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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 Boltonia

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1 Achenes with pappus reduced to a short ring of bristles to 0.15 mm long or with occasional slender awns to 0.6 mm; achene wings lacking or up to 0.1 mm wide; faces of achenes glabrous.
  2 Phyllaries 0.2-0.5 mm wide, whitened throughout or with greenish tip, midrib relatively prominent (25-35% phyllary width); heads 4.3-6.1 mm wide, peduncles 0.25-0.5 mm in diameter; ray corollas white fading to pinkish in age; bracteal leaves narrowly oblanceolate to linear; [of Coastal Plain and Piedmont of VA southward]
  2 Phyllaries 0.4-0.9 mm wide, whitened in lower 1/3 to 1/2 only, distal portion green, midrib relatively narrow (8-14% phyllary width); heads 6-11.5 mm wide, peduncles 0.5-1.1 mm in diameter; ray corollas lilac or pinkish (-white); bracteal leaves oblanceolate to oblong; [of Mountains of VA (Augusta County) northward]
1 Achenes with two distinct pappus awns in addition to a shorter ring of bristles, the awns mostly 0.3-1.8 mm long; achene wings obvious, mostly 0.2-0.5 mm wide; faces of achenes pubescent.
    3 Cauline leaves decurrent on the stem; rhizomes and stolons absent
    3 Cauline leaves not decurrent on the stem; rhizomes or stolons present or absent.
      4 Phyllaries spatulate, oblanceolate, or linear-oblanceolate, apices cuspidate, pappus awns 0.6-1.0× as long as the achenes; inflorescence diffusely branched, with numerous heads.
        5 Phyllaries spatulate to obovate-spatulate, (2-) 2.5-6 mm wide, membranaceous margins broad
      4 Phyllaries linear-subulate to lanceolate; pappus awns 0.2-1.0× as long as the achenes; inflorescence various.
               8 Inflorescence diffusely branched, heads relatively numerous, phyllaries (0.2-) 0.3-0.4 (-0.5) mm wide, (1.3-) 1.4-1.8 (-2.1) mm long, pappus awns 0.3-0.8 mm long
               8 Inflorescence with loosely ascending branches, heads relatively few, phyllaries (0.5-) 0.7-0.9 (-1.1) mm wide, (1.5-) 2.1-2.4 (-3.5) mm long, pappus awns (0.2-) 0.8-1.1(-1.3) mm long.
                 9 Plants reproducing vegetatively by basal offsets, culms ascending, leaves elliptic to obovate with rounded or blunt apices, held at various angles from culm and inflorescence branches, plants with weak apical dominance; [of the Susquehanna River of MD and PA]
                 9 Plants reproducing vegetatively by elongate stolons, culms more strictly erect, leaves lanceolate with acute apices, the leaves oriented at an acute angle to the culm and inflorescence branches, plants with relatively strong apical dominance; [more widespread in our area]