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Kind of Blue—It’s All about the Name S TA R I A VA N D E R P O O L “KIND OF BLUE” can be used to describe cross-genre music, moods, or my husband’s description of the shirt he’s trying to match to a tie, but when I hear the phrase over the phone, I know I’m in for a long, frustrating session with some potential for embarrassment. Someone has called about an unknown plant flowering in their lawn, pasture, ditch, field, or forest, and they want to know what they have. Actually, what they really want me to do is a phone identification of an unknown plant without the fuss and bother of bringing in a specimen to the lab—so they’ll call from Jonesboro, Bono, or more distant parts of Arkansas. After all, I teach classes for the Master Gardeners Program; I’m a plant taxonomist , a member of the Arkansas Native Plant Society, and sometimes known as “the gardening lady.” I should know all the 2,707 (+) species of vascular plants in the state, plus an additional 200 or 300 species and cultivars of ornamental plants. Right? Wrong! There are several people in the state who can come close, but I can’t. However, I’ll do my best. So, . . . the phone rings in my office, I glance up to see that the call is coming from our departmental secretary. I answer it with about half my attention still on the current project. Then I hear some version of the following , “I called the department about this strange plant I found, and they said you could help me.” Professional pride, courtesy, and my conviction that I work for the taxpayers who support Arkansas State University demands that I respond. I always ask if they can bring the plant in to the lab for me to identify, but they’re convinced that this is such an unusual plant that I can do a phone diagnosis. So, we play “Twenty Questions” as 161 I desperately try to develop a mental image of their plant (and then a name). 1. What time of the year is it? (Actually, this is a mental question because even I usually know what season it is, but it is important because this narrows down the possibilities.) 2. Where did you find it? 3. What are some of the other plants around it? 4. Is it a tree, shrub, or herbaceous plant? 5. How tall is it? 6. What color is the flower? 7. Are the leaves grasslike or broad leaves? 8. Are the leaves simple or compound? 9. Are the leaves on the stem opposite, alternate, all at the base, or are there leaves present at all? 10. Does it have a distinctive odor? Is it mint-like, pleasant, musty (the technical term is “fetid”), or acrid? 11. Does it look like a pea or bean flower? 12. Does it look like a daisy or sunflower? 13. Does it have a saucer-shaped bloom or is it shaped like a trumpet? You get the general idea. In the worst-case scenario the answers to these questions stack up like the following: It’s mid-spring and this unknown flower popped up along the edge of their lawn, next to the road, or in the woods next to a field. It must be rare; they’ve never seen it before. It is short and soft-stemmed, the flower color is sort of blue, the leaves are weird looking, the flower smells good, and they think the flower is more like a saucer, but not quite, maybe more like a bowl. But, it’s really pretty! What is it? The chances are pretty good that I am not going to successfully answer that question. One resource I keep in my office that is particularly useful in working with non-taxonomists is Wildflowers of Arkansas by Carl Hunter. It is well illustrated and widely used as a convenient reference to showy common wildflowers. Of the 484 species illustrated, approximately 110 are “bluish” (violet through blue and purple). The key phrase above is illustrated. In its 2006 guide to vascular plants of Arkansas, the Arkansas Vascular Flora Committee lists 2,896 taxa of plants in the state (191 families, 924 genera, and 2,707 species), and the number grows daily as plant biologists of the state complete comprehensive field and herbarium research as part of the project to produce a...

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