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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:
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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 Verbascum

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1 Flowers usually 1 per node throughout the inflorescence or with lowermost nodes with > 1 flower; inflorescences usually unbranched; leaves green and glabrous on both sides, or sparsely or densely pubescent with glandular hairs; hairs of the calyx and upper stem simple and glandular.
  2 Flowers yellow; bracteoles 2 on the pedicel; pedicels 1-3 mm long, shorter than the calyx; glandular hairs dense on the leaves and on the stems (and extending on the stems to the base)
  2 Flowers purple, white, or yellow; bracteoles 0 on the pedicel; pedicels 5-20 (-25) mm long, longer than the calyx; glandular hairs sparse to absent on the leaves and the stems (and restricted to the upper stems).
    3 Flowers white or yellow; leaves gradually reduced in size upwards
    3 Flowers purple; leaves abruptly reduced in size in the upper half of the stem
1 Flowers mostly in axillary clusters of 2-10; inflorescences either branched or unbranched; leaves densely tomentose at least on the lower surface, and often the upper as well; hairs of the calyx and upper stem branched (dendritic), not glandular (except in V. sinuatum).
      4 Inflorescence generally simple (sometimes with 1-several small branches from near the inflorescence base), dense and spike-like (at least initially); leaves moderately to densely tomentose above (or glabrescent in V. nigrum ssp. nigrum); upper 3 filaments bearing white hairs (or all 5 bearing violet hairs in V. nigrum ssp. nigrum).
        5 Basal and lower stem leaves with blades basally cordate to nearly truncate; leaves sparsely tomentose to glabrate, quickly glabrescent abaxially, sometimes glabrate on both surfaces, thinly tomentose on abaxial leaf surface but not completely obscuring epidermis; all filaments villous with purple to violet hairs
        5 Basal and lower stem leaves with blades basally attenuate (V. thapsus) or distinctly petiolate (V. phlomoides); leaves densely and persistently tomentose on both surfaces; proximal filaments villous or glabrous, distal pair of filaments villous with yellowish to whitish hairs.
          6 Middle to upper stem leaves sessile to auriculate-clasping, slightly or not at all decurrent on the stem; stigma patulate, decurrent on the style; corollas white or yellow
          6 Middle to upper stem leaves sessile, decurrent down the stem to the next leaf; stigma capitate; corollas yellow.
             7 Corollas 30-55 mm in diameter; pellucid glands of the corolla absent or very few; anthers orange; pedicels adnate to the rachis or often free
             7 Corollas 14-20 (-30) mm in diameter, pellucid glands of the corolla numerous; anthers yellow; pedicels all or nearly all adnate to the rachis
      4 Inflorescence freely branched, paniculate (or unbranched or with few basal branches); leaves green and nearly glabrous above (or densely tomentose in V. sinuatum); all 5 filaments bearing either white, yellow, or violet hairs.
               8 Basal leaves lobed; upper leaf surface loosely to densely tomentose; filaments bearing violet hairs
               8 Basal leaves entire and unlobed; upper leaf surface glabrate; filaments bearing either white hairs or violet hairs.
                 9 Mid-stem leaves sessile to subsessile; filaments villous with white to yellow hairs
                 9 Mid-stem leaves distinctly petiolate, filaments villous with purple to violet hairs