---
product_id: 48842333
title: "Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification"
price: "A$53"
currency: AUD
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reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.com.au/products/48842333-botany-in-a-day-the-patterns-method-of-plant-identification
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region: Australia
---

# Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification

**Price:** A$53
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- **What is this?** Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification
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## Description

Buy Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification 6th ed. by Elpel, Thomas J (ISBN: 8601400138540) from desertcart's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

Review: Helped me ID food and medicine plants around the world... - First and foremost, this is a book for learning Plant Families, as it's sub-title clearly states. It is not meant to be a field guide, as one negative reviewer complained about. Learning plants is hugely time consuming, and can seem daunting to the beginner. Yet every plant belongs within a family, and once you learn the "pattern of the family", it becomes a lot easier to narrow down your search. If you are a forager or herbalist this will be hugely important and extremely useful to you. Unlike botanists, who need to be "species specific". It will also help you ID plant families around the world. Not just in the UK or United States. I've used it to find plants in Africa, India and Asia! Foragers and herbalists oftentimes only need to know the family the plant belongs to. Simply because some species within a family are all edible EG. Mallow Family... With that in mind this book is the best there is on the market. And I own a huge number of different plant ID books, yet still keep returning to this fantastic resource time and again. This book has enabled me to identify food and medicine plants anywhere in the world... and I travel a lot! A fantastic resource for beginners who are interested in foraging for wild edible plants or wildcrafting herbs for plant medicine... as well as beginner botanists.
Review: The wildflower ID book I've always dreamt of. - This is the plant identification book I've always been dreaming of. Most plant identification guides give you a lot of complex information and leave you to work out how to absorb it and organise it in your head. The fact is that with most identification guides it's only by getting out in the field and keying out the plants you see that you build up that knowledge. However the problem with them can be overly technical language which more often than not causes you to require several attempts before getting it right, if at all. That's not the case with this book. It starts by giving you a grounding in the basic terminology that you need to know, and no more than is required (rather than having to be an expert in plant anatomy). As someone who has struggled with plant and flower anatomy in the past I just found that this book put it all together in a way that just lodged in my head and stayed there very quickly - from working out whether something is a dicot or a monocot, to being able to identify how many carpels a flower has. Before I purchased this book I was put off by the fact that it is focused on the plants of North America and that a review on this website mentioned a possible dangerous confusion between the common names of plants with the Americans having the same name for a safe plant over there as an entirely different species over here which is highly dangerous. However by focusing on the latin names rather than the common names that problem can be easily circumvented. Additionally, it's not a major issue that some of the species can only be found in North America as a large focus of the book is narrow identification down to specific families of plants, from which point you can focus in on that family using local field guides.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | 212,034 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) 749 in Nature References 1,232 in Garden Plants 8,171 in Popular Science |
| Customer reviews | 4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars (2,340) |
| Dimensions  | 27.94 x 21.59 x 1.42 cm |
| Edition  | 6th ed. |
| ISBN-10  | 1892784351 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-1892784353 |
| Item weight  | 703 g |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 235 pages |
| Publication date  | 20 Jun. 2013 |
| Publisher  | HOPS Press |

## Images

![Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41ukE+FBMyL.jpg)
![Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51FRFxGlkIL.jpg)
![Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification - Image 3](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51WFtyiXcRL.jpg)
![Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification - Image 4](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/917X-6xkkGL.jpg)
![Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification - Image 5](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/9197fJ4hfcL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Helped me ID food and medicine plants around the world...
*by R***D on 31 October 2017*

First and foremost, this is a book for learning Plant Families, as it's sub-title clearly states. It is not meant to be a field guide, as one negative reviewer complained about. Learning plants is hugely time consuming, and can seem daunting to the beginner. Yet every plant belongs within a family, and once you learn the "pattern of the family", it becomes a lot easier to narrow down your search. If you are a forager or herbalist this will be hugely important and extremely useful to you. Unlike botanists, who need to be "species specific". It will also help you ID plant families around the world. Not just in the UK or United States. I've used it to find plants in Africa, India and Asia! Foragers and herbalists oftentimes only need to know the family the plant belongs to. Simply because some species within a family are all edible EG. Mallow Family... With that in mind this book is the best there is on the market. And I own a huge number of different plant ID books, yet still keep returning to this fantastic resource time and again. This book has enabled me to identify food and medicine plants anywhere in the world... and I travel a lot! A fantastic resource for beginners who are interested in foraging for wild edible plants or wildcrafting herbs for plant medicine... as well as beginner botanists.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The wildflower ID book I've always dreamt of.
*by I***E on 13 September 2017*

This is the plant identification book I've always been dreaming of. Most plant identification guides give you a lot of complex information and leave you to work out how to absorb it and organise it in your head. The fact is that with most identification guides it's only by getting out in the field and keying out the plants you see that you build up that knowledge. However the problem with them can be overly technical language which more often than not causes you to require several attempts before getting it right, if at all. That's not the case with this book. It starts by giving you a grounding in the basic terminology that you need to know, and no more than is required (rather than having to be an expert in plant anatomy). As someone who has struggled with plant and flower anatomy in the past I just found that this book put it all together in a way that just lodged in my head and stayed there very quickly - from working out whether something is a dicot or a monocot, to being able to identify how many carpels a flower has. Before I purchased this book I was put off by the fact that it is focused on the plants of North America and that a review on this website mentioned a possible dangerous confusion between the common names of plants with the Americans having the same name for a safe plant over there as an entirely different species over here which is highly dangerous. However by focusing on the latin names rather than the common names that problem can be easily circumvented. Additionally, it's not a major issue that some of the species can only be found in North America as a large focus of the book is narrow identification down to specific families of plants, from which point you can focus in on that family using local field guides.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A great introduction to the plant world
*by E***E on 1 March 2014*

I gave this as a gift to my boyfriend who has no scientific background but got interested in plants and he absolutely loved it. I read a few pages too and I appreciated that the author managed to create a pretty extensive guide while still keeping it personal and very easy to read.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification
- Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary
- A Botanist's Vocabulary: 1300 Terms Explained and Illustrated (Science for Gardeners)

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*Store origin: AU*
*Last updated: 2026-02-20*