The Bexar County Master Gardeners have started their 43rd class for new members (more on the group in another post), and Wilson and I are both involved in this class.
Wilson has joined BCMG and is attending the class, and I am one of the mentors. We thought it would be interesting to share highlights from each class with you.
I was away for the first class, but the second one was on Botany, and was given by Karen Guz of SAWS. Karen makes botany interesting, and helps you see why it is important for gardeners to have some familiarity with the topic.
Why, you ask?
Funny you should ask … a knowledge of botany will help you grow better plants as you understand the structure of the plant better, and how it functions. It will help you identify plants, and categories of plants, which can help, for example, in knowing whether you can use a herbicide for grass where you would get some on your favorite irises. (Nope, both irises and grasses are monocots, and herbicides that kill grassy weeds would also damage your irises.)
Karen’s lecture was just full of neat little bits of information like this.
Or deadheading … why is it good to deadhead (pinch off the spent blooms) from plants? Because plants have a reproductive cycle they go thorough, and by deadheading, it prevents the plant from setting seed, and tricks it into continuing the reproductive cycle and blooming again so it can try again.
Or roots … we can all go on and on about the importance of having a good root system here in San Antonio. But understanding the plant’s use of roots — for food storage, for anchoring, and as in intake for water and minerals, you know why.
And you also know why plants need some TLC after being transplanted: the root hairs on the roots get damaged, which reduces the surface area of the roots until the hairs grow back.
How about some of the internal transportation structures of plants … do you have any trees in your yard that the weed whacker has cut into? If the tree becomes completely encircled by cuts that have cut through the thin cambium layer under the bark, the tree will not survive.
These are just some of the great examples Karen shared in her discussion of the usefulness of botany for gardeners. If you are interested in learning more about Botany, you might want to check out the Botany Coloring Book, by Paul Young. It’s not a traditional coloring book, it’s full of interesting info and, yes, it does have pictures to color too.