First I try to clear my eyes so I can see the forest through the trees.
Then I try do decide if it is a monocot or a dicot. Monocots have the veins in the leaves all running parallel, and those leaf veins are fine. Dicots have the smaller veins running off of the main vein. Sometimes even this can be tricky.
This wikipedia article is pretty good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_taxonomy
And the next one is also good basic information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowering_plant
(I more than kind of like Wikipedia. I'm a member of it.)
Go ahead and browse through these two articles, and after reading them, click on some of the links. I call it linking around.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_identification
What a person does to identify a plant is get more and more specific.
Yep, it's a plant...
You might notice there are different understandings of the classification systems. Once you understand them, looks like a person can pick which one they like best. I looked through Phylogeny some years ago, so I modify my understanding to that.
Life for example encompasses all living things. They are still arguing if life includes viruses.
Then there is Domain. That is, does its cell have a nucleus and chromosomes.
Then there is Phylum. They still are sorting this out, but basic things like, plant cells have chloroplasts, animal cells don't, Amoeba cells have no way to swim around, flagellate cells do.
I would have sub phyla next. How do plants sort out in the most basic ways. Some have roots and a way to move nutrients and water in them, some don't.
I'd want class next. How the vascular plants sort out. Some make spores, some make seeds with no cotyledons, some with one cotyledon, some with 2 cotyledons.
Next is Order. The Order would include one or a great many families. Order is where good thinking evolutionary biologists make decisions. For example, they decide if Borage is in a family separate and different than the family tomatoes are in, and how long ago it was that Borage and Tomatoes had a common ancestor.
Family is a grouping that is very important to plant id. There are close similarities, but still, sometimes the similarities can be tricky. English Ivy vines similarly to Ivy Geranium, but closer looking at the flowers and seeds makes a person decide they are in different families.
Genus is the group that common names are mostly but not exactly are given for kinds of plants. Squash, a common name, is equivalent to the Latin Genus name, Cucurbita for example. Not all Squash can cross with each other though. The ability to cross, in the most normal way, is for the next closer related group:
Species. This is the most special group because it is at this level that plants can cross readily and normally. Different looking plants in the same species are different mainly by things like sizes, proportions, colors, speed of growth, things like that.
subspecies is decided by different ways for different species. Cabbage makes a cabbage head, and Broccoli does not, so they are given subspecies names.
Variety is where the subtle differences are found. One snap bean cans nicely, another one does not but instead makes the best beans and bacon.
That's some of the arcane stuff! Lol!
