body is different. So, the things that we’re talking about may or may not apply directly to you. But we hope that they’ll give you some new information to think about and some ideas to research and experiment with further.

Ryn (02:45):
Finding your way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility. This doesn’t mean you’re alone on the journey, and it doesn’t mean that you’re to blame for your current state of health. But it does mean that the final decision when considering any course of action, whether it was discussed on the internet by your favorite holistic herbalist, or prescribed by your favorite medical physician, either way that’s always your choice to make.

How We ID’d Plants Before Apps

Katja (03:07):
Okay. So, if we’re thinking about plant identification, and apps, and whatever. And if we’re going to talk about why you should get good at plant id, and also how you can do that. Don’t worry, that’s coming also. Then I think one of the first things to consider is how did people identify plants before we had apps in our pockets that you could just take a picture and identify the plant? And we had field guides. We had little pocket guides, which this is. I mean, it’s a thick book, but it is quite portable actually. And these guides, all of them are different. This is the Peterson’s Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of Eastern and Central North America. Third edition, if you want to get really real. I particularly like this one because it has photographs. A lot of the field guides have line drawings. Those are also good. But I do, this one… We have a lot of different ones, and this one is my favorite just because I do like the pictures. Now, you’ll see here it also has lots of words, right? Those are descriptive qualities. So, this is what used to happen. You would look at your plant, and then there’s a way, it’s called a key, that you can look up and say well, it has this kind of leaf, or this kind of flower, or whatever. So, that if there was a plant you didn’t know, it would tell you okay, look here and see if you find your plant.

Ryn (04:51):
Yeah. Many of these field guides have a different approach or a different method for helping you sort it through. It’s often a kind of a choose your own adventure set to begin with, right? And it starts with like okay, are the leaves arranged opposite, or are they alternate up to stem? If it’s A, go to this section next. If it’s B, go to this section next. And you kind of go through, and you sort of narrow down from some kind of top-level features to some more fine features. And then at some point it will say all right, go look at these pages and just check out the descriptions. Look at the line drawings or the photos that are on there. Find the one that seems closest to what you’ve got. And then if you want to go all the way, at some point you’re going to start to need to measure things. Or in some cases to look at something with a little handheld magnifying lens or something like that.

Katja (05:39):
You know what though? A lot of plants you’ll identify before you get that far. It’s really you get that far if it’s like okay, there are two plants that are very, very similar, and I’m trying to differentiate. And sometimes those two plants are even related to each other.

Ryn (05:54):
Right. Because sometimes it’s not necessary for our purposes as herbalists, because once you’ve identified that this is Solidago, you are good to go, right? You’re like okay, I’ve got goldenrod, and I am happy to work with that. Or I am going to do my next step of assessment about whether I want to harvest this patch with my senses. I’m going to taste this goldenrod and be like oh, this is a really good aromatic stand of goldenrods. I’m not a hundred percent sure on their species, but I know that it’s got the aromatic quality that I was hoping for. As opposed to these other goldenrods which are beautiful but really, really bitter. And that’s not the kind of goldenrod that I want today, right? So, yeah.

Katja (06:37):
Right. But so, okay. There was a system in place before we had apps, but now there are apps that are doing that for you. And it is handy. It is right in your pocket. But the thing is that in order to use the books, the old system, which isn’t really that old. In order to use the books, you had to also use your brain. Every time that you looked up a plant in a book, you were also doing the exercises that would make you better able to recognize that plant the next time. Which is you were looking closely. You were observing how are the leaves, how is the stem, how is the flower? And you had to do that in order to look it up. But in the app you just take a picture, and then the app just gives you an answer. And you kind of have to scroll through and decide which one you think is right. But there’s nothing going into your head except the word of the name of the plant. And it’s harder to remember that.

Manual Plant ID Improves Retention

Ryn (07:54):
Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. So, the practice of the close observation of identifying whether we’re in column A or column B, right? About different features on the plant, the leaf arrangement, the leaf shape, the edges of the leaf on the outer part. The number of petals on the flower if you can see them or count them, the color of them. Like all of those elements you are thinking through them as you go through the key, and as you sort out, and you try out a page. You read a description, you match it to what you’re observing. You’re always coming back to what do I see? With the app it’s more like what does my camera see? What does the robot who’s interpreting my photo think this looks most similar to from its database of other photos that have been tagged and labeled. And the better one is kind of like verified by some expert or some people who really know what they’re up to. And so that’s more reliable, right? But a lot of that processing, that decision making is happening outside of your head. And again, it’s not the end of the world, but it does mean that there’s less happening inside of your head. There’s less mental activity going on. There’s less involvement, and therefore there’s less learning.

