Identifying my homestead plants

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phideaux

Old fashioned
Neighbor
HCL Supporter
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
19,538
Location
West Ky
Of course this thread is directed at my friend @Peanut .
I am always interested in trying to identify local , on the farm plants.
Peanut knows.
So I will be taking some pics and see if I can learn.
Here's the first one. It had little purple flowers last week , that's what caught my eye., Now they are gone...
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IMG_20191027_134913370.jpg


What ya think?

Jim
 
Edit to add this from another thread I posted this morning... It belongs here for others who might be following Jim's farm...

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Basic primer on taking pics to id plants... google any terms I don't explain.
1. Need pics of the leaves to show
a. are the leaves "alternate or opposite" each other on the stem.
b. general leaf shape, smooth or toothed edges.

2. Height of plant

3. Seeds (tricky) they can be within husks, pods, alone... sometimes it's hard to even find the actual seeds.

4. Blooms, anytime of the year. Blooms are the give away on id

Check this site... they are asking you for basic input data that I would need also http://www.southeasternflora.com/SearchForm.php If you don't know all the input data it's okay... just get what you know. Lots of university data bases are set up this way. Enter the bloom, leaf arrangement, hit enter, and the site will display 40 or 50 plant species to choose from.

I always check the stem shape... Is it square or round? Sounds silly I know but this little tidbit of info will speak volumes sometimes.

Remember this expression... All mints have square stems but not all square stemmed plants are mints...

26,000 species of mints world wide, less than 4000 in the eastern US, if a plant has a square stem you've just ruled out a few hundred thousand other possibilities. Talk about narrowing down an id!

Also, another little secret here in the eastern us... the other plants that have square stems here are all in the Verbena family. So, just knowing if a plant has a square stem you have narrowed the possibilities down to "relative" handful.

5. Size reference. Keep a regular old cheap bic pen in you pocket... a playing card... bic lighter... clip a clothes pin on the stem... anything people easily recognize the size of. Lay it in the photo with your plant.

I'll add to this list as I think of a few others...

I prefer to teach in the spring and summer... It's far easier to learn plants as they bloom and easier to remember them. Oh, green is a color, lots of plants have green blooms. Ragweed has green blooms!

Starting next spring pick the section of that creek you want to learn. Walk it once or twice a week. Photo every plant that blooms and post them.
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Back to Jims farm...

Look up Conoclinium coelestinum, purple mist flower, looks like a deformed one, and really short. They are usually 1 to 2ft tall. There are two species common in the southeast though the books list them as just one species. I believe there are two seperate species. The big one is in the 3ft tall range.

Lunaria annua is another possibility. much more rare. I've only seen it once or twice.

From the photos, the stem doesn't look square. This rules out any of the late season mints like skullcap and the monarda's which are 1ft to 3ft tall. It doesn't look like one of the dozen or so Phlox's that bloom this time of year...

Did you feel the stem? Be sure... is it round or square...

With this height and a square stem all the tiny little mints come into play... the dead nettles and such, 8 or 10 of those.

Thought this'd be easy huh? For each question you ask I got a dozen for you... each answer you give leads to even more questions... just to narrow down the possibilities. There is a purpose to this madness! :)
 
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No, don't chew it... I was already 99% sure it wasn't a mint but since I can't feel the stem I have to trust you too...

There is another plant nagging at my mind... its actually a mint but you would never know from looking at it... the stem is square only in certain spots, the rest of the stem is round... This plant had me chasing my tail for a couple of years. Its more common out west and was used as a medicine by western tribes.

The bloom of this plant looks like skullcap... look up skullcap photos... did the blooms you saw look like it?
 
The real danger to foraging isn't immediate. Less than 2% of the plants people eat by mistake will make you feel sick...

It's the others that get you... 20 years from now you wake up and your liver or kidneys no longer work... Most never remember what they ate 20 years ago that is about to kill them.
 
Dandelions and the lettuce are related species... one has a tiny little bloom, the other gets 10ft tall... lol.
Just have to watch and see. The size this early makes me think lettuce.

I'm thinking the same for the woodpile plant. wait and see. it could be an escaped ornamental from bora bora! Frustrating I know but at the end of the day you'll have more plants that you will never know the true identity of than ones you do.

I gave up long ago on the UK's, unknowns... I lump all of those into the nasty(toxic) or Uks and don't give them another thought.

Still at the end of the day you will have 10,000 or so edible, medicinal or otherwise useful plants in your repertoire. I can't remember every detail of 10K plants... Many plants are useful but for everyone of those there might 10 or 12 that do the same thing that are more common and easier to find.

