Plant Identification

Plants of the denver metro area

To the untrained eye, many plants can look alike. It can be easy to miss the diversity of plant life that surrounds us every day. Your backyard doesn't have to look like the Denver Botanic Gardens to find dozens of species of plants. With some practice, and some good field guides, you can start to put a name to the familiar green friends that live all around you.

Tips for Identifying plants

Just like any biological identification, the key to a good ID is careful observation and patience. Take the time to look at your plant from all angles and take a picture for future reference if you can. The most important things to take not of are the flowers, leaves, stem, fruit or berries, and seeds. Pay particular attention to shapes, textures, and colors. Using your observations, you can use a plant identification key (also known as a dichotomous key) to help you identify your plants. An identification key will ask you simple questions about your plant and then direct you to a new part of the key based on your answer. Once you follow the key through enough questions, you should be able to identify your plant.

Local identification keys are best. You can use different websites, apps, and even printable keys that you can take out into the field to identify plants while you explore.

Tips for Identifying Plants

Look at the flowers, if your plant has flowers. What color is the flower? How many petals does it have? Do the petals form a tube or lie flat? Is your flower symmetrical (mirror image if you cut it in half?
Look at the leaves. Are they connected at the base of the plant, or all up and down the stem? Are the leaves directly across from one another or do they alternate up the stem? Are the leaves hairy? Do they have a smooth or jagged border? What shape are the leaves?
Look at the stem. Is it green, or is it woody? Is it hairy? Does the stem have bumps or is it smooth? Is the stem round like a straw or does it have corners/edges?
Look at the berry, if your plant has a berry. What color is the berry? Does it have one part or does it look like it's made of many smaller parts? Is the berry powdery, hairy, or shiny? Is it squishy and juicy or dry?
Look at the seeds, if your plant has seeds. Does your seed have a fin like a helicopter? Is your seed in a pod? Does your seed have something that would cause it to stick to you, like burs?

Identify Plants on your Phone

Trees are the most obvious plant life in most areas and sometimes the easiest to identify. The leaves, flowers, seeds, and bark all have unique characteristics that help you identify tree species. LeafSnap is an app developed by botanists at the Smithsonian and the University of Maryland to automatically identify trees based on photos you upload. Just take or upload a picture in the app, tell the app if your photo is of a leaf or branch, bark, flower, or seed and it will automatically generate a list of trees that fit your picture. Look through the selections and find the plant that matches what you observed!

The similar app PlantSnap can help you identify over 600,000 plants by uploading a photo. The app will instruct you how best to take a picture of your plant, and then give you a list of possible identifications. When you find your plant, you can save it and create a life list of identified plants!

Plant Identification Field Guide

This field guide is known as a dichotomous key or an identification key. It will help you identify plants even if you don't know much about local plant species. The guide will take you through a series of questions that will direct you to new questions based on your answer. By the end, you will have identified your plant! A dichotomous key is helpful because it tells you what features of the plant are important to identifying it and tells you what each feature looks like. If you find words or descriptions of plant anatomy you aren't familiar with, Google can give you some pictures to help you decide.

Wildflowers can be especially fun to identify, but are very seasonal. Some are only blooming for a few weeks at a time. The city of Fort Collins has an excellent record of local flowers that you can use to help you identify wild blooms. Feel free to look at records from past years. Looking at a guide for the same month you see your flower is more important than the same year (there shouldn't be much change in the plants visible from year to year). Find detailed wildflower identification field guides here. If you want a more detailed guide to local plants and more detailed plant identification keys, you can use guides compiled by the Colorado Native Plant Society found here.

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