Shrubs Honor

The Pathfinder Shrubs Honor starts with a question that sounds simple, the difference between a shrub and a tree, and Brazilian botany has objective criteria to settle it. This guide explains the life forms of plants, introduces shrubs native to Brazil, shows how they connect with birds, and teaches you to build the collection of 10 wild shrubs without uprooting a single plant. The official list is in the complete requirements for the Shrubs Honor (EN-019).

🌿What is the Pathfinder Shrubs Honor?

In the Desbravai catalog, the Shrubs Honor has the code EN-019, sits at skill level 1, belongs to the Nature Study area, and was created in 1945 by the General Conference. In the Companion class, from age 11, it is one of the eight options for item 2 of Nature Study; see the honors required in each class.

The table sums up the ten requirements, without answers: the club instructor evaluates you based on what you observed and produced, which is why a pre-answered honor doesn't count. Start with items 5, 6, 8 and 9, which depend on observation in your region, and with item 10, which takes weeks.

Summary of the Desbravai catalog (EN-019), checked on October 6, 2026.

📏What is a shrub, and what is the difference between trees, shrubs and herbs?

Tree, shrub and herb are old categories: the Manual Técnico da Vegetação Brasileira (Technical Manual of Brazilian Vegetation), from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), notes that the Greek philosopher Theophrastus was already using them more than 2,300 years ago. On the manual's collection form (2nd edition, 2012), the main criterion is the stem: whether it has wood (woody tissue), where the branches begin, and whether the plant holds itself up.

Young plants can fool you: a young tree may be only 1 meter tall, so compare it with adult plants of the same species. In the life-form classification adapted by IBGE, woody plants 0.25 to 5 meters tall (nanophanerophytes) dominate Brazil's open grassland areas.

Source: IBGE, Manual Técnico da Vegetação Brasileira, 2nd edition (2012).

🍇Is a grapevine a shrub, or can a plant be both a shrub and a climber?

A plant can be both. The Flora e Funga do Brasil, the official list of Brazil's plants and fungi kept by the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (JBRJ), records the life form of each species, and several receive more than one.

What brings the two forms together is a stem with wood. A 2011 technical leaflet from Embrapa, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, describes the guarana plant as a "semi-erect, woody shrub with a climbing habit" (our translation): the plant stands upright but tends to climb.

The line between shrub and tree also shifts: the pitangueira, or Surinam cherry, often called a tree, appears in the official list only as a shrub.

In your notebook, write down what you saw (height, number of stems, support from another plant), check it against the Flora e Funga and, if the two disagree, record both readings.

Source: Flora e Funga do Brasil (JBRJ), checked on October 6, 2026.

☕What are shrubs used for?

In the Flora e Funga do Brasil, coffee (Coffea arabica, exotic) and cassava (Manihot esculenta, native) have the shrub life form, and annatto, called urucum in Brazil (Bixa orellana), a native shrub or tree, has colorau, also the name of a Brazilian annatto seasoning, among its recorded common names.

The guarana plant, native to the Amazon, is the plant species with the highest caffeine content, from 2% to 6%, according to Embrapa. Alecrim-do-campo ("field rosemary"), or vassourinha (Baccharis dracunculifolia), common along roadsides in Brazil's Southeast, Central-West and South, is visited by the bees that make green propolis, which is exported to several countries (Jornal da Unicamp, 2015).

In gardens, shrubs form hedges and flower beds, and many of the most popular ones came from abroad: hibiscus, azalea and hydrangea are on the official list as exotic shrubs.

🌺Which shrubs native to Brazil have showy flowers?

For requirement 5, remember that a cultivated shrub may be exotic, while a wild one grows on its own in nature. Check where each species occurs, because a shrub that is common in the Pampa may not even exist in the Caatinga, as the guide to the biomes of Brazil shows.

A pretty flower is no guarantee of safety. The toxic plant gallery of Brazil's National System of Toxic-Pharmacological Information (Sinitox), run by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), includes widely planted shrubs such as oleander, or espirradeira (Nerium oleander), castor bean, or mamona (Ricinus communis), and lantana (Lantana camara), all three exotic according to the Flora e Funga, as well as the native manacá. Review edible and toxic plants before heading into the field.

