Plant Identification

by Anna Lawrence

  164 Plant Identification

  CASE STUDY 7.1 QUESTIONNAIRE TO COLLECT INFORMATION

  ABOUT THE FORAGE LEGUMES TO BE INCLUDED IN A BRAZILIAN

  GUIDE FOR COMMUNITY USE

  Note to the interviewer: this questionnaire is for use with key informants from the communities and with agricultural development workers. It is important that the respondent feels comfortable and willing to give the information. It is a long questionnaire. You should make sure that the person does not feel obliged to answer all of the questions. If this is not the case, the person could give an incorrect answer.

  Place of interview:

  _______________________________

  Person interviewed: _______________________________

  Date: _______________________________

  1 Scientific

  name:

  2

  The most used popular name:

  3

  Other popular names known in the region:

  I Morphological characteristics

  4

  What is the habit of this plant? ( ) herb; ( ) bush; ( ) shrub; ( ) tree Height:

  5

  Shape of the crown:

  According to the farmer:

  According to the interviewer: ( ) rounded; ( ) elongated; ( ) spreading; ( ) other 6

  Does the plant have thorns? ( ) yes; ( ) no

  7

  Do the thorns fall off the plant easily? ( ) yes; ( ) no 8

  Where do you find the thorns? ( ) on the trunk; ( ) on the branches; ( ) on the leaves; ( ) other:

  9

  What is the shape of the thorns? ( ) straight; ( ) curved 10 Behaviour of the trunk: ( ) peeling bark; ( ) non-peeling bark Question for the interviewer:

  check whether there is any difference between the outer and inner bark.

  11 Texture of the trunk: ( ) smooth; ( ) rough

  12 Colour of the trunk: ( ) light; ( ) dark

  13 Are the hairs visible on the leaves? ( ) yes; ( ) no 14 Texture of the leaves: ( ) brittle; ( ) not brittle 15 What is the colour of the flowers?

  16 Shape of the fruit:

  17 Shape of the seeds:

  II Phenology

  18 When does it begin to flower? ( ) dry season; ( ) during the first rains; ( ) other: 19 During which months?

  Information 165

  20 In which season is the plant covered in leaves?

  21 When is the plant flowering (period when it is in full flower)?

  22 When is the fruiting season (period during which it is in full fruit)?

  23 When is the plant completely without leaves?

  24 When is the plant completely with leaves?

  25 Any other observations:

  III Uses

  26 Eaten by which type of animal? ( ) goat; ( ) sheep; ( ) cow; ( ) donkey; ( ) horse; ( ) birds; observations:

  27 Which part of the plant is eaten? ( ) leaf; ( ) branches; ( ) pods; ( ) flowers; ( ) bark; ( ) trunk; ( ) seeds; ( ) wood

  28 How do the animals eat this fodder? ( ) stall fed (in which case, do you dry it?); ( ) directly from the plant; ( ) on the ground

  29 Which fodder does the plant produce in the dry season? ( ) leaf; ( ) pods; ( ) flower; ( ) seed; ( ) bark; ( ) branches

  30 Which other uses does the plant have? ( ) medicinal; ( ) firewood; ( ) soap; ( ) hay; ( ) honey; ( ) human food; ( ) charcoal; ( ) timber/fence/furniture/benches; ( ) others: IV Management

  31 Do you know what coppicing is?

  32 Does the plant coppice? ( ) yes; ( ) no

  33 Under what conditions: ( ) following fire; ( ) after being cut 34 Do you know people who plant these trees? ( ) yes; ( ) no 35 How do they do it? ( ) stakes; ( ) seed

  36 Which plants do people worry about conserving around here?

  37 Why?

  38 Do you collect the seeds of pods of these plants? ( ) yes; ( ) no 39 During which season?

  40 How do you ensure the conservation of these seeds/beans?

  41 How do you make the seed germinate, and does it germinate easily? ( ) plant directly in the field; ( ) make a seed bed; ( ) other:

  42 What is the procedure utilized for forage? ( ) cut, dry, store and give; ( ) cut and give; ( ) cut, dry, make hay, store and give; ( ) cut, grind, make silage and give; ( ) others:

  V Problems or restrictions in use

  43 Problems or difficulties when the animal tries to eat the plant: ( ) the seed punctures the stomach; ( ) the plant is very high; ( ) poisonous; ( ) others: 44 Is this plant toxic to the animal? ( ) yes; ( ) no 45 When is it toxic? ( ) when it is green; ( ) when it is withered; ( ) when it is cut; ( ) others:

  VI Other information

  Source: research for Costa et al (2002)

  166 Plant Identification

  informants are willing to provide, at the same time avoiding jumping too quickly to conclusions about the meaning of the information provided.

