After the hiccups, we’ve finally been able to dedicate the majority of our time to botany! I am very familiar with many species and know most of my plant friends by their common names, but we always want to be sure (and we need practice) so we key most species of interest. This has been a challenge. Luckily, the botanist in our forest gave us a handy dandy illustrated botany glossary, so our current method is for one person to read the key as the other rapidly looks up every other word. I don’t think my vocabulary has grown this fast since my wee years of learning how to speak from scratch. To make matters more childlike, I have only read the majority of the words I have to now say out loud…to other people. This has been an extremely entertaining and embarrassing trend. I have to revert back to sounding out each syllable -mostly of the scientific names- and am promptly corrected upon getting the word out. But we’re learning. 

I wasn’t aware botany meant learning a whole new language but I am glad it is such a entertaining one. So far my favorite (and least favorite) word that has in fact entered my daily vocabulary is “peduncle”. It sounds nearly Dr. Suessian and it made me laugh out loud the first time I encountered it, but now I am to the point I can use it with a straight face (though it is the butt of many jokes amidst the wildlife crew that hears us using it). The reason it is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite is the definition. The peduncle is the stem/stalk of a single flower, fruit or inflorescence, and that’s fine. But here’s the thing: there is like ten other words for that same thing. That might be my main hurdle with learning the botanist babble, there are so many words that to my relatively untrained eye, mean the exact same thing. I will note though, that the more we key and the more we look, I am starting to be able to understand the differences that appear between the same “parts” of plants across varying species, as well as just how many parts make up a single plant, hence why in one case a stem is referred to as a pedicel and in another it is a peduncle.