2024 Edition • Get the App • Cite this Page
X

Colors

Data mode

Account

Login
Sign up

Collapse this

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
(0.9¢/key)
Donate $30 per month
(1.8¢/key)
Donate $50 per month
(amazing!)
Donate another
or one-time amount

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 Commelinaceae

Copy permalink to share

1 Spathes absent; inflorescence open and repeatedly branched; [tribe Tradescantieae]
1 Spathes present, single or paired; inflorescence compact, unbranched.
  2 Spathes paired, terminating the stem, resembling foliage leaves in size, shape, texture, and coloration; [tribe Tradescantieae]
  2 Spathes single (or paired in Callisia), either terminal or axillary, differing from the foliage leaves (in Commelina folded, heart-shaped when spread, and usually pale-green, in Cuthbertia and Murdannia scale-like, scarious, and inconspicuous, sometimes hidden by foliage leaves in Murdannia).
    3 Spathe folded, heart-shaped when unfolded, usually pale-green, closely subtending and surrounding the flower pedicels; petals unequal, the 2 upper petals larger and usually more deeply colored than the lower petal (which is sometimes absent); [tribe Commelineae]
      4 Leaves not glaucous; spathe folded; fertile stamens 3, their filaments glabrous; [collectively widespread in our region]
      4 Leaves glaucous; spathe open; fertile stamens 6 (though of 4 disparate forms), their filaments bearded with purple or purple-and-yellow hairs; [TX only in our region]
    3 Spathe scale-like, scarious, and inconspicuous, not closely subtending and surrounding the flower pedicels; petals equal, in both size and coloration.
        5 Leaves linear, > 20× as long as wide; petals bright pink (rarely white); [tribe Tradescantieae]
        5 Leaves lanceolate, < 20× as long as wide; petals white, pink, purplish, or bluish.
          6 Fertile stamens 3, alternating with 3 staminodia; petals pink to purplish or bluish; [tribe Commelineae]
          6 Fertile stamens 0-6, all fertile (no staminodes); petals white to pink; [tribe Tradescantieae]