To all plant enthusiasts, botanists, and biologists out there, how did you master identifying species to the point where you can tell, in less than a second, the difference between plant A and plant B? Do you master one family at a time? Do you go out and identify as much as you can? I asked this …

I can’t speak for the genus Premna, but for me it was a combination of continuously going out and literally just iNatting anything and everything, regularly communicating with other naturalists regarding identifications, using dichotomous keys, and recognizing what species prefer which growing condi…

Here is a paper with a dichotomous key for Premna, it may help. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236270791_The_genus_Premna_L_Lamiaceae_in_the_Flora_Malesiana_area

Going to organized walks (I am a member of a local branch of the botanical society), trying to identify with the key myself, reading articles about different species when they exist. Not usually the whole family at a time. Rather various taxons that appear in the area relevant to me. And then some i…

Reading keys, using different keys and repetition, repetition, repetition, repe…. ;) With some (a lot) of frustrating moments “why still don’t you know this species, you had seen it so often”. Start in your region, with species you can see very often and which are easy to recognize. Here in Europe…

Constant practice is the only way. The more you key and learn, the easier it gets. You may not figure out what an identification key is talking about until you’ve seen multiple taxa in multiple populations. Even then, some keys are not very good or contain errors. And some plant taxa are almost impo…

The “in less than a second” part is just about practice and familiarity. No one can scrutinize features and go over keys that quickly, but once you really know a given plant, you can recognize it instantly without having to. I sometimes compare this to recognizing people’s faces. We can pick a fam…

Some people just have an innate eye for the plant pattern recognition and others don’t, I do believe it is trainable however.

[image] drichh: couldn’t tell the difference between the species because they all look the same another way around that is to annotate for phenology. When you work thru hundreds of obs, slowly slowly something starts to stick. And if you have learnt A vs B, then go thru the obs stuck at Genus…

For me it has been partly about poring over my field guides and the iNat species accounts and other online sources, over and over and over again. Even for the taxa that I feel most comfortable with, I often refer to them. A big help for me has been filtering for disagreements in a particular genus …

How did you master identifying plants?

Nature Talk

dgwdoesthings February 2, 2026, 5:03pm 7

In one way, everything others have already said. But also, I will never be a master at identifying, my skills and knowledge will increase overtime but the more I learn the more I forget, it is simply human nature.

Topic		Replies	Views
Overthinking plant identification General	27	4867	January 29, 2021
How do professional naturalists conduct species identification? Nature Talk question	15	404	March 28, 2025
Learning families vs learning genera? Nature Talk question , identification	14	785	December 5, 2023
What is the Best Way to Learn a Species? Nature Talk question , taxonomy	46	4241	October 17, 2019
When Things "Click" For ID of Difficult Groups Nature Talk	5	873	March 4, 2020

How did you master identifying plants?

Related topics