  Several detailed books on ethnobotany and its methods are available, including two in this series (Martin, 1995; Cunningham, 2001) and two other highly recommendable volumes (Alexiades, 1996; Cotton, 1996). Producing a field guide may seem like only the tip of the ethnobotanical iceberg, and yet many ethnobotanical studies either start, or end, with the decision to produce a guide, often with the aim of ‘conserving traditional knowledge’. We cannot go into all the issues around this here, but note that issues of self-determination (the right of indigenous peoples to decide what is documented and how) and intellectual property (see below) are paramount.

  The choice of respondents needs particular attention in an ethnobotanical study. An ethnobiological description, or field guide based on such a study, may consist of only that knowledge unanimously agreed on by all informants or the combined knowledge of all. But some knowledge is more important in that is it more salient and widely shared, while other knowledge is unique to individuals (Berlin, 1992).

  A major task of ethnobiological description is to find relationships between folk and scientific classifications. While a field guide is not usually a work of ethnotaxonomy (indigenous systems of classification) in itself, it is often the result of such studies and may well be organized in such a way as to reflect local classifications. It is useful, therefore, to understand how ethnobotanists go about understanding such systems. There are two well-established systematic ways of gathering basic data from which the patterns of variation in informants’ classifications may emerge:

  1 use of prepared specimens, which multiple informants are requested to view and name independently of one another;

  2 use of several different informants who identify multiple plant or animal species in their natural state at the time of collection, but none of whom see the full set of collections.

  Such studies are also important for finding out the local names used for the plants in the field guide. However, naming is not the same as classification. If an informant tells you that a plant is ‘a kind of fern’, that means that he perceives it to belong in the group of plants that he knows as ferns. It does not mean that the name of the plant is ‘fern’.

  More important in the context of field guide preparation is to find out how different people identify different species, and what are the characters that they rely on. This can help to develop user-friendly identification keys as described in Chapters 5 and 6. One approach that has been used to elicit the characters employed by different local forest users is described in Case study 7.2.

  Participatory visual methods

  The tools developed under the umbrella of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) often rely strongly on using visual methods to stimulate discussion and to record information. This is for several reasons: visual information, such as maps and diagrams, is more easily shared by a group, thereby avoiding the sensitive situation of a researcher writing down data on a form that she then takes away without locals sharing in the results. Visual information is also more easily shared with people who do not read and write – or who

  Information 167

  CAS
E STUDY 7.2 METHODS DEVELOPED ON MOUNT CAMEROON TO

  ELICIT CHARACTERS USED IN INDIGENOUS PLANT IDENTIFICATION

  Penny Fraser

  If we want to talk or write about plant identification, or to teach others how to identify plants, then we need to work out which characters are being used in the identification process.

  The characters used by formally trained botanists are well documented. But do people from other cultural and knowledge domains use the same characters? Researchers working on Mount Cameroon were aware that people from different backgrounds not only speak different languages, but can think, see, perceive and interpret in different ways. They therefore designed a series of exercises to elicit information on the characters and processes of plant identification used by local plant experts with contrasting backgrounds and relationships with plants. Mount Cameroon was an appropriate site for this work because it hosts great diversity of species, habitats and ethnic groups: 2435 plant species; 28 rare animal species; a rise from sea level and 34°C to 4094m and 20°C in less than 14km. Rainfall also rainfall varies greatly, from 800–11,000mm within 40km.

  The teacher–student role-playing exercise

  The objective of this exercise is to elicit which characters and processes plant experts use when they are identifying plants. The output of the exercise is a ranked list of the identification characters for each participating user group. Analysis enables calculation of the total number and relative importance of different characters and character types, within and between sample groups. A suitable sample for the exercise is 3 to 15 plant identification experts, working with a staff of two facilitators. Essential equipment comprises pre-prepared recording sheets and an audio tape-recorder, and, most importantly, a location containing habitats and plants familiar to participants.

  Method

  The rationale behind the exercise is first explained to participants:

  •

  Identification is something we do every day, without giving it much thought.

  •

  In order to teach plant identification, it is necessary to know what it is that we do unconsciously each time we identify, and which criteria are used.

  In order to make people think about how they identify plants, they will pretend that they are teachers who have to teach their students how to identify specific plants. The researchers will be the students; participants have to choose a plant that they know and teach the researcher how to identify it. Participants have to try and teach well, and students to learn well. The information that passes between them will be recorded.

  The procedure is then explained before commencing.

  Procedure

  The group will go on a walk during which each participant, in turn, will act as a teacher, selecting a plant that they know and teaching the facilitator (who acts as the ‘student’) how to identify that plant. Participants need to imagine that they want to send the ‘student’, unaccompanied, to collect the selected plant; so the student must know exactly how to distinguish it from other plants. Teachers can choose any plant in the bush, farm, forest or

  168 Plant Identification

  garden that they know well. Live in situ plants will be used as teaching material. The group must choose a route for the walk that includes a range of habitat types and plants, enabling all members to find plants that they would like to use for their teaching.

