Introduction

Types of Pollination

Plants Today

Major Groups of Pollinators

• Bees
• Butterflies
• Moths
• Flies
• Wasps
• Beetles
• Hummingbirds
• Bats

Plant-Pollinator Interactions

Why Native Plants Are Important Now

How to Use This Book

Get to Know Your Native Plants

• Wildflowers
• Trees
• Shrubs

Projects, Activities, and More

Glossary

Recommended Reading and Community Science

About the Author

Introduction

Plants are amazing. They come in many different forms and can be found almost everywhere on Earth. As a group, plants are one of the most common forms of life on the planet. Many, like mosses, ferns, trees, shrubs, grasses, and herbs, are familiar organisms that we see most every day. Others, such as green algae, cycads, and liverworts, are a bit more unusual. In fact, the kinds of plants that are found in an area help define its habitat type. Examples include grasslands, forests, deserts, and savannas.

Know Your Taxonomic Names

Because so many lifeforms exist on Earth, scientists use taxonomy (say it, tax-on-oh-mee) to put living things in categories. Taxonomy is the science of naming and classifying organisms. It uses a ranked system that’s a bit like a pyramid. At the top of the pyramid, there are big categories called kingdoms. You’ve probably heard of the animal kingdom, and plants belong to their own kingdom: Plantae (say it, plan-tay), the plant kingdom. As you go down the pyramid, the levels get more specific, and there are fewer lifeforms in each category. Kingdom is followed by phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.

In this system, called binomial nomenclature (say it, bye-gnome-ee-ul gnome-en-clay-ture), each organism on Earth has what’s called a scientific name. It has two parts. The first part of the scientific name refers to the genus and is a bit like a last name. It indicates which organisms are closely related, like your other immediate family members and you. The second part is called the specific epithet (say it, ep-i-thet). It’s like a first name, and it separates you from close relatives and identifies you as a unique individual or, in this case, as a unique species. The resulting taxonomic name only belongs to that lifeform. Scientific names are easy to spot because they are always written in italics. The whole system may sound complicated, but it isn’t too hard to learn. In this book, you will see common names, such as purple coneflower, followed by scientific names, such as Echinacea purpurea.

Although many people regularly use common names, common names can be confusing. There can be more than one for the same organism, and people may use different names depending on where they live. This can make it hard to know if everyone is talking about the same thing. For example, a common southeastern wildflower, Monarda punctata, has many common names: dotted horsemint, dotted horse mint, spotted horsemint, or spotted beebalm. On the other hand, scientific names are known everywhere and standardized across regions, cultures, and languages. They are the global standard. It's also important to note that some scientific names can change as scientists learn more about how organisms are related. Now, let’s go back to Monarda punctata and look at its full taxonomy.

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