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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 Lantana

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1 Inflorescence axes not thickened or spongy; inflorescence bracts broadly elliptic, broadly ovate, or reniform; corollas either pink or white to pale lavender and often with a pale yellow 'eye'; drupes white, tan, brown, pink, or purplish black, succulent to nearly dry when ripe; stems trailing, ascending, or erect; [section Callioreas].
  2 Stems trailing; corollas pink (rarely white)
  2 Stems ascending to erect; corollas white to pale lavender, and often with a pale yellow 'eye'.
    3 Stems, leaves, and inflorescence bracts sparsely to densely covered with (sometimes grayed by) erect, spreading, or curled soft hairs; inflorescence bract apices obtuse or acute
    3 Stems, leaves, and inflorescence bracts moderately to densely covered with (and whitened or yellowed by) strongly appressed, stiff, usually straight hairs; inflorescence bract apices attenuate or caudate (abruptly tapered to a long tail-like tip)
1 Inflorescence axes clavate-thickened, spongy; inflorescence bracts lanceolate-triangular or oblanceolate; corollas at least in part orange, variously entirely orange or varicolored in the inflorescence with oranges, pinks, and/or purples; drupes bluish-black and juicy when ripe; stems ascending to erect; [section Lantana]
      4 Inflorescence bracts (excluding lowermost one or two that sometimes develop leaflike structure) widest at or just above base, deciduous after flowering; twigs with curled or appressed hairs usually < 0.5 mm long
      4 Inflorescence bracts widest near or above the middle, persistent in fruit; twigs with spreading hairs 0.5-2 mm long.
        5 Leaf blades rotund to broadly cordate or ovate-triangular, 1-1.5× as long as wide; leaf teeth spreading, with sinuses 2-5 mm deep; bracts oblanceolate or spatulate
        5 Leaf blades elliptic, 1.7-3× as long as wide; leaf teeth arched forward, with sinuses 1 (-2) mm deep; bracts elliptic lanceolate.
          6 Shrubs low-mounded, rarely more than 0.3 m tall, prominent stems prostrate or decumbent (to 1 m long); leaf blades 1-3 cm long
          6 Shrubs pyramidal to rounded, 0.5-3 m tall, prominent stems erect, ascending, or arching; leaf blades 3-6 cm long.
             7 Shrubs rounded, central axis +/- developed, not prominent, all branches +/-spreading-arching; stem hairs 0.5--1 mm; corolla limbs 8--10 mm wide
             7 Shrubs pyramidal, central axis well-developed, prominent, erect, distal branches stiffly ascending, basal branches sometimes decumbent; stem hairs 1--1.5 mm; corolla limbs 6--8 mm wide