Katja (09:10):
Yeah. So, a lot of students talk about how am I going to remember all this stuff? There’s so much to learn. How will I remember it all? This is one of the ways. Because if you look up your plant, then you’re spending a lot of time making the pathway to the information. Like you look at the plant, and you say okay, I need to know what kind of leaf it has so that I can figure out where to go in the thing. So okay, what kind of leaf? I’m looking, I’m looking. Okay, it’s got lumpy bits on the outside, and it has a vein in the center. And it’s maybe a little bit hairy. And you’re coming up with all these descriptions. And then oh, okay, now I have to figure out what the flower looks like. And now I have to… And every step of the process is reinforcing the pathway to the location in your brain where you’re putting that information. Literally, like when people walk across the grass a lot, and they make a pathway. Like if you do it once, you don’t see that. Like maybe you see it for a minute while the grass is pushed down, but then a couple hours later that pathway is gone. Does that sound like your brain? Right? But if you go on that path a lot, it wears it down. And eventually the grass doesn’t grow back there, or it does, but it stays like really… You know? And that path is visible every time you come back. That’s what we want to happen in our brain.

Ryn (10:41):
Right. And I mean part of this is about what is our goal for using the app or identifying the plant that I found, right? If my goal is literally just I want to know what that is right now. Then okay, the app, if it’s trusty, and if you think it’s a confirmed identification. Fine, great. You’ve accomplished your goal for the moment. But if your goal is to learn and to be able to recognize that same plant when it’s growing in another area or when you encounter it somewhere else. Or if it’s your goal to just get better at the process of plant identification in general. Then I’m sorry, you actually have to go through the process of plant identification in order to get good at it, right? It’s like learning anything at all.

Katja (11:22):
But also it’s good actually because when you are doing the process, you are also in your brain doing the process of retention. But if you use the app, you are procrastinating the work of retention. You’re pushing that off for later. So, you have the answer now, but you don’t have the retention of the information now. You’re going to have to do that work later one way or another. So, it’s almost like a time saver if you have the book with you. And like okay, probably you always have your phone with you, and maybe you don’t have the book with you in that one moment. But it’s like 20 bucks, you know, or you can probably get it cheaper used. And it’s not that big or heavy. It’s portable.

Ryn (12:14):
I mean, yeah. Even going through the process of looking at the plant, and working through a key, and figuring out what are some distinctive features that allow me to go to column A or column B or whatever, however it’s arranged. That actually would make you better at using the app. Because you would be like okay, I’m not just going to try to grab any picture of the plant or whatever picture I happen to get. But look, this particular plant has fuzzy leaves. I’m going to make sure that that’s clear in my photo so that it gives better data to my robots, right?

Katja (12:54):
Yes, yes, yes.

Ryn (12:55):
So, like, these things can feed into each other in a way that can be helpful. Yeah.

Plant ID Requires Careful Observation

Katja (13:00):
So, okay. You might be thinking all right, I’m sold. I should probably try the book method sometimes. That will help me remember. So, I do want to just say a few words on this, which is that when I was first learning to be an herbalist, I thought that plant identification was so hard and that I was never going to learn it. And now I can do it at 60 miles an hour on the highway. Absolutely not entirely safe if I’m the one driving. But fortunately he drives most of the time, so it’s okay. But my point here is that you are going to be good at this if you just do it a little bit at a time and be consistent with it. I promise you, you are going to be good at it, even if you think right now that it is the hardest possible part of herbalism, and you’re never going to learn it. Yeah.

Ryn (14:03):
Yeah. And again, each guide that you work with is going to be a bit different from others, right? First of all they’re going to be regionalized. And if you’re looking at wild plants, then you’re going to want to get a guide for your region, right? If you’re in Arizona, then this guide for Eastern and Central US is probably not going to be super helpful for you, right? And so because of that, what we want to show you is more about observation in general than it is about following the specific key from this guide or from another one that we like to work with, right? Because the skill of seeing a plant and not just stopping there and being like a green thing or a plant with a purple flower. But saying what do I see when I pause, when I go down to the plant level, and I look at it from where it’s growing? What do I see if I spend a minute, a whole minute – put a timer on it if you need to – looking just at this leaf and then another minute looking just at the flower, right? Shape, color, symmetry, arrangement, edges, all of that kind of stuff. That is what is most important to cultivate. That enables everything else to happen.

