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People with allergies to certain flowers need to be able to identify them so they can avoid them. Those who use flowers for medicinal purposes or food have to be able to tell plants apart so they won't be misused. Some flowers are dangerous if eaten or even touched by people or pets.
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Queen Anne's Lace.Flowers are grouped into families that share common characteristics. Each family has a common and scientific name and each flower has a scientific name and one or more common names. The morning-glory, or "convolvulaceae" family has flowers with five petals united to glare into a bell shape. Ivy-leaved morning-glory or "ipomoea hederacea," has three lobed leaves and showy flowers. Small white morning-glory, or "ipomoea lacunosa," has very small flowers and heart shaped leaves. The lily, or "liliaceae" family has bulbed perennials with bell-like or triangular flowers in six parts or three parts. Most lilies have six part flowers with six stamens. Trilliums are triangle-shaped with three leaves, three petals and three sepals. There are numerous flower families, and each family has hundreds of different flowers. -
Many flowers are identified by different ways they're classified. Gardeners know classification based on blossoms. These include annual flowers that are planted each year such as petunias, perennial flowers that come up every year such as roses and biennial flowers such as Queen Anne's Lace or wild carrots that don't bloom at all the first growing season and die after the second season. Other ways flowers are classified are the position of the flower on the stem or leaves, the morphology (arrangement of the petals) of the flowers and the number and arrangement of flowers on a plant.
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Composite family.The best way to identify flowers in a certain area is to buy or borrow a field guide of the flowers in that area. Good field guides include flower families, pictures or drawings of the flowers, common and scientific names, and descriptions of the parts of the plant that distinguish it from others. There are many websites that can help you identify flowers, including the Master Gardener site listed in Resources that allows you to submit a picture of a flower for master gardeners to identify. Many universities have extension centers and labeled flower gardens that are open to the public at certain times. Catalogs and brochures from companies trying to sell flower seeds or bulbs usually contain information and pictures that identify flowers. -
Moss rose.The location where a flower is growing can help you identify a plant. There's more than one plant with showy, yellow, cup-like flowers in the northeastern and northcentral part of North America, but a prickly pear grows in rocky and sandy soil while an American Lotus grows in sluggish rivers and ponds. Some flowers, like lilies, grow in shaded, damp, wooded areas. Others, like daisies, grow on roadsides, in waste areas or in fields. - The more you read, study and learn about flowers, the easier it is to identify those you don't recognize. Asking others the name of a flower can lead to learning the names of many. When you become used to looking at all of the parts of a plant and the surroundings the flower is growing in, you will be able to identify different types of flowers easily.
