"What is that tree (or shrub, or flower)?" is a common question from gardeners. There are millions of plants, and no one can know them all.
When taking a walk in the woods, it would be nice to be able to identify the plants that are indigenous to our state; but statistics show that "plant blindness" is a common problem — consumers can identify, on average, 1,000 logos of products but only 10 plants. That really needs to change.
"Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Arkansas" by Jennifer Ogle, Theo Witsell and Johnnie Gentry, can help make that change.
There are online sites for plant information, but reference books with good pictures are still a mainstay for many of us. For years, my go-to plant ID books for Arkansas have been the late Carl Hunter's "Trees, Shrubs and Vines of Arkansas" and "Wildflowers of Arkansas." Both books are out of print, and while still excellent resources, they needed to be updated. To be truly helpful, plant ID books should be readily available.
The Ozark Society Foundation was looking for someone to create a new resource. The foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1975 to support and promote conservation, education and recreation in the Ozark-Ouachita region. The foundation is a partner with the Ozark Society (ozarksociety.net), the nonprofit that in 1972 saved the Buffalo River from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams and pushed for its National River status.
About eight years ago, the foundation approached Gentry, then director and curator of the University of Arkansas Herbarium, for help. He enlisted Ogle, one of his proteges and now collections manager of the herbarium, and Witsell, longtime advocate of native plants and the ecologist and chief of research for the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission.
They eagerly agreed to the project, and with support of their employers and a grant from The Ozark Society Foundation, they got started. It turned into a labor of love, and the three have become good friends, but the book was a more formidable task than they expected.
The end product is a fabulous 520-page reference. "Trees, Shrubs and Woody Vines of Arkansas" covers 471 plants, with more than 1,500 color photographs. It will be a game-changer in native plant identification in the South.
To get started, they drew up a rough outline of what each of them wanted to do, picking and choosing subjects near and dear to each. Then they divided the other subjects. Gentry started on the oaks and hickories, Witsell on the prunus and viburnums, and Ogle wrote the technical descriptions and the family group sections.
At first, they were only going to write about the plants most commonly found in Arkansas, but then they decided that for the book to be really useful, they needed to cover all the woody native or naturalized plants they could.
ORGANIZATION
The book begins with a detailed description of the various regions of Arkansas, followed by a quick pictorial, visual key that uses growth habit (tree, shrub, or woody vine) to help people narrow their searches.
From there, the plants are divided by family but also by type of plant — gymnosperms, monocots and dicots. Gymnosperms are nonflowering seed plants with naked seeds. They include the needle-type conifers (pines, cedar, junipers and bald cypress). Angiosperms, or flowering plants that have seeds enclosed by an ovary or fruit, are broken into monocots (one seed leaf, like grasses, yuccas, greenbrier and palms) and dicots (with two seed leaves, like apples, cherries and dogwoods).
Keep in mind that the authors are all botanists, so there has to be some technical information in the book.
There is also an excellent section on basic botanical terms with clear illustrations, plus an extensive glossary at the end of the book.
You may think this all sounds too technical, but to properly identify plants you need to know some basics. Think of an oak leaf vs. a hickory leaf. An oak has a simple leaf with a small stem or petiole that attaches the leaf to the branch; but hickory has a compound leaf. One hickory leaf consists of seven to 17 leaflets (depending on species). I can't tell you how many times I have had someone bring me one leaflet for identification — it can't be done.
This book helps you know what you are looking for so you can properly identify the plant.
PLANT BY PLANT
For each of the 471 plants, they give the Latin name along with the common name.
There is a map showing where the plant has been found growing in Arkansas, along with detailed information about the plant with great color photographs of flowers, foliage, fruit and bark, if applicable. Each plant also has a "notes" section with some interesting information about the plant. This is section of the book of which Witsell is most proud.
Descriptions include notes about the plant's conservation status if it is rare or endangered: (conservation concern/tracked); potentially of conservation concern (watch list); non-native but naturalized (introduced); and invasive.
If the plant doesn't have one of these designations next to its name, then it is considered native and fairly secure in its growth status in the state.
A complete list of the rare and invasive plants is at the back of the book as well.
CLEAR PICTURES
The photographs are outstanding. While the authors all had a wealth of photos, they could not have filled the book with all the photos they needed without the help of many friends and colleagues who contributed the majority of the photos. They filled in remaining gaps with help from iNaturalist, an online global community of people who record observations of organisms and share them so everyone can learn more about the natural world.
iNaturalist began in 2008 as a University of California-Berkeley master's project. In 2014, the organization merged with the California Academy of Sciences, and in 2017 it became a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.
Anyone can join for free, either through the website iNaturalist.org or via a mobile app on your phone.
This online citizen-science project maps and shares biodiversity observations (plants, animals, butterflies, birds, etc.) from around the world. Members are encouraged to upload photos to share, or use the database for help in identification. The site continues to gain in popularity and the number of participants and observations has roughly doubled each year. As of February 2021, there were 66 million observations of plants, animals, insects and more. Check it out.
I asked Witsell and Ogle how they got interested in botany and native plants. Both had early family encounters with plants through hikes in the woods and have always loved the natural world. In choosing between plants and animals as a career focus, they thought the plants were a whole lot easier to catch.
"Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Arkansas" was released in January and is already in its second printing. The book is available from University of Arkansas Press (uapress.com), Amazon and many local bookstores.
If you are looking for an excellent reference book for native and naturalized woody plants, this will be the best $29.95 you will ever spend.
Read Janet Carson's blog at arkansasonline.com/planitjanet.