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Key J4: shrubs and subshrubs with opposite simple leaves with entire margins
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https://fsus.ncbg.unc.edu/main.php?pg=show-key.php&keyid=40728
1 Plants terrestrial, autotrophic or hemiparasitic shrubs or subshrubs. | |
2 Leaves herbaceous or leathery (succulent in Borrichia), much wider than thick; [various habitats]. | |
4 Petals clawed, the bases noticeably thinned compared to the broader tips; fruit schizocarps, breaking into 2-3 nutlets or 1-seeded cocci; [in part, Aspicarpa and Galphimia] | |
5 Well-developed leaves 4-6 per stem; inflorescence a head subtended by 4 large white bracts | |
5 Well-developed leaves many per stem; inflorescence of individual flowers axillary in pairs or clusters or in terminal cymes. | |
9 Upright shrubs, unarmed. | |
11 Inflorescence a terminal head of many flowers. | |
12 Head flattened, either subtended by 4 large white bracts or by an involucre with >5 green phyllaries. | |
13 Head subtended by an involucre of >5 green phyllaries; leaves with venation otherwise; flowers 5-merous | |
11 Inflorescence otherwise (if terminal, the flowers not arranged in heads), either of a solitary flower, or one of a wide variety of inflorescences with flowers attached at different points along branched or unbranched axes (e.g. axillary). {add: [Lagerstroemia] LYTHRACEAE; [Rosmarinus] LAMIACEAE; [Buxus] BUXACEAE; [Exochorda] ROSACEAE; various other [see spreadsheet]} | |
16 Leaves not glandular-punctate and aromatic (only herbaceous Hypericum sometimes with black or transluscent leaf punctae, thus keyed instead in S1); flowers with 1-5 or 8-10 stamens; fruit not a berry, instead either a capsule (Hypericum), drupe (Cornus; Viburnum), follicle (APOCYNACEAE), or prominently ribbed and stipitate anthocarp (Pisonia). | |
17 Fruit lacking prominent glandular ribs, the fruit not generally sticky. | |
14 Inflorescence either terminal, axillary or leaf-opposed, if terminal elongate (not flat-topped) or flowers solitary; if axillary then variously arranged (sometimes also solitary in the axils). | |
21 Carpels many (> 9), either separate or fused; stamens many; perianth segments either many and undifferentiated into calyx and corolla, maroon, brown, or yellow (in CALYCANTHACEAE), or differentiated into a fleshy and persistent calyx of 5-9 sepals, and a deciduous corolla of 5-9 red (or white) petals (Punica in LYTHRACEAE). | |
22 Fruit a leathery, 4-15 cm in diameter, reddish, spherical berry with obpyramidal seeds surrounded by a juicy sarcotesta (pomegranate); perianth differentiated, the sepals fleshy and persistent on the fruit, the petals deciduous, 5-9, bright red to white; ovary inferior; branches typically armed with axillary spines | |
21 Carpels 1-5 (-6), fused; stamens either 1-5 or 8-10 (except 10+ in MYRTACEAE); perianth segments 4-5 or 8, variously colored; fruit a simple capsule, drupe, or berry (including berry-like fruit); flowers 2-many, in axillary or terminal inflorescences OR sometimes solitary (MYRTACEAE, SANTALACEAE, and THESIACEAE); [Eudicots]. | |
24 Leaves conspicuously glandular-punctate and aromatic, evergreen and usually coriaceous; fruit a berry or apically-dehiscent capsule; flowers with abundant stamens and a cup-shaped hypanthium. | |
24 Leaves not both conspicuously glandular-punctate nor aromatic, membranous and deciduous; fruit a drupe or berry; flowers with 1-5 or 8-10 stamens, with or without a cup-shaped hypanthium. | |
23 Ovary superior (flowers hypogynous); corolla primarily radially symmetrical (zygomorphic in Citharexylum in VERBENACEAE and MALPIGHIACEAE; absent in Forestiera in OLEACEAE); fruit either a 1-4-seeded drupe, or a many-seeded berry (or berry-like fruit), or a capsule. | |
