Get to know your backyard

Learn the names of some friendly plants

My high school had a “May term” where you could take a 2 week elective class to finish out the year. My junior year, I took a botany class that involved traveling to parks all over Indiana (where I lived). I learned the names of various plants: wild columbines with their delicate red flowers, the skunk cabbage that grows in swampy soil, and how to recognize a beech tree. Basically, if you see a tree with initials carved in it while you’re on a walk in the woods, that’s a beech tree. The smooth bark seems to attract vandalism.

Now, whenever I spot these plants while I’m on a walk, it feels like I’m seeing old friends. I met them in high school — and here we are together now.

There’s a lot to be said for knowing the names of plants you see frequently. To be sure, plant names are human attempts to impose categories on things that might exist whether we named them or not (“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”). But just as knowing people’s names helps us feel more connected to them, knowing the names of things in nature helps us feel more at home, even in our own backyards.

So, if you are somewhere that the weather and the world turns lovely in April, go outside and see what you see, and whether you can make some acquaintances. While I learned a lot of names in high school (and in my continuing botanical obsessions after) I currently rely on the PictureThis app, which quickly identified a star magnolia as being the early blooming white tree that smelled so nice. Another fragrant bush is the Japanese andromeda. The cherry trees have been announcing themselves over the last few weeks, along with the forsythia.

Arm yourself with an app (or a book) and see what you can learn. Not only will knowing the names of various plants allow you to refer to them more specifically (“should we plant some roses by the weeping cherry?”) you can read up and figure out what to expect. I now remember which trees are the crabapples and when I can expect them to blossom — and I am really looking forward to that!