In this module you will learn to understand the botanical kingdom, nomenclature (please see the ‘using plant scientific names’ handbook), plant identification, and from Year 2, plant anatomy and physiological processes. 

Botanical identification is vitally important to the study of herbal medicine to understand the plants and make safe medicines. It is one of the first things that all herbal students should learn.

Things have moved on slightly from the time of using a heavy book with a dichotomous key to identify plants (although this is still the favoured method of many botanists because of the accuracy). There are now a variety of apps available (listed later) to identify plants, as well as online botanical keys, but care must be taken to confirm their accuracy.

For making herbal medicine you have the ethical and legal responsibility to be 100% correct in your identification of plants when making your own medicines to avoid prescribing ineffective, or worse, toxic medicine. 

The workbook will help you get to grips with the basic concepts of botany and plant families but you are strongly encouraged to read widely on the topic and above all, practice, practice, practice to enable you to identify plants correctly for your Year 2 exam.

Essentially, it is all about practice, and once you have the basic skills, you will need to schedule time in your diary over summer to learn the skills needed for the Year 2 Exam in June.

Have fun getting to know your plant allies!