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Plant Life Valerie Easton

Preserving Our Bio-Identity

With pieces of pod, seed and bloom, these detectives solve our garden mysteries

"WHAT THE HECK is that plant?" Every gardener has probably said that, and more than once. I guess our lives are enriched by botanical Latin, but the puzzle of matching name to plant can be tougher than a Sudoku to solve.

Without a correct identification, it's impossible to track down plants or learn how to care for them. For some of us, one green leaf looks pretty much like another. Even if we can tell a rose from a peony, quite often the question comes down to which rose, which peony?

Take heart. There's a free local resource willing and able to identify garden plants. All you need do is clip a fresh, live piece of whatever plant you're wondering about, along with fruit, seed or flower if possible, stick it in a plastic bag, and carry it on over to the Otis Douglas Hyde Herbarium at the University of Washington Botanic Gardens.

Here you'll find experts able to identify plants down to the cultivar level. "We need a nice big chunk of the plant, not just a leaf," cautions Wendy Des Camp, who manages the herbarium. Drop off the pieces of your mystery plant, and the staff will figure it out on the spot or get back to you in a week with an answer.

The herbarium is an inspired mix of art and science. It feels more like an art gallery than a lab, with framed botanicals lining the walls. A closer look reveals these are actual mounted plant specimens.

Plant identification is as tricky as any other kind of detective work, and these dried plant bits are the code. Fruit and flower are vital for identification because reproductive characteristics tend to be "conservative," meaning they don't change much. So it's the lovely little tracings of dried berry, split pod and pressed flower that provide the best clues to a plant's heritage and name. Leaves aren't as useful because they're more variable, altering with soil, light and stress.

Thanks to volunteers, thousands of dried specimens fill the file cabinets in the herbarium, serving as documentation for plants grown in the nearby Washington Park Arboretum past and present. Plants from other notable gardens in the area fill the drawers as well. Intrepid collectors have ranged well beyond the arboretum in their quest to preserve every interesting plant they can find.

Volunteers have had a remarkably long run of collecting and mounting specimens. Since the 1970s, they have spent two mornings a month gathering flora in fruit or flower, then debating the plants' names over lunch. "We're always looking at what we have and what we need," says Des Camp.

These collectors are following a long tradition, for herbaria work has changed little in the past 500 years. Dr. Sarah Reichard, the herbarium's curator, explains that plant parts are still sandwiched between special paper, then put in a wooden press bound with straps that are tightened every day. "The only thing different is that now we have a dryer, which helps preserve colors," she says. Once the specimens are mounted on acid-free paper, they are popped into a freezer for three days to kill any insects, spores and eggs. After this treatment, specimens should last for hundreds of years.

Reichard still marvels over how she once held a Drymes winteri collected by Captain Cook on his original voyage. This was the real 18th-century plant, albeit dried and mounted, that sailed the seas on Cook's ship.

These pressed remnants of live plants will fill the herbaria of the future. They're not only key to figuring out what grows in our own backyards, but also to telling the tale of our Northwest ecosystem before and after the turn of the millennium.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Tom Reese is a Seattle Times staff photographer.

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