We come to recognize many plants, animals, even individuals by their general appearance.  Lumping characters together in our minds, this general appearance often works quite well.

Gestalt is the term for these physical and biological configurations of many elements unified as a whole.  If it looks like a duck or if it looks like an elm tree, chances are good that it is a duck, or an American elm.

Even with some of the characters removed, such as leaves on a deciduous elm or a dead elm, it still can look enough like an elm and help in identifying the tree as a dead elm tree.

Elms particula...