Katja (15:13):
Okay. You said spend a whole minute looking just at the leaf. And you might be thinking when you see it, you see it, right? But the thing is that’s not actually true. There’s a lot of visual information for your brain to process. And so actually the longer you look at it, especially if you look with curiosity. If you look and think what else do I see? What else do I see? The more that you actually will see that you did not see when you first looked at it. Yeah.

Ryn (15:47):
One way to trick your brain into that degree of attention is to either literally or imaginatively say what if I was drawing this, right? Because when you draw it, you’re like oh, wait. You look at it. You sort of draw it. You’re like oh, no, no, it’s actually not quite that sharp of a triangle. It’s a little more broad and open. Okay, I’ve got to change how I drew this, right? So, the more precise you try to be about that, again, even if it’s just in imagination. Like if I was to close my eyes, can I redraw everything that I just observed about the shape, the bumpiness, the curves, the way the veins move? That is a good way to kind of get yourself into that type of attention.

Katja (16:26):
Drawing it is really valuable. Even if you think you can’t draw, it doesn’t actually matter. It is the process of your brain trying to interpret what you looked at and then trying to output that, right? Because you’ve got the input, so that’s passive. But then your brain is trying to actively turn that into output. And it doesn’t matter if the picture ends up being beautiful, and you hang it on your wall. It matters that you are shifting the information from passive input to active output. Again, that is like one more level of helping you retain that information so that you literally no longer have to even worry how am I going to remember it? You literally just automatically remember it because of this process. Yeah.

Ryn (17:20):
All right. So, maybe we’ve convinced you that this is a great practice, but why don’t we do a demo? Why don’t we go outside, and find a plant, and give it our attention and our observation for a while? And see if we can figure out who it is and see if you can figure out alongside with us.

Katja (17:36):
Yeah. So, if you’re listening with your ears only, don’t worry. We’re going to be super descriptive. And so you can see if you can guess the plant at some point in the process, at the very end we’re going to tell you what plant it is. And if you are watching this, if you are listening with your eyes, ’cause you’re watching this as a video we’re not going to show you the plant until the end . So, you also will be able to see if you can guess the plant as we go along. And if you don’t know what plant it is, that’s okay. We’re going to show you at the end. So, it’s going to be totally great.

A Plant ID Demo: Leaves & Stem Shape

Ryn (18:10):
All right, let’s do it.

Katja (18:13):
All right. Well, here we are outside. This is take two because the first one it started raining.

Ryn (18:20):
Welcome to New England.

Katja (18:22):
Yeah. But here we are with a plant that you can’t see. We’re going to show it to you at the end, but first we’re just going to spend some time looking at it and describing it. So, I’m going to start off and say that it has leaves that have very scalloped edges. They’re not sharp like a serrated knife. They’re very roundy like somebody’s decorative, humpy-edged things.

Ryn (18:57):
Some lacy things. Yeah. When we talk about the edges of plants, we can talk about teeth, even if they’re not sharp teeth but actually soft, round-edged teeth. I guess maybe a cow would have them, and they would squish their grass when they chew it up, and it’s that kind of thing. But yeah, so not sort of like triangular shapes all around the outside of the edge, like when you have the fancy scissors when you’re in kindergarten. And some of them make little triangle edges when you clip the sides. But these ones are the roundy edges that go like that. Or like if it’s a child, and they draw a cloud, and it has like the round edges around the outside of the cloud. It’s kind of like that.

Katja (19:39):
Now, these scalloped edges are quite regular. Like each bumpy scallop is like the same size. I noticed that. But the overall shape of the leaf is kind of triangular, or heart-shaped, or in some of these it’s kind of kidney-shaped.

Ryn (20:07):
Yeah. There’s a range.

Katja (20:10):
But there is kind of a point that shows you where the middle is.

