Colors

Data mode

Account

Login
Sign up

Collapse this

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 C7: rooted aquatics with simple, cauline, opposite or whorled leaves

Copy permalink to share | Check for keys that lead to this key

1 Leaves whorled, most nodes with 3 or more leaves.
  2 Leaves strongly toothed to pectinate
  2 Leaves entire or finely toothed.
    3 Leaves tipped by a callus (visible at 10× magnification); leaf margins entire; flowers many, grouped in a terminal involucrate head; [Eudicots]
    3 Leaves not callus-tipped; leaf margins finely toothed or at least with conical protrusions remaining from the disintegration of better-developed deciduous teeth; flowers solitary on elongate, flexuous stalks; [Monocots]
1 Leaves opposite, no nodes with 3 or more leaves.
      4 Cauline leaves in 2-many nodes.
        5 Leaves in 2-3 pairs, appearing verticillate; plants of marine waters; [of FL, MS, LA and southward]
        5 Leaves along stem at 2-many nodes; plants of fresh to brackish waters; [collectively widespread].
          6 Flowers 3-merous; [Monocots].
             7 Leaf margins (or at least leaf sheaths) serrate or minutely spiny; fruits sessile, entire; leaves 5-15× as long as wide
             7 Leaf margins (including sheaths) entire; fruit stalked, dentate on one side; leaves >20× as long as wide
          6 Flowers 4- or 5-merous; [Eudicots].
               8 Leaves 1-12 cm long; flowers borne in axillary or terminal spikes or clusters
               8 Leaves 0.5-3 (-5) cm long; flowers solitary, axillary.
                 9 Carpels 4-5, separate; fruit an aggregate of follicles; leaves succulent
                 9 Carpels 2-5, fused; fruit capsular (variously dehiscent); leaves thin in texture or somewhat succulent (e.g. Bacopa in PLANTAGINACEAE).
                   10 Leaves dimorphic, the terminal leaves usually spatulate (strongly expanded towards the apex); corolla absent; stamen 1
                   10 Leaves monomorphic, obovate, oblanceolate, or parallel-margined; corolla present (absent in Didiplis in LYTHRACEAE); stamens 2-6.
                     11 Flower radially symmetrical, 3-4-merous; petals absent or separate
                       12 Stems lacking ridges running down from leaf bases
                       12 Stems with ridges running down from leaf bases
                     11 Flower bilaterally symmetrical, 4-5-merous; petals present, fused at least basally, forming a tube.