“Botany Basics & the GILF Method”

Notes from the 1st class of the Botany Conservation Course
by Course Volunteer Phyllis Daniels & Course Coordinator Mary Kiesau

Stewart Hougen was the first speaker in the Methow Conservancy's 2014 "Methow Conservation Course." This is the 10th annual course and this year's topic is Botany.

Stewart, a Seattle-based landscape architect and Mountaineers naturalist and instructor in his spare time, created the “General Impression of Leaf & Flower” or GILF method for identifying plant families. The first three classes of the six-week course will use his GILF method and other plant “keys” as a way to learn the characteristics of common flowering plant families in the Methow Valley.

As part of the GILF method, Stewart created seven Identification Groups where he lumps families with certain similar characteristics together. For instance, ID Group #1 includes Lilies, Irises and Orchids because they are all Monocots. All the other ID Groups will be Dicots. A dicot is a flowering plant with two embryonic seed leaves, rather than the single embryonic seed leaf associated with monocots. Embryonic seed leaves, also known as cotyledons, are an important part of plant development, and monocots and dicots develop in different ways right from the very start. The cotyledons aren't the only difference between monocots and dicots. Monocots have parallel veins in their leaves. All grasses are monocots. Monocots also typically have flower parts in multiples of three. Dicot flowers have flower parts (petals, etc.) in multiples of four or five, and their leaves have netted veins.

Stewart Hougen’s Identification Groups should be thought of as hierarchical. For example, does the plant have parallel veins and parts in 3s? If yes, it’s in Group 1, if no, go to Group 2 next. Does the plant have parts in 4s such as 4 petals? If yes, the plant is in Group 2. If no, then move to Group 3 and decide if it belongs there. We covered the first three ID Groups in the first class.

ID Group 1: Showy Monocots; flower parts in 3s and parallel veins
Families: Lily, Orchid & Iris

ID Group 2: Flowers in 4’s but not bell-shaped
Families: Evening Primrose & Mustard

ID Group 3: Central Clusters (Could be stamens &/or pistils or compound flowers.)
Families: Buttercup, Rose & Sunflower

Once you’ve placed a plant in an ID Group, you can try to determine which family it is in, such as is a plant with 4s an Evening Primrose or Mustard, and then you can try to identify the plant further to Genus and then Species.

Using the “General Impression of Leaf & Flower” (GILF), some of the features might be:

Is the leaf simple or compound?
Are the leaves opposite or alternate or offset?
Are the leaves primarily basil (at the base of the plant, near the ground)?
Are the flowers single or in clusters?
Are the flowers radial or bilateral?
Are the flowers on a raceme?
Sometimes we just know the flower is what it is, like an orchid just looks like an orchid. 

Learning plant terms and anatomy is a great first step!

Stewart have us a 10-page handout to help distinguish families by these and many other “general impressions.”

Here are two examples from the families we learned in first class:
1. Using the “general impression” of the leaf in the GILF method, we can distinguish the ID Group 2 families this way: Evening Primrose plants in our area both have “willow-like” leaves, whereas the Mustard plants have basal leaves or if the plant has some leaves on the stem, the dominant leave impression is that they are basal.

2. ID Group 3 contains three large families with Buttercup being the most diverse. Roses always have 5 petals/sepals. Buttercups can have 5-12 petals/sepals but their leaves are mostly compound or deeply divided whereas Roses tend to have 3-5 leaflets that are toothed. The Sunflower family is always going to have numerous small flowers in a cluster that is the flower-head. We tend to think of Sunflowers family plants as having ray flowers (look like petals) and disc flowers (the circle inside the petals), but some only have ray flowers such as dandelions and some only have disc flowers such as pussytoes.