Dearest Readers, this was an absolute stinker, and I promise never to do it again. However, even so we had two great results: I awarded one mark for the correct leaf shape, and one mark for the correct plant. So, Claire got a very respectable 14 out of 20, but just pipping her to the post was FEARN with 16 out of 20.
Don’t blame me, by the way, blame the Royal Horticultural Society gardening school. Goodness knows how any one ever passes their exams 🙂
1)C) Elliptic (shaped like an ellipse) (leaf is twice as long as broad, with the broadest bit in the middle) Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus)
2) D) Lanceolate ( shaped like a spear head) – Silver Birch (Betula pendula)
3) E) Perfoliate (a leaf with a base that appears to be pierced by the stem) Spring Beauty/Miner’s Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata)
4) G) Linear ( long and narrow) Cornflower (Centaurea cyanus)
5) A) Flabellate (resembling a fan) – Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba)
6) B) Ovate (egg-like with the broader part at the base) – Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea)
7)H) Falcate (sickle-shaped, like the beak of a falcon) Sickle Wattle (Acacia falcata)
8)F) Spathulate (spoon-shaped) – Water Oak (Quercus nigra)
9) L) Oval (similar to elliptical but ‘fatter’ – the width is more than half the length, widest in the middle) – Alder Buckthorn (Frangula alnus)
10) J) Obovate (shaped like an upside-down egg, with the broader part at the top) – Big-leaved Magnolia (Magnolia obvata)
11) I) Oblanceolate (shaped like an upside-down spear head) – Woad (Isatis tinctoria)
Photo Credits
Photo Two by Mehmet Karatay, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Photo Five by No machine-readable author provided. Lorenzarius assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo Six by Dcrjsr, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo Seven by By Casliber – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15212665
Photo Nine by Emőke Dénes, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo Ten by Σ64, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo Eleven by Matt Lavin from https://www.flickr.com/photos/plant_diversity/6124894886
All other photos public domain or author’s own.
This quizz was so interesting! Will try to study the taxonomic key, it is so useful, there are so many wild plants in towns. But I find it difficult to learn anything new, new knowledge seems to flow through my brain…
I know, stuff seems to be lodged in my brain somewhere but my filing system isn’t what it was 🙂
I’ve been speared…..
Well done to Claire and Fearne. Despite learning about leave shapes for my RHS general certificate exams years ago, and now having the Woodland Trust tree identification app, I still get confused when looking at actual leaves, rather than diagrams and images – particularly when it comes to telling the difference between elliptic, ovate, oval and obovate!
I think it was a really tricky quiz. I’m hoping that the one tomorrow is a ‘bit’ easier 🙂