During your parabotanist training, we instruct you to collect plant specimens that include “flowers and fruits”. While there are some plants that do not bear fruits and flowers at the same time, we do ask that you try to collect both – but why? The Botanist normally needs reproductive parts of the plant in order to positively identify it. Including all representative parts of the plant makes the specimen complete, and enhances its scientific quality. 

“Fruit” is a collective term used to describe the different types of mature ovaries that flowering plants can have. The fruit contains the seeds, and some examples are: berry (grape, tomato), nut (acorn), capsule (poppy fruit), pod (pea pod), drupe (plum, cherry), bur (cocklebur), caryopsis (grass grain), and achene (dandelion or sunflower).

If your specimen has neither fruit nor flower included, we may reject the specimen, or we may ask you to return to the plant later on to collect additional material (to which you will assign a new collection number). 

Here are some tips to help you understand what you should make note of in your field book, and what you need to collect, depending on the plant family your specimen belongs to. Accurately record features like flower color that may be lost in drying and presssing. Never mix leaves or flowers from one individual plant with fruit from another plant, because the plants will be genetically different from one another.