HOW TO USE THE BOOK
When gathering flowers with a view to ascertaining their names with the help of the botany, the whole plant—root, stem, leaves, flowers, buds, and fruit—should be secured, if possible. This will avoid much uncertainty in the work.
The anthers are best seen in the unopened buds, and the ovary in old flowers or those gone to seed. A cross-section of the ovary will show the number of its cells.
The flowers should be sorted into colors, and each in turn looked for in its own color-section. In arranging the flowers according to color, some difficulty has been experienced, because the pink blends so gradually into the purple, and the purple into white, etc., that it has been impossible sometimes to say accurately to which section a flower rightly belongs. In such a case search must be made in the other probable section. Sometimes the same flower occurs in several colors, in which case it is usually put into the section in whose color it most frequently occurs. In the Red Section have been included flowers of a scarlet hue, not those of crimson or magenta hues, as these have a tendency to merge into pink or purple. Flowers of a greenish-white are usually put into the White Section, those of more decided green into the Miscellaneous.
It is an excellent plan for the student to write a careful description of his plant before beginning to look for it in the book; commencing with the root, passing on to stem, leaves, inflorescence, calyx, corolla, etc., taking the order of the technical descriptions in the book. This will serve to do away with that vacillating condition of mind which is often the result of reading a number of plant-descriptions before fixing firmly in mind the characters of the specimen under consideration.
A magnifying-glass—or a small dissecting microscope and a good Zeiss lens, if more careful work is to be done,—a couple of dissecting needles, a pocket-knife, and a small three or four-inch measure, having one of the inches divided into lines, will be required for examining specimens.
It is also a good plan to make a note of the date and place of collection of all plants, as it is often of great interest to know these facts at some future time.
Plants are grouped into great orders, or families, which are made up of a number of genera, each genus consisting of a number of species. Every plant has two Latin names; the first a generic name, answering to the last name of a person; the second a specific name, answering to a person's given name. The latter is usually descriptive of some quality or character of the plant, the name of the place where found, or of its discoverer, or of some person in whose honor it is named. This dual name serves to clearly distinguish the species from all others, especially when the name of the person by whom the specific name was bestowed is added.
Each plant-family bears an English title, which is usually the name of its best-known genus. Thus the order Leguminosæ is known as the "Pea Family" because Lathyrus, or the pea, is its best-known genus. In many instances the English names borne by orders in the Eastern States have no significance with us, as the type genus is not found in our flora. In such cases we have given the name of the genus best known among us, to which we have added the other; thus, "Baby-eyes or Waterleaf Family."
Most of our plants have common English names, and the same plant is often known by one name in one locality and by another in another. Hence, while these names are often pretty and apt, they cannot serve for the accurate identification of the plant. For this we must consult its Latin name, by which it is known all over the world.