Plant ID and the Broadmoor

During orientation at my most recent internship, we were informed that employees were not allowed to have their phones out while working. Due to the high-end nature of the hotel, and its tendency to house some very famous guests, phones were a liability. Having worked at Disney, “no-phones” was a policy I was accustomed to. However, the Broadmoor took it a bit further. Even taking your phone out to check the time could be an issue. So when I got to the grounds department and my supervisor informed me I would have to memorize all the names of the plants we work with because guests frequently stop color landscape crew to ask them questions, I cackled, out loud, almost uncontrollably.

Thinking back on it, I probably looked insane. Here stood my supervisor, informing me, a new hire, that due to the no phone policy I’d have to memorize all the plant names, and in response I laugh. Little did she know I had previously been tortured in Hort 308, a required class for all horticulture majors.

Hort 308 was the kind of class I skipped other classes to study for. It’s the kind of class that keeps you up at night when all you want to do is sleep. It’s the class that stops you dead in your tracks whenever you see a plant that looks semi-familiar, and refuses to let go until you remember the family, genus, specific epithet, and common name of the piece of greenery in your path.

Hort 308, better known as, “Plants for Sustainable Landscapes” or “the spring plant ID class” is a right of passage. ALL hort majors, must take a plant ID class, and there are only two of them, taught by the same professor, with the same format. Students can either take Hort 306 in fall, which covers woody ornamental trees and shrubs, or Hort 308 in the spring, which covers everything else. And since plant ID is mandatory, the lore of which class to take is... extensive.

Real footage of me summoning the right class to take.

On paper Hort 306 may seem like the easier class to take, after all everything is either a tree or a shrub. But don’t be fooled, some trees look very similar. Wanna know the best way to tell a Texas red oak apart from Shumard oak? It’s the small tufts of pubescence on the crotch angles of the veins on the underside of a leaf. Want to know how to tell green ash apart from white ash? It’s the shape the leaf scar makes when you pop off a petiole.

Do those words mean anything to you?

So what about Hort 308?

Well, can you tell the difference between yellow and purple? Because that’s the main difference between yellow flag iris and German iris. How do you tell golden bamboo and clumping bamboo apart? One grows in clumps and has a perfectly round shoot, one doesn’t grow in clumps and doesn’t have a perfectly round shoot.

Can you guess which class people usually take to fulfill the mandatory plant ID requirement?

So Hort 308 is objectively easier?

So, here’s where it gets tricky. In Hort 306 you learn less plants and less plant families. If you get tested on 10 oaks but forgot the specific epithet(the part of a scientific name that goes after the genus) you can at least get partial credit on the genus and family. Fagaceae is a huge family, and all oaks are going to start with Quercus. You don’t get that built in advantage in hort 308. There’s a ton of families, a ton of genera, and a lot of plants have very similar common names. Would you believe me if I said butterfly vine, butterfly bush, butterfly ginger, butterfly pea, and butterfly weed had nothing in common? They’re different species, in different genera, with different families, zero overlap.

In Hort 306 you learn Monterrey oak, Shumard Oak, Bur Oak, Post oak, chinkapin oak, sawtooth oak, live oak, water oak, and Texas red oak are all in the same genus (Quercus) but in Hort 308 red yucca and yucca(yes they’re two different plants) are separate (Hesperaloe and Yucca). In Hort 306 winged elm, lacebark elm, American elm, and cedar elm share a genus(ulmus), but in Hort 308 inland sea oats and sea oats are separate (Chasmanthium and Unifolia).

Oxblood lily, rain lily, surprise lily, lilies(yes, just lilies), crinum lily, and water lily are not only in different genera, but some are in different families too.

To make an already long story shorter, in Hort 306 you get less plants that are harder to tell apart, but a built-in advantage of sharing genera and families. In Hort 308 the plants are easy to tell apart, but you get more of them with less overlap.

So “which is easier” depends on if an individual is better at telling things apart or route memorization. In my case, I took my chances memorizing the difference between yellow and purple over the difference between rounded teeth and blunt teeth on a leaf’s margin.

So what was Hort 308 like?

Two quizzes every week, one in lecture, one in lab. One quiz covers your knowledge of scientific names, common names, and families. Another covers the growing range, landscape use, susceptibility, and historical importance. 25 new plants a week for 11 weeks, totaling 275 plants. Every quiz contained a mix of new and old plants to prevent students from simply forgetting the previous list. By the end of the semester I was dreaming of plants.

So yes, when I started my internship at the Broadmoor I laughed. For they did not know of my journey.

But strangely enough, over the summer, I began to change. Like an addiction, I found myself drawn to my quizlets and study guides. I craved more plant knowledge. Upon returning to Texas A&M I did the unspeakable, I registered for Hort 306. Already I can feel sections of my brain that lay dormant over the summer stretching in anticipation.

My body recognizes the two quiz format, craves the once a day study sessions. For I fear I cannot stop.

The void has gazed upon me.