Learning plants one by one can be an arduous task, with thousands of plant species around us.
Family groupings offer a system for recognizing similarities in structure and in medicinal functioning. Most plants in the mint family, for instance, encourage digestion and have a soothing effect on the nervous system. They all have square stems, opposite leaves, and lipped flowers. In two sentences, you have clues to the identification and use of at least twenty common species.
It's like meeting a stranger and finding out she's a cousin of a friend of yours. You now have a context for understanding and getting to know this person, and you know what questions to ask if you want to find out more.
With plants, recognizing family characteristics can send you to a particular section of a field guide for more information or to narrow down identification, and you have clues to help jog your memory as you're learning. There's also the pleasant shock of recognition that comes when a stranger turns out to be related to a plant you already know.
For details of the most prominent characteristics shared by plants in each family, see Thomas J. Elpel’s excellent book Botany in a Day (Hollowtop Press, 1996). It is a useful reference for anyone learning to identify plants and also gives brief information on edibility and medicinal applications.
For more information on plant families, see The Mint Family and The Mustard Family.
