Hi Cavan.
Nice work!
I've never tried ID'ing a plant myself.. At Tropica we just sent them to a biologist and let her have all the headaches..
Perhaps you would care to share some of the work involved in ID'ing plants.. Perhaps others might be interested in trying themselves...
Not that I'd care much for a lot of ID's gone bad because of inexperience in ID'ing, but the process might be interesting!
The most important thing is to learn as much as possible about all the different parts of a plant.
Getting inflorescences and flowers is crucial. For most plants, that means growing them emersed under good conditions. Once you have all that and a good botanical dictionary (Wikipedia and dictionary.com actually work pretty well), good botanical descriptions and/or botanical specimens are needed (preferably both). Finding all that can be the trickiest part; I'm fortunate to have access to a really good herbarium and botanical library. Things like that can be found at universities and museums in many cities. The internet can be useful, but in many cases can only take you so far.
Getting the help of botanists who specialize in relevant families is of tremendous value. They can often point you in the right direction or confirm an ID. But they're often busy people, so it's best to try to do most of the work yourself. That can be rewarding by itself (sometimes frustrating!).
P.S. There are now two photos of emersed
Limnophila repens in the Plant Finder.