I'm doing good to keep up with 5000 or so plants and try to narrow or categorize these even further.

Starting early with this approach helps in my experience, just how many plants do you want to know?
 
Mushrooms like older timber. I rarely see any in young woodland, pinelands-forget about it.

Their hunting season starts now, late fall, winterish if mild and very early spring.

Don't forget about the water... rain is a critical factor in seeing certain mushrooms or not.

I'm a novice when it comes to mushrooms but have picked up a little info from friends who hunt and make meds from them... I hope to learn a bit from such friends this winter.
 
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@phideaux Mullein aka Verbascum thapsus... That is without doubt the most pitiful, sickly looking mullein plant I have ever seen. :D

Wonderful, powerful medicinal, dozens of uses… will reset badly broken bones, will unherniate, herniated discs. Best plant for incontinence with new mothers or the elderly. The blooms are a very gentle pain reliever, toddler with an ear ache? It’ll take care of it…

I think it’s time I did a write up on Mullein…

Mullein 1_v1.jpg
 
From the top of the thread… I think photo’s 1,2&3 are a different plant than photo #6 (wood pile).

@camo2460 Got the id on #6, one of the mallows. I saw some growing by my mailbox this morning… Many times tiny mallows look different, used to think they were a couple of dozen different species but in the end they are just variations of a handful of plants spread across the whole world that keep getting relocated to different continents.

I don’t use it as medicine or cook with little mallows… in many parts of the world tiny mallows are often used for both. A great deal on the web about these uses.

There are several large mallows also, 4ft to 7ft that are beneficial… a few toxic ones out there as well.

@phideaux Can you number your photo’s with a paint program before posting? Just draw on the photo itself, that works well… Or refer back to post numbers in newer posts concerning one from earlier? A question about one or two plants on a single thread doesn’t need a lot of clarification.

Since this is going to be a continual thread with photos being added over months it’s really easy to lose track as to who is talking about which plant… Also, it’d be helpful not to go back and add photos to an earlier post for the same reason, just make a new post but include the older post id number or some clear identifier.

Thanks… just trying to be helpful. :)
 
I don't have anything on my phone that I can edit photos,
Only internet I have is my phone as a hotspot a and my laptop runs way too slow using the he hotspot.

I'll work on it.
We are looking into a good internet provider , which are few here in the country.

Jim
 
Jim, I figured a way to number them... I had to pm admin this morning to correct a mistake I made with a photo... I pm'd them a photo which they switched with an incorrect photo I posted long ago.

Soooo... Pm me your next batch of photos, I''ll number them (easy, quick) and pm them back to you... They don't lose any size or real quality.

I know this sounds like a pain but I've done these kind of running threads and I lose track... Heck, I've lost 2 or 3 tooth brushes this year, good thing I keep new ones in a drawer. How do I lose tooth brushes? :huh:
 
@phideaux Mullein aka Verbascum thapsus... That is without doubt the most pitiful, sickly looking mullein plant I have ever seen. :D

Wonderful, powerful medicinal, dozens of uses… will reset badly broken bones, will unherniate, herniated discs. Best plant for incontinence with new mothers or the elderly. The blooms are a very gentle pain reliever, toddler with an ear ache? It’ll take care of it…

I think it’s time I did a write up on Mullein…

View attachment 27864

Peanut, could you go a little deeper into Mullein and herniations? I am sure interested in this aspect.
 
Post #27... colors get wonky this time of year as temps get near freezing. I'd have to see this one get a little bigger. It feels like an escaped ornamental.

Post #28... guessing once again. It reminds me of one of the "Cudweeds". Down here purple cudweed is common, it's leaf edges are smooth and it looks "fuzzy". There are a 7 or 8 of the cudweeds nationwide. Their only claim to fame is being toxic to livestock. Another wait n see! ;)

Plant info... Some plants come out of the ground looking like a miniature version of the adult plant. The other extreme are plants that look absolutely nothing like the mature version. The rest are a mix of degrees...

Still others look identical to totally different plants when small. One of my favorite examples are Ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), a medicine and Bidens bipinnata another medicine. When they are about 6 inches tall I can't tell them apart. At about 8 inches subtle differences show up. The plant underlined in white is ragweed... the plant underlined with black is Bidens...

@phideaux there is another one of these you know well... Cocklebur aka Xanthium strumarium. When tiny it is identical to Lambs Quarters aka Chenopodium album. Lambs Q. is great as a salad. I have to wait for it to get a little bigger before having some because of cocklebur.


Ragweed 001_v1.jpg


Post 30
 
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