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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 Lilium

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1 Dark bulblets produced in many leaf axils; [exotic]
1 Dark bulblets never produced; [native (except L. longiflorum and L. philippinense), though some species also cultivated].
  2 Flowers white; leaves narrowly linear or lanceolate; [exotic].
    3 Leaves lanceolate, 10-30 mm wide; plants < 1 m tall; tepals 13-18 cm long, white or greenish externally; tepal surface glabrous internally near the base
    3 Leaves linear, 5-13 mm wide; plants 0.3-3 m tall; tepals 18-25 cm long, with reddish flush externally, especially on the main vein; tepal surface papillose internally near the base
      4 Outer surface of tepals white, with purplish flush; plants 0.3-2 m tall
      4 Outer surface of tepals white; plants 1-3 m tall
  2 Flowers orange or yellow; leaves lanceolate, oblanceolate, or obovate; [native].
        5 Flowers erect, facing upward; tepals clawed.
          6 Leaves all alternate; [of the Coastal Plain]
          6 Leaves (at least some of them) whorled or verticillate; [of the Mountains or inland (northern or western)]
             7 Leaves 3-10 mm wide; leaves usually whorled at 1-2 nodes; capsules 4-8 cm long; [western, ranging from OH, MN, and BC south to NM]
             7 Leaves 10-15 (-25) mm wide; leaves usually whorled at 3-6 nodes; capsules 2.5-3.5 (-5) cm long; [eastern and mainly Appalachian, ranging from ME and s. ON south to NC, GA, and KY]
        5 Flowers nodding or declined, facing downward or to the side; tepals narrowed to the base, but not clawed.
               8 Leaves oblanceolate to obovate, alternate and whorled, in many plants 50% or more of nodes bearing a single leaf; flowers 1-4 (rarely more), nodding to pendant, fragrant
               8 Leaves lanceolate or narrowly elliptic, not broader distally, alternate and whorled, in most plants 10-30% of nodes bearing a single leaf; flowers 1-30+, oriented variously, not fragrant.
                 9 Flowers at maturity campanulate (tepals with somewhat recurved tips); flowers borne horizontally to pendant or nodding; style and stamens included or barely exserted.
                   10 Flowers 3-4 cm in diameter; pistil 3-4 cm long; tepals 3-5.5 cm long, deep red, mucronate by extension of the midrib, reflexed < 45 degrees from the flower axis, the terminal third of the tepals generally gently incurved; anthers 4-6 mm long, completely included within the perianth when viewed from the side; [high to moderate elevations in the Blue Ridge of w. NC, ne. TN, and sw. VA]
                   10 Flowers 4.5-9 cm in diameter; pistil 4-6 cm long; tepals 6-8 cm long, yellow, orange to brick-red, acuminate, reflexed 60-120 degrees from the flower axis; anthers 5-10 mm long, exserted to fully included within the perianth when viewed from the side; [low to moderate elevations, more widespread]
                 9 Tepals at maturity recurved fully to form a circular shape; flowers pendant to nodding; style and stamens long-exserted.
                     11 Style reddish, more-or-less the same color as the tepals; [e. OH, e. KY, e. TN, and nw. GA westward and northwestward, west of the Blue Ridge]
                     11 Style pale green, strongly contrasting with the tepals; [collectively widespread].
                       12 Leaves 7-26 cm long, oriented horizontally, with the tips downward-arching; leaf whorls 6-24; plants 1.2-2.8 m tall; inflorescences (1-) 5-22 flowered, tepals orange to reddish; [Mountains, Piedmont, and Coastal Plain]
                       12 Leaves 2-16 cm long, ascending or more or less horizontal, but with the tips not downward-arching; leaf whorls 1-12; plants 0.6-2.0 (-2.5) m tall; inflorescences 1-4 (-12) flowered, tepals yellow to orange (to dusky red); [Coastal Plain].
                          13 Leaf whorls 1-5; petals yellow to yellow-orange; [East Gulf Coastal Plain pitcher-plant bogs and relatively open blackwater baygalls and streamheads in nw. FL and sw. AL]
                          13 Leaf whorls 1-12; petals orange to dusky red; [seepage bogs and margins of tree-shrub streamheads in se. VA, c. NC, and c. SC]