Ryn (20:14):
Yeah. And there is a vein that runs straight up the middle of the leaf to that point also. That kind of helps you to see it. So yeah, there’s a range of leaf shapes. And this is also, by the way, normal when you’re looking at plants and doing plant ID that the largest, oldest leaves on a given plant specimen might have a bit of a different shape than the youngest, newest leaves. Also you could have one plant over here that has grown all the way up, and it has leaves all the way up to the top. And another one that is so far just a couple of leaves poking out of the ground. And so they might also have a different shape to them. But yeah, somewhere between an overall triangle silhouette with those scallopy edges on it all the way over to one that’s kind of like a kidney bean, so a couple of curves.

Katja (21:08):
So, the leaves always come in pairs. And the leaves are directly across from each other in their pair. So, the stem goes through. And on one side there’s one leaf and 180 degrees, like a mirror image, is the other leaf.

Ryn (21:29):
Yeah. In botanical terminology this is opposite leaf arrangement as opposed to alternate. And this is a good one to learn and to have in mind because it’s often a starting point for sorting out which major groups of plants your specimen is going to be in. So yeah, opposite leaf arrangement is what we see here on this one.

Katja (21:52):
And then when I look at the stem… Oh wait, one more thing I noticed about the leaf here is that when I touch it, it’s thicker than it really looks. And especially along the bottom side there’s a lot of little hairs.

Ryn (22:09):
You can feel them.

Katja (22:11):
You can feel them, yeah.

Ryn (22:13):
You can see them too.

Katja (22:14):
They’re not prickly or stingy. It’s more like if you regularly shaved some part of your body. And then you didn’t shave today, and you get that stubbly bit. It’s like that.

Ryn (22:29):
Yeah, the hairs aren’t too long. They’re not too firm. They’re not so dense that they give it a silvery look underneath the way it happens with some plants. There’s a little bit of a change though in the color of the upper face of the leaf to the lower leaf because the hairs are more present on the bottom.

Katja (22:48):
Yeah. Like the top part of the leaf is darker. The bottom part of the leaf is not white or silver, but it is lighter than the top part of the leaf.

Ryn (22:57):
Lighter green color, yeah. And on the leaf you can see multiple branching veins. Mostly the major ones kind of originate at the point where the body of the leaf meets the stem, and then they kind of branch and spread out from there. There’s like the major, the deeper veins that are present. And then from that there’s sort of a network that spreads out like a network of blood vessels, or a network of roots, or any other of the many natural manifestations of that kind of thing that we could see.

Katja (23:28):
Some of these plants have a little bit of a purple edge along the border, the scalloped border of the leaf, especially as you get closer to the top of the plant. That’s doesn’t seem to happen as much at the bottom. But towards the top the leaves do get purply, reddish tinge around the edges.

Ryn (23:58):
Yeah.

Katja (23:59):
Otherwise it’s fairly uniformly a medium green color.

Ryn (24:05):
Okay. Stem?

Katja (24:08):
Yeah, the stem. So, this stem is also stubbly, like it didn’t shave today.

Ryn (24:17):
Yep. You can feel it.

Katja (24:20):
And the stem is really square. And I love things that are square in nature. Because lots of times you’ll hear people say oh, everything in nature is round, as if it’s some kind of criticism on things that are square and have angles. But if sometimes you feel like you’re square and have angles, that’s okay, because this plant also has a very square stem with super-defined, 90-degree angles.

Ryn (24:53):
This is easiest to feel rather than to see. To some extent I can look at that one over there, and I can be like yeah, I see your square shape, you. But if you’re ever in doubt, just take the stem between your fingers. And even better is to roll it back and forth a little bit. And there you can really feel it.

Leaf Node Spacing, Petioles, & Flower Placement

Katja (25:09):
You can really feel it. Yeah. Now, when we look at how the leaves are attached to the stem, there’s the opposite pair, so the mirror image, the opposite pair. And then there’s really kind of a lot of distance, like an inch or an inch and a half of distance until the next leaf of just naked stem until the next leaf pair.

Ryn (25:39):
Yeah. This particular plant, sometimes there’s… Well, and actually for a lot of plants there can be variation in how much space you get between a node, a place where there’s – in this case – a pair of leaves together. Depending on the growing conditions, and how often it gets cut down if it’s a plant that grows back fast, or what’s growing next to it. If there’s like tall plants around the plant will try to reach and to grow itself taller. And so you’ll find more of a stretched out look in between each leaf node.

