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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 Malaxis

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1 Leaves 2-5.
  2 Leaves cauline; lip oriented downward (resupinate); lip broadly triangular, concave, 3-lobed, the central lobe acuminate at apex, truncate at base; [PA and NJ northwards]
  2 Leaves basal; lip oriented upward (not resupinate); lip entire, obtuse to acuminate at apex, cordate-auriculate at base; [se. VA southwards]
1 Leaf solitary.
    3 Pedicels 3-5 (-5.8) mm long (even in plants with inflorescences over 80 mm long); basal lobes of the lip prominent, 0.75-1.1 mm long, usually 1.5-2 (-2.5)× as long as the apical lateral lobes and > 0.6× as long as the length from the base to the tip of the mid-lobe; inflorescences loosely flowered above, the lower flowers withering slowly
    3 Pedicels (4-) 5-10 (-13) mm long (and > 5 mm long in plants with inflorescences > 45 mm long); basal lobes of the lip not prominent, 0.4-1.1 mm long, mostly < 1.5× as long as the apical lateral lobes and < 0.6× as long as the length from the base to the tip of the mid-lobe; inflorescences densely flowered above, the lower flowers soon withering