Sources: Flora e Funga do Brasil (JBRJ, checked on October 6, 2026), Sinitox/Fiocruz and Revista Brasileira de Botânica (2006).

🐦Which shrubs attract birds, and what is erva-de-passarinho, Brazil's mistletoe?

In tropical forests, up to 90% of tree and shrub species may have their seeds spread by animals, according to a study by Brazil's Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in the Revista Brasileira de Ornitologia (2008). In that study, 16 bird species ate the fruits of the native shrub Miconia ciliata in a park in the Belém metropolitan area, in the state of Pará; its family, Melastomataceae, is considered key for fruit-eating birds.

For flowers, the clue is different: bright colors, especially red, plenty of nectar, no scent and a tube-shaped corolla are linked to hummingbird visits, according to a 2006 study in the Revista Brasileira de Botânica carried out in the Caatinga of Pernambuco. Of the eight species pollinated by hummingbirds there, three were shrubs.

According to Embrapa Florestas (2005), erva-de-passarinho (literally "little bird's herb") is the common name in Brazil for plants of the Loranthaceae family that live up high, on the branches and trunks of shrubs and trees; the same document notes that English speakers call them mistletoe. They are hemiparasites: they carry out photosynthesis but take water and mineral salts from the host through special roots, the haustoria, and weaken it. Birds eat the fruits and spread the seeds; in Curitiba, the estimate cited was about 30% of street trees infested.

Two cautions: the common name mistakenly covers some epiphytes, plants that use the tree only as support, Embrapa warns; and the Flora e Funga do Brasil records species such as Struthanthus flexicaulis with the herb life form, even though requirement 7 speaks of a parasitic shrub.

For the nests in requirement 9, watch from a distance with binoculars and note the plant, the height and the bird; the bird-watching guide for the Birds Honor pairs well with this one.

🗂️How do you collect and press 10 shrubs for a herbarium without uprooting plants?

For requirement 10, one branch from each shrub is enough. IBGE points out that identification depends on a complete collection, with flowers, fruit and leaves whenever possible, and advises cutting the branch of low plants with pruning shears, at a slant, so that water does not pool at the tip and the mother plant is not harmed.

Choose branches without insects, fungi or deformities, make samples of about 35 by 25 centimeters and press them the same day; large fruits go separately, in a numbered bag. Drying and mounting the herbarium specimen (exsiccata) follow the step by step of the Trees Honor.

IBGE recommends describing on the form what the sample does not show, such as the height of the plant and the details lost in drying.

Before you cut, check where you are. Under Ordinance No. 748/2022 of Brazil's Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), collecting botanical material in a federal protected area, such as a national park, requires a permit from the Biodiversity Authorization and Information System (Sisbio), and teaching permits apply only to higher education. Outside these areas and caves, land plants that are not on the official lists of threatened species do not need this permit. In the park, record the shrubs only with photos and notes. In a state or municipal park, check with the agency that manages it; on private land, ask the owner for permission.

Wear gloves, treat any unknown shrub as potentially toxic, put nothing in your mouth, and wash your hands when you finish.

Simplified worksheet based on the IBGE collection form (2012).

🧭How do you earn the Shrubs Honor, and what comes next?

Flowering and drying don't follow the club calendar. For requirement 6, mark in your notebook when each shrub on your street blooms and whether its leaves were out; within a few months, the pattern of your region shows up, and it can change from one biome to another.

The most common slip-ups are collecting a branch with no flower or fruit, mistaking a young tree for a shrub, calling an exotic garden plant native, and copying a scientific name from an app without checking it.

Next comes the Shrubs Advanced Honor (EN-072), at skill level 2, created in 2012 by the South American Division (SAD): it requires the basic honor and raises the collection to at least 20 shrubs. Both count toward the Botany Master Award (listed in the site catalog as Master Award in Botany, ME-014), which asks for seven honors from a botany list. Check each item in the complete requirements for the Shrubs Honor (EN-019) and, after that, your neighbor's hedge will never look like just weeds again.