80,000 plants, landscape architects, etc.

To me (not to the landscape architects), I had an unusual question at work. To simplify a classification system (or for biologists and librarians, it's taxonomy) for tagging 80,000 plants to be sorted, delivered and planted around the bridge, vehicle/pedestrian ramps and by the road approaches we are constructing.

It is confirmed there will be just a couple magnolia trees sprinkled about the transportation system route, some hawthorn trees, lots of Douglas fir..

So simplified system was cobbled under 35 min. To de-Latinate, de-classify abit from precise scientific terms...to common names, size of seedling..

How do the landscape architects, botanists, etc. remember all those plant names. common vs. Latin terms for 1 plant.and more to the point, remember what all the different varieties look like? Maybe it's just remembering local/native stuff as priority over more "exotic" stuff?

I've always wondered how the Botanists & Marine Scientists that work for our firm remember all of the tech terms for the reports they write. I know they must know all of the tech terms as it's often on the field notes I come across..

Well, you generally don't learn them all at once. You can cram for an exam, but to learn the names and retain them you can only learn so many at a time. There are also things like pneumatic devices and abbreviations.

I used to do botanical/ecological surveys in Montana over the summer when I was in and right after college. We coded everything by 4 and then later 6 letter codes, and I tended to learn those before the full name. For example, one habitat type was known as ABLA/MEFE. I knew what what plant ABLA was (fir tree) and what MEFE was (shrub) but it was a couple weeks in that I remembered ABLA=Abies lasiocarpa and MEFE=Menziesia ferrugina.

The soil conservation service (or whatever it's named now) uses six letter codes (first three letters of the genus+first three of the specific epithet) for all plants. A number is added if more than one species have the same 6 letter code.

Now, horticultural varieties--that's a whole 'nother ball of wax.

When I did plant surveys, I'd learn the scientific name first then the common name. Sometimes I didn't know the common name.

When my mom and sister came to visit me in Montana, we did an overnight float with a commercial outfit. There were some other folks & my mom, of course, bragged how her daughter knew all the plant names. 'Cept all I knew were the geek names. Uh, that's, Tiarella trifoliata, uh, I think it might be called foamflower but I'm not really sure. The other folks on the trip were not impressed.

How many different species/genus were those 80k plants? Probably not a huge variety, right?

I know that plants that I like to work with, both common and botanical names. The others that I don't use so much I can look up. I'd say that most landscape architects have a pretty good baseline of the names of the common plants they use.

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Originally Posted by ilima

There are also things like pneumatic devices and abbreviations.

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Pneumatic devices like a jackhammer to pound the names into your short term memory?
I think you mean mnemonic devices ;)

Rote memorization.

When I took plant ID, the courses were divided into spring & fall (this was in the Bay Area, so if something flowered during one part of the year, that was the semester it was taught).

We made flashcards for study aids. One side had a dried, pressed plant specimen mounted on it under clear contact paper. The other side had botanical name, common name(s), and other descriptive information about the plant -- family, genus, height, form, flower/fruit type, area of distribution, whether it provides food or habitat, etc., etc.

I also spent time volunteering at the local arboretum, and that was a great way to get familiar with the plants and how they look different throughout the year.

Without going through details of all landscape-engineering drawings, it would be safe to say there are under 40 different species amongst smaller number of families.

It would almost seem a necessary love of some gardening on the personal side, for a landscape architect to always have that memory skill and keep alive the understanding how plants behave under certain environmental conditions. Do you folks dream in conceptual spaces, colours and then details of plants...?

I'm not much good at any 3-D art, so have great respect for interior designers, landscape architects, sculptors, etc.

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Do you folks dream in conceptual spaces, colours and then details of plants...?

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I'm not a landscape architect but I do dream of trees, plants and shrubs, yeah I'm weird like that. I lived too long in the baren desert and just love the Northwest! I can't get enough of the green stuff and am so amazed at all the variety.

I've tried to get to know some of the names of my favorite plants and trees by looking at books and asking friends lots of questions, however my native to the NW friends seem to hardly care or know, sigh. I threaten to bring them cactus when I go down south to visit family! LOL

I used to think all forest trees were pine trees, now I know there are fur trees, cedar, pine, okay I'm tasked now....back to the books!:confused:

Among landscape architects that I've met &/or whose work I've studied, depth & breadth of plant knowledge varies greatly.

Some L.A.s really love plants in all of their diversity and this will be reflected in their work if they are not too constrained by building codes and design standards.

Others have limited knowledge and just stick to a few well-performing favorites. Especially if they are the type who have projects in multiple cities/countries. Then they may need to rely on a local expert to choose plants.

A lot of award-winning designs these days tend to stick to a limited number of plants.

As a field ecologist, it is all remembered through repetition and need. Working in Botswana, I had to learn the names of about a dozen shrubs/tress as well as about a dozen mammals. I took good notes the first day, kept looking things up the first week, then just remembered them because I had repeated it all several times a day. Now that I haven't used that information for a few years it is all forgotten and I would have to go back to my notes to remember. Same with doing vegetation surveys in Norway. The first couple of days I had to look up things in my notes, but after a couple of days of repeating the same species I'd have them all memorized. Only the rare ones, I'd have to look up again on occasion. The list of species was around 30 plants. Each summer, I'd have to refresh my memory the first few days and now that I haven't been in the field for a while I can only remember the most common ones. And I would usually only remember either the latin name, or the common name and then have to look up the other.

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Originally Posted by jocelynlf

Among landscape architects that I've met &/or whose work I've studied, depth & breadth of plant knowledge varies greatly.

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Yep. It's important to work with people who have complementary skills. Larger firms like the one I used to work for had a variety of LAs on each team, some were plant specialists, some had expertise in stormwater, some were well-versed in site engineering, and some were visionary designers. Most of us fell somewhere in the middle.

I once had a project in Mali and had to do alot of basic research on very unfamiliar plants.

And yes, I do dream in conceptual spaces, colors and plants. I can't imagine doing anything else. One of my bigger projects since leaving the corporate support system is going to be planted this fall (construction of the building is almost complete). So far, it looks like the budget is holding and that the landscape will actually be planted at least mostly as designed. I'm quite curious to see how it will turn out.

we humans have a real healthy piece of brain for naming stuff. I find that i remember the names of an incredible number of plants... because I'm interested in it. I hired Arthur Lee Jacobsen to give me a consultation on my yard a few weeks ago, and it was fun to see him at work trying to figure out my weeds and my planted stuff. He's a walking encyclopedia!