Katja (26:13):
This is pretty uniform though. They all seem to have about an inch and a half. Or there’s one that has more like two or two and a half inches. But it’s pretty, even the smaller ones and the taller ones have fairly uniform… It’s not like there’s one that has a lot of density, and then some of the other ones are spread out. They’re pretty uniformly with these gaps in between of naked stem in between the leaves.

Ryn (26:47):
Yeah. Another thing you notice when you look at the leaves closely is that they have a leaf stem. So, rather than the leaf being directly attached to the stem like that, there’s a little bit of a stem between the main stem of the plant and the leaf itself. So, the fancy term for that is usually petiole. And leaf stem is another fine way to say it. There are some plants where the leaves are attached directly to the stem, and there’s no petiole at all. Or even where the leaves are surrounding the stem, and it’s like it’s poking straight through them. But in this case at each node we have the leaves attached on either side, and there’s a little stem for each one, and then the leaf body is there. Yeah. When you’re up at the top of the plant and the newest growth, then you don’t see that quite as much. But that’s just because those leaves aren’t fully developed yet, and their petioles are not so obvious.

Katja (27:39):
Even here at the very tip-top of this one there is a petiole, but it’s just super, super short. Yeah. Now, so the petiole, the stem for the leaf, that is also opposite, so like a mirror image on either side of the stem. But then at the base of the petiole joining the stem, which sort of makes a V shape, at the base of that is the flowers. And the flowers are more like they’re not going in the same direction as the leaves. The leaves are a mirror image, like a straight line in one direction on either side of the stem.

Ryn (28:26):
You can call it north-south if you want. Just as a…

Katja (28:29):
And then the flowers are opposite that. They’re like in between, filling in the space in between the two leaves.

Ryn (28:37):
Yeah. The flowers on this plant, they grow from multiple nodes, right? So, we’ve got places where we’ve got the stem coming up, and we’ve got leaves. And we go up, and we’ve got more leaves. And you can have multiple flowers growing on the plant at or just under each of those nodes, right? So, some plants are going to have all their flowers right up at the tip or standing on their own stems entirely separate from the places that the leaves grow from. But in this case we have like the main stem of the plant, we’ve got the leaf nodes. And several but not every one of those leaf nodes has a flower growing just underneath of it or more than one flower.

Katja (29:21):
Yeah. More than one, most of these. Some of them you can tell that the flower is already passed. But the node for the flower, the little cup that was holding the flower is still there, and it’s just empty now. It’s not really going to stay empty because that’s where the seed is going to form. But you can’t, even if you get really… Well, if I get really close on this one, I can actually kind of see that. So, try that. Try getting really close on the little cup that was holding the flower right down at that node. And look in there and see if you can see the seeds forming. You might be able to, you might not. But in this case on this one, I can. They’re very small.

Ryn (30:08):
Yeah. Those little spots where the flowers were attached there, they almost looked like a flower themselves. Like if the main flowers weren’t there at all, you could be like okay, that’s sort of a flower-looking thing. Like it kind of opens, you know, it stretches out and then opens. And it’s a different color from the leaves and from the stem. It’s a little more of like a brownish sort of vaguely purple-maroon sort of thing going on.

Katja (30:34):
Like mauve maybe.

Ryn (30:35):
Yeah. And they have little stripes actually. They have little stripes going from the base up to the tips.

Flower Color, Shape, & Interior

Katja (30:42):
So, okay. So, but where the flowers are still attached, the ones that are still nice and pretty, they’re purple for starters. But they’re not solid purple. They’re purple, like a kind of medium bluish-purple with a much darker purple – or maybe we would even call that burgundy – decoration on them.

Ryn (31:13):
Speckling.

Katja (31:14):
Oh, that’s a good word. Speckling, yeah. And most of that… So okay, maybe we can talk about the shape of the flower, because that way I’ll be able to tell you where the speckling is. The shape of the flower is kind of funny. It comes up as one tube. And it starts off quite narrow, and then it opens. And it’s almost like if you had a tube, but you wanted it to bend over at the top. And so you would have to cut pieces of the tube so that you could let it bend over and open up at the top. And that’s how these flowers look. There’s really not individual petals like on a daisy you might be thinking of. It’s really like it’s one piece of fabric, or petal, or whatever that then at the top just has cuts in it so that it can open out.