28 Stamens 8-10, of 2 different lengths in each flower; petals separate, 4-5 (-7), pink purple, 10-15 mm long; stems strongly arching, rooting at the tips; [plants of flooded to saturated wetlands] | |
30 Petals clawed (the bases much thinner than the broader tips); fruit a drupe; inflorescence a terminal raceme (Byrsonima) or axillary corymbs or umbels (Malpighia); [in part, Byrsonima and Malpighia; some vining species will grow shrub-like, but those keyed in J3; TX and FL only in our area] | |
30 Petals not clawed, the width similar throughout; fruit a drupe or capsule; inflorescence axillary and terminal. | |
31 Fruit a loculicidal capsule, dehiscing into 3 valves; branches square in ×-section; leaves < 2 cm long; [exotic, cultivated and weakly established, of temperate areas] | |
31 Fruit a drupe with 2-4 pyrenes; branches round or nearly so in ×-section; leaves > 2 cm long; [natives, of peninsular FL] | |
32 Inflorescence a drooping axillary raceme (sometimes minutely so), flowers zygomorphic; fruit a drupe | |
32 Inflorescence various, if a raceme then not conspicuously drooping, flowers actinomorphic; fruit a drupe or capsule. | |
Key J5: trees with opposite simple leaves with entire margins
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https://fsus.ncbg.unc.edu/main.php?pg=show-key.php&keyid=40729
1 Leaves deciduous (medium to pale green, thin in texture); leaves strictly opposite. | |
3 Flowers white to yellow; capsules linear, >10× as long as wide; leaf undersurface with curly simple hairs; nectar glands present in the main vein axils on the undersurface of the leaf (visible from the underside or the upperside in fresh leaves and herbarium specimens as a triangle 1-4 mm on a side) | |
5 Leaves 4-20 cm long, 2.5-12 cm wide; petals connate into a 15-25 mm long tube, either greenish-yellow and mottled with purple; some calyx lobes expanding to 7 cm long and 5 cm wide, petaloid (pink to yellowish); capsule 2-valved; [native, in saturated, boggy seepages and streamheads, se. SC to FL] | |
5 Leaves 2.5-7 cm long, 1.5-4 cm wide; petals separate, clawed, 12-20 mm long (including the 6-9 mm long claw), white, pink, or purple; calyx remaining small and sepaloid (3.5-5 mm long); capsule 4-6-valved; [introduced, persistent from planting in upland to moist situations] | |
1 Leaves evergreen (dark green or gray-green, thick in texture); leaves opposite or subopposite (offset by < 2mm from the opposing leaf). | |
6 Mangroves, with one of various adaptations to growing in tidal or near-tidal, saline situations: prominent salt-excreting glands on the petiole (Laguncularia in COMBRETACEAE), or prop roots (Rhizophora in RHIZOPHORACEAE), or abundant pneumatophores (Avicennia in ACANTHACEAE); [FL and less commonly subtropical shores of other, especially Gulf Coast, southeastern states]. | |
8 Plants with numerous pneumatophores ascending from the roots and terminating in a blunt tip; leaves gray on the undersurface | |
8 Plants with prominent prop-roots descending to the ground from the trunk and branches; leaves light green on the undersurface | |
6 Non-mangroves; [collectively widespread]. | |
9 Secondary leaf veins relatively few (or diffuse), further branching and reticulating into the tertiary vein structure (or in Santalum and Strychnos the veins brochidodromous, arching away from and not completely reaching the margins of the blades); [collectively widespread]. | |
12 Twigs with spines; leaf venation with 3 primary veins from near the blade base; fruit a spherical berry, 5-12 cm long | |
9 Secondary leaf veins many and conspicuous, closely parallel to one another and extending unbranched to the leaf margin. | |