Plant Identification Instructions
Part A: Identifying your plant
1. Go to http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/plants/florawe/index.htm and use the online wetland plant identification key at the bottom of the page to identify your plant.
2. The key works just like any other classification key, where you are asked a question, and then your answer determines where you should go next.
3. The key may use difficult vocabulary, so use the illustrated plant identification terms to understand words you don’t know. If the word you are looking for is not pictured, keep reading until the end of the sentence, it may become obvious what they are looking for. Some of the questions refer to flowers or reproductive parts that you may not have collected. If this is the case, you will have to follow both branches of the key just to make sure.
4. You will eventually end up in a plant group (1-8), where you will have to click on each of the links for a picture of the plant. Look through the links in that group until you find one that looks very similar to your plant.
5. Once you find a plant species that looks just like your sample, check to make sure it is on the list of “Native and non-native plants found in Utah wetlands”. Once you have done this you can move on to Part B. If you can’t find your plant on the key, go to step 6.
6. Go to Utah's Wonderful Wetlands Plant Identification Key. Use this key just like the last one to identify your plant. If you find the name of your plant go to Part B so you can look at a picture and make sure. If you still can’t find your plant, go to step 7.
7. Try going to http://www.earth.utah.edu/west/k12/Biology/plants/ . This page contains pictures of some common Utah wetland plants that you can browse through. If you find your plant this way, go to Part B. If not, move on to step 8.
8. If none of this works for you, try using a plant reference book such as Audubon’s “Trees” or “Wildflower” books to identify your sample. However, if you have reached this point it’s possible your sample is not a wetland plant and it may need to be removed. Whether or not you find your plant in a reference book, you should take a digital photo of it and include this photo with your wetland proposal so that an expert can identify it and determine if it needs to be removed.
Part B: Making sure your plant is a wetland native
1. After you have identified your plant, go to http://plants.usda.gov/ so you can look at a photo of it and make sure it is not a weed or non-native plant. To do this, enter the common or scientific name in the “Search” section of the web page (upper left corner). Make sure the option directly below your entry matches! For example, if you entered a common name, you must change this entry to “common name.”
2. After you click “Search”, scroll down until you see your plant species name, and click on it. This page will have pictures that you can compare to your plant. If you have the right species, scroll down towards the bottom of the page and look for the headings “noxious weed information” or “invasive information”. If you have these sections, your plant may need to be removed from the wetland.
