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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 Peperomia

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1 Leaves opposite or whorled; stems strigose.
  2 Bractlet margins crenulate; spikes ca. 1 mm in diameter; [terrestrial on shell middens; e. coast of FL, from Duval County south to Martin County]
  2 Bractlet margins entire; spikes ca. 2 mm in diameter; [primarily epiphytic in strand swamps; s. FL (Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Collier counties)]
1 Leaves alternate; stems glabrous or glabrescent.
    3 Leaf bases slightly auriculate and clasping/decurrent on the stem, sessile or subsessile (petioles to 3 mm long).
    3 Leaf bases cuneate, truncate, rounded, or cordate, distinctly petiolate (the petiole > 3 mm long).
      4 Leaves 2-4× as long as wide, the apex acute to acuminate, the base cuneate; plant either with conspicuous black punctate glands on stems and leaves, or black punctate glands absent or minute and inconspicuous.
        5 Black punctate glands absent or minute and inconspicuous
        5 Black punctate glands conspicuous
      4 Leaves 0.8-2× as long as wide, the apex rounded to emarginate (or if broadly cuneate, then the base rounded to truncate); plant lacking dark punctate glands (may have pellucid or amber glands).
          6 Leaves 0.8-1.3× as long as wide; largest leaves < 3 cm long, < 2.5 cm wide; leaf base rounded, truncate, or cordate; leaf venation palmate (with 3-7 main veins arising from a point at the leaf base).
             7 Leaf base broadly rounded; leaf apex broadly rounded; primary palmate veins 3 from the leaf base
          6 Leaves 1.3-2× as long as wide; largest leaves > 4 cm long, > 1.5 cm wide; leaf base cuneate; leaf venation pinnate (4-10 secondary veins diverging from the midvein at intervals above the base).
                 9 Leaf blades typically oval to suborbicular, broadest near the midpoint, 4-9 cm long; [epiphytic on bark of living branches well above the ground; se. FL (Dade County) hammocks]
                 9 Leaf blades typically cuneate and obovate, broadest above the middle, 9-14 cm long; [on decaying on bark of logs and stumps]