Orange spots but no lemons says Poland and Clement

It's the 9th of February. At this point in the year most botanists are in hibernation awaiting warmer climes - at least after a brief reverse-diapause for the New Year Plant Hunt. Sadly, I'm not smart enough to do that. Got to keep busy. Fortunately, I've been able to record 274 species of vascular plant in NT18 already. The unsung hero of this is the magnificent Vegetative Key of Poland and Clement. 

It's impossible to speak too highly of this book. When I got the first edition a few years ago it took me an age to key out any plant, and I had to check the glossary on every couplet. It was botany by immersion. Slowly, though, I started to learn the meaning of botanical terms, and got familiar with the sort of info I would be asked for. The fact that I now recognise commoner plants in a vegetative state even while walking past them is something that's entirely attributable to this book. I also learned that the promise of the book - to allow keying a plant in minutes - is in most cases a realistic one.

Probably I've had this out every day of this year (and the Winter Twigs book, which is starting to look just as good). Yesterday I learned again just how good it is.

I came across a plant in the woods at Townhill which sort of had the feel of maybe a Veronica beccabunga, but I knew that I didn't fancy it for that, or anything else I'd seen before. As P&C have taught me, I noted that the leaves were simple (no leaflets), entire (no funny business on the edges), opposite (not alternate) and that it was prostrate and rooting at the nodes. That's a lot of narrowing down when it comes to plant ID - you've removed a lot of possibilities.

I squirrelled away a bit for later perusal. Last night I picked it out and keyed it through. In a few minutes I was in the wrong bit of the key. It should have failed. It didn't though - because P&C already knew I would botch it and had prepared a safety net. I'd failed to notice that the leaves had orange spots. Luckily they knew I would fail to notice that so the plant keyed out anyway! Then there was a warning that I should look at the correct part of the key. Only then did I really grill the leaves and find that there were, indeed, orange spots. I would have sworn that there weren't. Only under the right light at the right angle there were spots like a Tom & Jerry measles outbreak.

The plant in question is Creeping Jenny, Lysimachia nummularia. Lysimachia is a genus that's acquired a number of species, like Chickweed-wintergreen, Scarlet Pimpernel and Sea-milkwort, in Stace IV (AKA "The Book of Stace", another book you can't live without). 

Three cheers for Poland and Clement! If you haven't got one, here's how to get one:

P&C at Summerfield