Ryn (32:20):
Yeah. Open and divided.

Katja (32:22):
And they’re not all uniform, but they are symmetrical. So, we have that mirror imaging happening again. The one that goes towards the bottom is the largest one. And it’s almost like the plant is sticking out its tongue, like down. And then there’s two on the sides that are kind of medium-sized. And then there’s one at the top, but it looks like it was trying to be two.

Ryn (32:52):
It has a bit of a split in the middle.

Katja (32:53):
Yeah. It has a tiny bit of a split in the middle, and that one is the smallest.

Ryn (32:57):
Yeah. So, kind of that split one up top, and then little moderate-sized wings on the sides, and then this big lower lip all pointing out in the middle. Which also has a little bit of a divot or a division.

Katja (33:12):
Like you can see where the halfway point is, yeah. So, then that dark purple speckling is happening on the one that is sticking out its tongue or like the lower lip, and the one at the top, but not on the sides. The sides are just solid that lighter color purple.

Ryn (33:34):
Yeah.

Katja (33:36):
Now if you look in… These flowers are quite small, so you kind of have to get close. But if you look in, that speckling goes all the way down the tube, and there are tiny little hairs, really, really small little hairs with very tiny yellow, powdery dust, right? So, polleny dust. And it’s quite a pale yellow. And you almost wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t get really, really close. The hairs are mostly on the bottom part. Like where it’s sticking out its tongue, the tongue is hairy.

Ryn (34:37):
The inner part, yeah.

Katja (34:39):
And then all the way down into the tube the hairs keep going, but there’s not really hairs on the side or on the top. Although if you bend it back there is on the tippy-top some more yellow. And that is going to be like the polleny bits and the reproductive parts of the plant, but they’re very small. It’s not like in a hibiscus where you see. They’re very, very tiny.

Plant Shape, Habitat, Scent, & (Maybe) Taste

Ryn (35:16):
Okay. So, we can also notice that this is a plant that is not standing straight up and tall so much all by itself. Like some of them are standing tall but only like a few inches. After they get a few inches tall, then they sort of flop over. And it’s like at that point they would be more like leaning on other plants that are around them, or we also know this plant would even creep along the ground.

Katja (35:44):
Here’s one that is. So, here’s one where it just went straight to the ground. And so the leaves in this case are kind of standing up a little bit so that they’re off the ground. And it is still trying to flower, but mostly it is going along the ground. And that’s a runner where it’s going to make more plants at each of those points where the leaves are. So, this is one of the ways. Plants can reproduce in a few different ways. They can have seeds. And this is not really reproduction so much as it is expansion, right? So, there’s going to be more plants, but it’s because a plant has sent out a runner. And then along that runner there will be roots that form and more plants come up from it.

Ryn (36:37):
Yeah. Okay.

Katja (36:40):
And also, you know, you were saying about how it’s not one plant standing tall like one evening primrose, or one poppy, or something like that. There’s – I don’t know – 20 or 30 of them here.

Ryn (36:56):
They like to be together.

Katja (36:57):
Yeah.

Ryn (36:59):
Not a solitary plant all by itself, ideally.

Katja (37:04):
Okay. You know, and also as we’re sitting here talking, there’s a bee over there visiting each flower, like a big fat bumble who’s visiting each flower. And so that also gives us information. Even though it’s not part of the plant, it does tell us that this plant is bee pollinated and not air pollinated. Or other pollinators as well, but it’s not air pollinated.

Ryn (37:28):
Yeah. Always be looking at where the plant is, who’s near the plant. You can be thinking a little bit about the quality of the soil or how damp or dry it might be there. If you get a sense of how water moves through the area around here, then that can help you to understand a little bit more about the plant through its habitat and through its visitors.

Katja (37:50):
All right. Well, did you…?

Ryn (37:52):
Wait, wait, wait. Oh, okay. There’s one other feature, which we won’t be able to show you on the video. But it’s about if I take one of these leaves… And I’m not going to show it to you yet, right? But if I crush it up, and I give it a sniff, what comes through there? It’s not like the kind of pungency that we would get with thyme or sage.

Katja (38:19):
Yeah. It’s not a sharp smell.

Ryn (38:21):
Nope.

Katja (38:23):
Although on the second round there is more. It has a strong smell.

Ryn (38:30):
It’s green for sure.

