What Is It?

I want to share a bit about how I identify many of the species of plants and animals that I write about. You may find this useful if you need to identify a specimen.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm an expert. I do have basic knowledge, most recently gained from my Master Naturalist training. I'm also just curious and eager to learn. Over the years, I've learned to recognize many of the local trees, shrubs, and grasses. I treat it as a game or puzzle and am always looking for ways to improve my "score".

I'll take a photograph when I don't recognize the specimen. This is much better than relying on memory. I then use Google image search to try to narrow down the possibilities. For example, I'll search for terms like "central texas lizard", or "hill country pink flower". This results in hundreds of photos which I'll search through, trying to find a match. This works remarkably well.

The Wildflower Center also has an excellent native plant database which I use. This database allows searching by growing conditions and plant characteristics which is sometimes a good approach. The Wildflower Center also has a service, "Ask Mr. Smarty Plants". I haven't used this before, but you can send in a photo of the plant and they'll try to identify it.

Another approach I take is to ask my local group of experts. Many fellow Master Naturalists are very knowledgeable and are always very willing to help. If possible, I'll take them a sample of the plant to help with the identification. I've also met experts who speak at our chapter meetings and they are also very helpful. I relied on Dr. Travis LaDuc recently to help identify a small tortoise I rescued. You can find my post on that here.

Finally, here's a moth caterpillar which I'm still trying to identify. I think it might be a tiger moth caterpillar.

In this case, I asked Dr. Chris Nice from Texas State University for help. I saw him at a Master Naturalist event and didn't have the photograph with me. I gave him a verbal description and he thought it might be a tiger moth caterpillar.

Here's the Google image search. What do you think? Is it a tiger moth? Please leave comments!