Identifying S-weeds

Identifying the S-weeds - and other living things

Putting up plant images on the Web as I do with my S-weeds, it's not like I knew everything from the start. Actually, I'm still working on it: learning to recognize the plants that grow wild in my suburban neighbourhood. This involves, for one thing, a lot of weed walking: looking around outdoors at what there is to find. Checking the state of old acquaintances, searching for the seen-but-lost, and keeping an eye open for the unknown. Finding S-weeds.
Then there is identification: what is it that I see? Some of the flowers that I find on S-weed turf I have known ever since I was a child, picking flowers with my mother - like the Wood Anemone. Others, although common, I have never thought much about before - like the Lime seedling, and many, many more.

   When I see something new I want to know what it is. I'm quite convinced that when I have names for the things I see, I discover a lot more in my environment. Names change the way I look around me, the ability to make distinctions makes the experience richer. And then, as an educational researcher, I cannot help being interested in how these things are learned. There is already a page in the S-weed album presenting some of the helpers in my own learning process: books, people and online resources.
   Now that I have been given the opportunity to explore these things further (for which I am grateful to the Swedish Social Security system and the Swedish Species Information Centre) the Web is still my favourite space for thinking aloud as I work things through.


Page created April 2, 2002, modified September 10, 2002, Eva Ekeblad;

I think the page will print OK reduced to 80%, with a horizontal page setup

I have been (am and will be, through the summer of 2002):

Writing a PM with the title "Nationalnyckelns illustrationer - några tankar från ett pedagogisk-psykologiskt perspektiv"
(that's in Swedish, in case you didn't notice)
Looking at (botanical) illustration as an aid to recognition
Looking at Stellaria media as an example.
Looking at palm-size pictures
Continuing my explorations of what can be done with digital image processing.
- which of course includes continuing with the S-weeds. Thinking of transposing them into S-wedish as well. (Easy to do, but takes time I don't seem to have)
Thinking of keys (May 29)

Here's a page from Krok-Almqvist Svensk Flora
- and below is the result of my wondering what one of these keys would look like if the layout was done in a flowcharter. It works quite well. But how would it work for a larger species group? Like Carex...