Katja (38:32):
And kind of bright.

Ryn (38:34):
Kind of bright. Not citrusy, but okay.

Katja (38:41):
Yeah. But you do have… Once you crushed it more and more, there was a little like…

Ryn (38:48):
A little bit similar to celery or parsley leaf, a little bit in that direction.

Katja (38:52):
But there was a tiny little bit of something sharper just for a moment there.

Ryn (39:00):
If I bite it, and I chew it up, then I get a little bit of bitter. Not a strong bitter, but a little bit is there, right? But I don’t have the heat of a pungent herb. I don’t have sweetness. I don’t really have sour. So, just a little hint of bitter. That’s about what we’re coming through here, right? My point here is that your senses can give you helpful information. Now I don’t encourage you to go eating any random plant that you come across because that can get you into serious trouble.

Katja (39:41):
Right, right, right. Only eat it if you know. If you’ve done this, and you’re like okay, I know what plant this is. And now I’m going to get that extra information. Okay, then you can have a nibble. You can smell any plant. That’s always safe. But in terms of eating it, only do that if you know what plant it is. Well, so maybe now it’s time to tell them what plant it is.

Ryn (40:00):
Let’s do it.

The Big Reveal: Ground Ivy

Katja (40:01):
Were you able to guess? Let’s find out. Can you see it there? This is our plant. This is ground ivy. In some places this is called creeping Charlie, and here’s a good example of the creeping. See? Yep, that’s the one I was thinking of right there. And that’s how it’s doing that expansion. It’s going to create roots there, and these will be new plants, yeah. And this is right near the garden. Like see, right there is the garden bed. There’s some garlic in there. So, it does have really good soil. And it has more moisture than the surrounding area because I water when it’s too dry.

Ryn (40:58):
And because we don’t mow too often.

Katja (41:00):
Yeah, we do not mow too often.

Ryn (41:02):
And the growth of the plantain, and some dock, and some other things around here is helping to keep the water in and keep the soil moist.

Katja (41:09):
And we would be remiss if we did not include the Latin name here before we wrap up for ground ivy, which is Glechoma hederacea. It’s really important to know your Latin names, because that is how you will know for sure which plant you’re talking about.

Ryn (41:31):
If you don’t know ground ivy already this is one of our favorite herbs to work with for when there’s stuck fluid in your ear, nose, and throat area. It’s an excellent lymphatic mover, especially for this region of the body. But if you’ve got stuck lymph somewhere else, you can still work with it and get some benefits from it. Ground ivy is also a bit of a diuretic herb. Not super intense. It’s not on the level of your nettle leaf, and your dandelion leaf, and that kind of thing. But it does get the fluids moving and help to drain away the excess for you. So, it’s a really helpful herb, especially for people with more of a damp constitution or who are coping with some stuck fluids at the moment.

Katja (42:05):
I also really love ground ivy when I have a headache. Most of my headaches and migraines have a stagnation component where I feel like everything is too full in my head, and I feel a lot of pressure. And so the ground ivy here is a really good choice, because it’s helping to move those fluids and relieve the pressure. Yeah.

Ryn (42:30):
Yeah. Okay. So remember, the goal here wasn’t now you have learned ground ivy, although maybe you did, right? The goal was we give our attention to the plant. We use our skills of observation. Even if we don’t have all the fancy botanical terms. Even if we’re not able to apply all of those right now. Still developing the skill of looking, the skill of perceiving and identifying different elements that can help you distinguish this one from others. That’s what we’re really trying to cultivate here. That’s what makes you more effective at working through a plant guidebook and keying it out. And that’s also what makes you better capable to collaborate with the robots and to be more skillful in the way you work with the apps.

Katja (43:16):
Well, because they’re going to show you some pictures after they have identified what they think the plant is. And if you have really observed carefully, then when you look at those pictures, it’s going to be so much easier for you to say yes, that is my plant. Or no, that’s close, but it isn’t actually my plant. Yeah.

Ryn (43:37):
Cool. All right. Well, we hope you found that entertaining and maybe helpful. And so yeah, thanks for listening and tuning into the podcast this time. We’ll be back soon with some more Holistic Herbalism podcasts for you. Until then take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea.

Katja (43:54):
Drink some tea.

Ryn (43:55):
And look at some plants.

Katja (43:57):
Go look at a plant. Bye-bye.