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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 Swida

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1 Leaves alternate (the internodes typically short and therefore the leaves looking nearly whorled)
1 Leaves opposite.
  2 Veins usually 5 or more per leaf side.
    3 Bark of older branches and stems splitting longitudinally, appearing braided; leaves without tufts of trichomes in axils of secondary veins on abaxial surface.
      4 Abaxial leaf surface not coronulate, trichomes appressed and rigid, and erect and curling, on the same leaf, leaf base usually rounded or truncate
      4 Abaxial leaf surface coronulate, trichomes all appressed and rigid, leaf base usually cuneate
    3 Bark of older branches and stems smooth, with scattered protruding lenticels; leaves with tufts of trichomes in axils of secondary veins on the abaxial surface.
        5 Area surrounding lenticels suffused with purple; leaves suborbicular or broadly ovate; 7-9 veins per leaf side; tertiary veins usually prominent
        5 Area surrounding lenticels not differentiated; leaves lanceolate, elliptic, or ovate; 5-7 veins per leaf side; tertiary veins not prominent
  2 Veins usually 3-4 per leaf side.
          6 Trichomes appressed or slightly raised on the lower leaf surface.
             7 Multiple stems from a single rootstock (occasionally appearing rhizomatous from decumbent stems); lenticels not protruding, bark swelling between lenticels; fruit blue
             7 Rhizomatous, forming large colonies; lenticels protrude slightly, older stems appear verrucose; fruit white
          6 Trichomes erect on the lower leaf surface.
               8 Drupes purple-black; shrub short-rhizomatous, the stems therefore clustered; [exotic]
               8 Drupes blue to whitish-blue or white; shrub rhizomatous, with aerial stems spaces 1-6 dm apart; [native]
                 9 Petioles 3-7 mm long; leaf veins evenly spaced
                 9 Petioles 8-25 mm long; leaf veins emanate from the basal half of the leaf