The best way to get started is to begin with something simple. Keeping a list of wild flowers found in one small area, perhaps a section of roadside verge, your local churchyard, school grounds or a park, will enable you to develop your identification skills. Over the course of a year even a small area is likely to produce a list of between thirty and a hundred species.
To begin a simple site checklist use
Survey Form W.
Alternatively you can survey a larger area, such as a parish or village, but focus on a small group of species that are easy to identify. To cover a large area you may wish to involve the whole community in the survey or encourage the local school to adopt the survey as a project.
Even with more difficult groups, such as ferns, if you develop an interest in your local patch, with practice and close observation you will soon develop the skills to separate quite similar species. In any one area there are likely to be fewer than twenty species of ferns so the challenges of identification can be overcome.
Want to focus on plants of a particular habitat?
Some plants are known as indicator species and provide evidence of high quality habitats likely to be important for other wildlife. Click here for lists of
indicator species for ancient woodlands and meadows.
You don’t have to be an expert…
There are a lot of plants for the beginner to come to terms with, but there is no need to panic. With practice and a good field guide you can easily begin to recognise individual species and if you wish to survey plants you will have a distinct advantage over those who survey birds, mammals or invertebrates because plants cannot run or fly away!
Start with the plants you know well: a survey of the distribution of a couple of species, for example primrose and
cowslip, can produce fascinating and useful results.
Equipment
Simple plant surveys can be done with no more equipment that a pencil, notebook and map. However, the following equipment can be helpful:
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A good hand lens.
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A digital cameral with a macro setting.
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A waterproof notebook.
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A good plant identification guide.
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A small plastic collecting pot or sealable plastic bag.
Collecting specimens
It is rarely necessary to gather plant specimens, and to uproot a wild plant without the landowner’s permission is breaking the law. Sometimes, to confirm the identity of a plant, it can be helpful to remove a single flower or leaf to study back at home. Comparing collected material with a range of reference books and illustrations can be fascinating and will help you learn. It will also allow you to seek an expert opinion. If you only remove single flowers and leaves and never uproot a whole plant then you are very unlikely to be doing any harm to a population of plants.
The one exception is the orchid family, some of which are legally protected against picking, and where in some cases a single flower spike may have taken many years to produce.
On sites which are nature reserves or SSSIs there are likely to be restrictions on any collecting and this should never be done without permission.