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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:
Donate $15 per month
(0.02¢/plant image)
Donate $30 per month
(0.05¢/plant image)
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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 Spermacoce

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1 Calyx with 4 lobes of nearly equal length.
  2 Flowers in terminal glomerules; stamens exserted; corolla white with a pink throat
  2 Flowers in axillary glomerules; stamens included; corolla white.
    3 Corolla villous in the throat; sepals rotate in fruit, long-deltoid, < 2× as long as width at base
    3 Corolla not villous in throat; sepals erect in fruit, narrowly triangular, > 5× as long as width at base
1 Calyx with 2 long lobes, the other 2 absent or vestigial (much shorter than the 2 long lobes).
      4 Terminal head (1-) 2-3 cm wide; leaves broadly elliptic, the blade 3-4 cm long, 1.2-1.5 cm wide, obtuse to rounded at the apex
      4 Terminal head 0.5-1 cm wide; leaves ovate to linear, acute at the apex.
        5 Leaves ovate-elliptic, with 3-5 pairs of lateral veins; calyx longer than the corolla
        5 Leaves linear to linear-lanceolate, with 1-2 pairs of lateral veins; calyx shorter than the corolla
          6 Flowers in a terminal head, and also at most in the next axil below; corolla tubes 1/5-2.5 mm long
          6 Flowers at 3 or more nodes; corolla tubes 0.5-1 mm long