Plant ID Portfolio - some final notes

The posts with the "plant id' label constitute my Plant Portfolio for the Plant Identification and Classification module on year one of my BSc of horticulture studies at ITB.

This turned out to be quite an undertaking, as I checked the RHS A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants for each one of the plants - as well as my 1998 copy of Hillier's for all trees and shrubs (see Bibliography). The final descriptions and cultivation notes are based on those, and my lecture notes.

The sizes are as listed on the Encyclopedia and refer to mature plants - though it's well worth keeping in mind that in many parts of Ireland the growing conditions are sufficiently better for the ultimate size of many plants to be remarkably larger from the one listed, even in an "average" location.

I've also included additional notes on various topics for a smattering of plants, mostly out of my own interest.


Observations and reflection:

While the required 120+ plants only scrape the bloom of the surface of the continuously growing number of garden plants in cultivation, I've noticed that I'm already able to identify the vast majority of the shrubs and hedges I see anywhere I go. This, however, says a lot more about the variety of plants people go for (and/or garden centres sell!) than my abilities or knowledge level.

In any case, it's already obvious that there's nigh unlimited scope for educating the plant purchasing public to broaden their tastes. Perhaps the impending and encroaching climate change will help there, making consumers more open to new solutions.

I think the blog approach was probably the right one. The process was slower than I expected (all that leafing through books turned out to consume a lot of time!), and I did learn a lot as I went along. I haven't yet fully utilised all the features the medium offers; I haven't, for example, linked to external pages with more information for most plants. On the other hand, adding material in the future will be easy - as well as finding all this information! It won't languish at the bottom of a bookshelf but can be accessed from anywhere.