  ‘Teaching’ should take place in front of a small group, one facilitator recording the identification characters provided by the teacher, the other acting as student. The student asks questions, probing the ‘teacher’ for information, until satisfied that sufficient information has been provided to fully identify the plant. Using a banana plant as an example:

  •

  Teacher: ‘You know this plant because it has long fruits in a bunch and long huge leaves. It also has a smooth and green stem, not as hard as a tree stem.’

  •

  Student: ‘But a plantain is also like that; how can I know that this is banana and not plantain?’

  The teacher then continues with further characters – ‘banana fruits are smaller than plantain fruits … and there is a white powder, etc.’. Enthusiasm for the exercise can develop as the floor is thrown open – when student and teacher flag, other participants can assist them, pointing out gaps in the character list. Some participants will need encouragement to adopt the teaching role and may prefer to role play on a one-to-one level, or with a sub-group. Facilitators must mediate and ensure that all personality types participate.

  If you have different livelihood groups among your participants, you can test for different character use between them by asking everyone to gather together after the walk and produce a matrix of the most important characters for each sub-group. Define ‘important’

  as the first characters that they would teach a plant identification novice. Participants may agree among themselves on the choice of characters and their ranking, or the exercise may require facilitation, first eliciting a list of the ten most important characters, and then discussing and reaching consensus on the ranking. Statistical tests can be applied to the matrix to test for significant difference between groups.

  Results

  The knowledge elicitation exercises were tested on a sample of plant experts who live and work in the forests of Mount Cameroon. Five user groups were sampled: hunters, farmers, timber exploiters, spice collectors and herbalists. The results indicated that context is important. People from different user groups identified plants in different ways, using different characters perceived in different ways, as well as a different total number of characters.

  There was greater similarity within user groups than within communities. The process of identification was linked to a person’s relationship with the plants that they deal with. Timber exploiters, for example, use the shape of the tree – the stem and branches (important in terms of timber value). Hunters also work with many tree species, but were more tuned in to features of fruits and ecology (when trees fruit; whether and which animals eat the fruit, or sleep in the trees), traits important to their trade. Timber exploiters used many characters that require action before they can be perceived (30 per cent of first characters used): they cut wood and look at the colour and texture inside. Hunters used ‘active’ characters first only 5 per cent of the time. Different groups used different parts of the plants to different extents.

  Herbalists and spice collectors emphasize leaves: flowers were used by only two user groups. Herbalists used a suite of characters most similar to that of taxonomists; characters they gave importance to included leaf traits and hair cover. A person’s background determines which part of the available information they use. From the full suite of characters, 42

  per cent were used in a single community; only 21 per cent were used in all four. In contrast, the number of characters used in different farmer, hunter and timber exploiter communities was consistent. Timber exploiters, on average, used the most identification characters and herbalists the least, with greater variation among spice collector communities.

  Information 169

  do it so rarely that they feel uncomfortable and nervous when expected to. Finally, visual methods are more fun and attract more participants to join in the discussion around them. They are particularly suitable for use in workshops or small groups.

  Two of these methods, ranking and sorting, are described in Chapter 3. These are helpful at the early stages of planning a field guide when a method is needed to prioritize the species to be included. They can also be used at this later stage of gathering more information about each species because they often stimulate much discussion about why people have decided to put them in the chosen categories, or to rank them in the order they have given. One particularly useful method for elaborating upon these reasons for ranking, which thereby provides considerable additional information about the species being ranked, is the matrix scoring diagram (see Box 7.5). This has the advantage that the categories of informat
ion about the species are defined by the local people most knowledgeable about those species, and that all categories are covered for all species –

  hence, providing the kind of systematic information that we have seen is so important.

  Three other participatory visual tools that can help in acquiring information suitable for the field guide, depending upon its users and purpose, are seasonal calendars, timelines and maps (see Box 7.5). Participatory mapping, in particular, can help a community group to discuss the kinds of habitats that different species are found in, and to indicate where particular individuals might be found for sampling purposes. Seasonal calendars demonstrate the annual cycle of growth, management and use of a given species. Timelines are used to explore the longer-term history of (in this case) a community’s resource use, and can highlight changes in availability, abundance or use of a given species.

  As with all methods for collecting information, whether questionnaires or more participatory methods, it is important to keep your eyes open and observe the species and vegetation around you, and constantly cross-check that reported information and reality match up (see the section ‘Accuracy and reliability’ later in this chapter).

  SECONDARY SOURCES: INFORMATION FROM

  EXISTING DOCUMENTED SOURCES

  In most cases, your field guide will not be the first to publish information about the chosen species. Valuable additional information on medicinal uses, chemical content, management or conservation status can often be gleaned from scientific journals, books, botanical databases and the internet. Even field guides in relatively neglected areas of the world can benefit from a literature search. When the authors of the guide to trees and shrubs for agroforestry systems in the inter-Andean valleys of Santa Cruz (Vargas et al, 2000) conducted a literature search, they found useful published information about 32

  of their 60 chosen species, adding greatly to the advice on management and use of those trees.