Name tags tend to be a royal pain for the person who has to wear one, but they’re useful to everyone else. This could be said of plant tags or labels as well. We see them in most public gardens and arboreta, sometimes in parks.
They can be metal, plastic, wood, stone. They sometimes impinge upon the plant they identify. But in general labels help us out when we meet and greet new plant friends.
Some gardens eschew them entirely, citing visual clutter. But for those who want to learn what they’re looking at without Google Lens or apps, plant labels are a good thing. And, so far as I know, there is no one “perfect” plant tag out there. Gardeners seem doomed to search eternally for the universally excellent, truly weatherproof and cost effective type of plant tag that ideally persists year after year and remains legible.
Name-tag cruelty is particularly heinous when it’s perpetrated against trees.
A sadly inefficient system of tree tags was used in one of my favorite local parks. It consists of a plastic layer with a wood plaque and another plastic label, all affixed to the tree with two screws. I don’t know exactly when they were installed, but by this time most of the wooden plaques are rotting and the identifying labels have fallen off. This leaves only a bare piece of plastic screwed to the poor tree.
Thankfully not every single tree was labeled so some of them remain undefiled. But I keep hoping to find out that there is some great improvement available that could make this problem go away.
When the pickleball courts are closed on Sundays, folks are going to want to take a look around and make the trees’ acquaintance. They are going to wonder why the trees have been defaced in this heavy-handed attempt at identification.
All you plant tag inventors out there, any solutions that will provide a kinder, gentler type of tree education?
Sadly, my experience has been that plant tags not screwed into the trunk of trees are often stolen. Believe it or not, some folks imagine that instead of photographing a sign, they’ll just take it home and the sign fairy will somehow just replace it. Crazy, but there are folks out there who clearly are a tad anti-social and selfish.
I’ve seen labeling at our local botanic garden off to the side, normally on a metal stand. They put them in the ground close to the plant, but not hurtful to it like this!
It’s all just a lesson that we humans are the interlopers, and the trees will generally be around much longer than we will!
You are right – my collection is here https://www.worm.co.uk/collections/tying-and-labelling but nothing that would work in this case as though copper engraving one is good, but my offering is too small for this purpose.
I do some searching and see if we can’t answer the problem.
My friend cherished his neighbor’s Catalpa tree bordering his property at the back corner. The neighbor had died and the place was vacant. He went over and put a tree ID tag on in in hopes that this would lend enough status and prestige by properly announcing its place in the taxa of the world to save it. The tree still stands.
No reason to conclude the plant tag ID’ing the tree is the reason it still stands. Can’t imagine it truly reduces the likelihood of the neighbor’s choice about whether to keep it. I suspect other considerations may well be at work here. For instance: cost of removal, the preference for the shade that the tree offers in the yard, beauty of the tree’s blooms, quick and easy breakdown of the fallen autumn leaves.
I put ID tags in the ground next to perennial plants. If I want more I know what plant and variety it is. Also, it keeps me from weeding out that $18 seedling that is just emerging in the spring. Sometimes on the back of the label, I’ll put the year planted and other info. Mislabeled plants drive me nuts. Yes, nailing or hanging labels on trees is a problem. Branches grow and get choked to death. Good article.