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Support the Flora of the Southeastern US

2024 has been a banner year for making the best flora we can imagine. We've created:
With financial support from people like you, we are aiming even higher in 2025. Together we can accomplish all this: Vote on our 2025 priorities
  • Add Global Conservation Ranks (GRanks) vote
  • Professional graphic keys (polyclaves) to individual families/genera vote
  • 2 new FloraQuest apps: Florida & Mid-South vote
  • Image overlays highlighting diagnostic characters with arrows vote
  • iNaturalist integration in FloraQuest vote
Write-in vote: vote
We've set a goal of recruiting 200 ongoing supporters to donate $15 or more each month in 2025. Please help us reach this goal and make next year's flora even better:

Click the number at the start of a key lead to highlight both that lead and its corresponding lead. Click again to show only the two highlighted leads. Click a third time to return to the full key with the selected leads still highlighted.

Key to Malus

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1 Twigs not thorny; leaves involute or convolute in bud; leaves unlobed; [exotics, cultivated and persistent or escaping]; [section Malus].
  2 Leaves densely pubescent in bud, permanently pubescent beneath; fruits large, > 5 cm in diameter ("apples")
  2 Leaves glabrous or nearly so; fruits small, < 3.4 cm in diameter ("crabapples").
    3 Twigs pubescent; sepals persistent in fruit; fruit 20-25 (-34) mm in diameter; [section Malus]
    3 Twigs glabrous (or sparsely puberulent only when young); sepals deciduous in fruit; fruit 8-10 mm in diameter; [section Florentinae].
      4 Sepal lobes lanceolate, 5-7 mm long, longer than the calyx tube; anthers yellow; fruits globose
      4 Sepal lobes triangular-ovate, 3-5 mm long, equal to or shorter than the calyx tube; anthers white; fruits oblong or pyriform
1 Twigs thorny; leaves folded (conduplicate) in bud; leaves often lobed; [natives and exotics].
        5 Sepals deciduous in fruit; leaves (many on a tree, and not just on vigorous shoots) trilobed; [section Sorbomalus]
        5 Sepals persistent in fruit; leaves unlobed or slightly trilobed (especially on vigorous shoots); [native, sometimes weedy]; [section Chloromeles].
          6 Fruit 40-50 mm wide; leaves mostly unlobed; branches sparsely thorny
          6 Fruit 20-35 mm wide; leaves often lobed on vigorous shoots; branches thorny.
             7 Leaves permanently pubescent beneath; pedicels and hypanthium pubescent; [western, disjunct east to KY and MS]
             7 Leaves glabrous or nearly so; pedicels and hypanthium glabrous or with scattered long hairs; [widespread in our area].
               8 Leaves elliptic to elliptic-lanceolate, 2.5-8 cm long, 1-4 cm wide, mostly > 2× as long as wide, subacute to obtuse at the tip
               8 Leaves ovate to ovate lanceolate, 4-10 cm long, 2-7 cm wide, mostly < 2× as long as wide, acute to acuminate at the tip