Plant Identification - a walk through a recent ID adventure

Sometimes it's really easy to identify a plant; you may be with someone who knows the plant, or it may be really similar to plants that you already know. At other times, however, we need to go a bit deeper and follow many research paths.

Recently I needed to go through quite a bit of research before I was able to find out the plant that I'd found. The photos below show the plant that I'm using in this example.

Books
My first port of call are the plant books that I have, to use these well I need to consider characteristics such as: flower colour, amount of petals and sepals (occasionally tepals), leaf shape, plant/leaf/flower size, type of inflorescence, etc.

The first two are for wild flowers of Britain, the smallest is the Collins book of Wild flowers. This book is a small field guide that is handily sectioned into flower colour. This can be ideal for a quick flick through to get an idea of the type of flower you're looking at - especially if you recognise the characteristics in other flowers you know. This didn't help much this time, so I went on to my next wild flower book. This book is the Collins Complete British Wildflowers. This book has a great short cut for finding flowers by the amount of petals - which is handy if the petals and sepals have obvious distinctions! However, this blook led me to the understanding that this plant must be a species of Allium.

So, I then thought that perhaps while this may not be a wild flower, it may well be a cultivar or similar. I therefore checked my garden plant book - the RHS Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers, but unfortunately - and surprisingly, this didn't lead to a solution. So the next step is the internet!

Internet
As I thought that this may be an Allium, I initially started searching for photos of Alliums. I also used search terms for the amount of petals, the colour of the flower, and the rather interesting three green stripes on the petals. Alas, still nothing.

So I uploaded my photos to Wild About Britain (iSpot is another good website for identification help). A website that has a forum of excellent members, some of whom are true experts. The first responses were from the memebers that I would expect to supply the answer immediately, but they weren't sure. I was quite surprised. This plant must be something special. However, some members did recognise the flower as perhaps something that they had grown previously.

This led me to emailing the RHS member's advisory service in the hope of gaining an answer.

Shortly after this another member, Sophie gave the answer that we were all waiting for. This plant, tentatively, was Italian Garlic - Allium pendulinum. It looked right when I saw photos on the web search. I even checked online to see if there were any references to this plant being at the location photographed - Lacock Abbey. And to my surprise - there was. A letter from Fox Tablot to William Strangways on the Talbot Correspondence Project website.

"I have discovered a new and valuable quality in our old Neapolitan friend the Allium pendulinum. This plant has escaped from my botanic garden into the shrubbery, where it is flowering in profusion over a considerable space, in the shade of trees and in just the same sort of places as the English Allium ursinum delights in"

This was enough for me. I wouldn't, this time, need to go back to Lacock Abbey to meet with the gardener to get a conclusive answer. Some time later, I did receive a response from the RHS:

"Our Botanist Dawn Edwards says the photographs you sent for identification appears to be Allium pendulinum."

Conclusion 
Researching plants is far from mundane. In fact, the harder the search for identification, the better. Quick searches can lead to superficial observations of the plant characgteristics, which are quickly forgotten (by myself at least!). Whereas, when you find something difficult to identify, it makes you look closely, to find something in the plant that you hadn't seen previously, but that can assist you in your search.

To apply the ideas of systems thinking. These deep searches can lead from data, such as petal colour, to information, 5 petals of white colouration with 3 green stripes, to knowledge, how these pieces of information related - perhaps giving you an idea of the species or genus. This can lead upward to understanding, where experience has enabled you to see patterns in the way of identification - this is an Allium because...
Then eventually wisdom where we can understand the principles of plants and their place within taxonomy.

In other words, these deep searches not only add to our personal knowledge base, but also enrich the activity that we so enjoy.

What is important is that we know our limitations through experience and use the resources abailable to us to lead us to the right place for advice when something is outside of our experience.