Are you one of those people who like to wander through forests and meadows, discovering various beautiful plants - and don't know how to distinguish between native meadow plants? If this happens to you, buy a good identification book that fits in your jacket pocket. The different meadow plants can be easily distinguished from one another based on certain characteristics.
How can I correctly identify meadow flowers?
To identify native meadow flowers, use an identification book and distinguish the plants based on their flower color, flower and leaf shape, habitat and type of propagation. Be careful not to remove or plant rare and threatened species.
Identify forest and meadow plants by color
The first distinction is of course based on the color of the flowers, which is one of the most obvious plant characteristics. For this reason, numerous determination books are structured exactly according to this basic scheme. Meadow flowers can have very different, colorful flower colors: These can be red, blue, violet, yellow, green, white, purple or pink. In addition to the color of the flowers, the individual plants naturally differ based on the shape of their flowers and leaves, their habitat, their method of reproduction, etc. With some plants you have to look very closely in order to be able to correctly identify individual species - this can happen under certain circumstances become dangerous, the yarrow is confused with the highly poisonous giant hogweed.
Wild meadow flowers or wild cultivated plants?
You are probably familiar with many meadow flowers from your home garden. Over the centuries, resourceful gardeners developed very diverse and differently colored cultivated varieties from the sometimes inconspicuous wildflowers. However, you should be careful about releasing such cultivated varieties into the wild, especially when it comes to rare and endangered wild plants (such as cowslips). Such a release usually only leads to the wildflowers, which are already in distress, being pushed back even further.
Endangered meadow flowers must not be removed from nature
A reliable identification of native meadow plants is particularly important if you want to pick a bouquet of flowers on the go or collect seeds for your own wild meadow. Rare and endangered wild meadow flowers must under no circumstances be picked or dug up. On the other hand, it is usually no problem to collect the ripe seeds.
Tips & Tricks
There are probably several thousand different wild meadow flower species in Germany, which can be distinguished based on their location, flower color and shape, and other characteristics. Unless they are protected species, you can take them home and plant them in your own meadow. The best thing, however, is to leave the flowers alone and instead just take the ripe seeds for sowing.
