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
(0.2¢/heliophily index)
Donate $30 per month
(0.4¢/heliophily index)
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 Sapindaceae

Copy permalink to share

1 Leaves opposite; leaves either palmately compound, or simple (and then palmately lobed and/or toothed), or pinnately compound.
  2 Leaves either simple (and palmately lobed and/or toothed) or pinnately compound; flowers radially symmetrical; fruit a schizocarp of 2 samaroid mericarps; [subfamily Hippocastanoideae, tribe Acereae]
  2 Leaves palmately compound; flowers bilaterally symmetrical; fruit a capsule, usually with single large “nut-like” seed; [subfamily Hippocastaoideae, tribe Hippocastaneae]
1 Leaves alternate; leaves compound (if unifoliolate and thus appearing simple [Dodonaea], then unlobed and with entire margins).
    3 Leaves unifoliolate, appearing simple; [subfamily Dodonaeoideae, tribe Dodonaeae]
    3 Leaves compound.
      4 Herbaceous vines or lianas; leaves 3-foliolate or otherwise compound (biternately or pinnately compound); [subfamily Sapindoideae, tribe Paullinieae]
        5 Leaves 3-foliolate
        5 Leaves pinnately to biternately compound.
          6 Fruit a schizocarp with 3 winged mericarps; seeds lacking a pseudohilum
          6 Fruit an inflated, papery capsule; seeds with a white or pale tan heart-shaped or kidney-shaped mark (pseudohilum)
      4 Tree or shrub; leaves 3-foliolate or pinnately or bipinnately compound.
             7 Leaves palmately 3-foliolate; [subfamily Dodonaeoideae, tribe Doratoxyleae]
             7 Leaves pinnately or bipinnately compound, with 5 or more leaflets.
               8 Fruits indehiscent, berry-like.
                 9 Fruits 1 (-2)-coccate, with (1-) 2 rudimentary cocci, tardily schizocarpic, separating into indehiscent globose mericarps, with fleshy pericarp containing much saponin; seeds globose, lacking an aril
                 9 Fruits ellipsoid or nearly globose, usually with a single locule; seeds arillate or sarcotestal.
                   10 Leaves with (4) 8-10 (-18) leaflets; fruits light brown; seeds with a thin, translucent-white, fleshy aril, easily removable to show a shiny dark brown testa
                   10 Leaves with (2-) 4 leaflets; fruits green; seeds with a fleshy testa; petals usually with 2 marginal projections or appendages on or above the base, or lacking appendages
               8 Fruits dehiscent, a capsule with papery, membranaceous, coriaceous, or woody valves.
                     11 Leaves mostly odd-pinnate (with a definite terminal leaflet); [subfamily Sapindoideae, tribe Koelreuterieae]
                       12 Petals yellow; capsules papery or crustaceous, inflated (the capsule wall , with incomplete septae; seeds < 7 mm in diameter; [non-native, collectively widespread in our region]
                       12 Petals pink; capsules coriaceous, the capsule wall closely invested around the seeds, with complete septae; seeds 10-15 mm in diameter; [native, TX]
                     11 Leaves mostly even-pinnate.
                          13 Leaflet margins serrate; [subfamily Sapindoideae, tribe Cupanieae]
                          13 Leaflet margins entire.
                            14 Locule 1-seeded; [subfamily Sapindoideae, tribe Cupanieae]
                            14 Locule 2- to several-seeded; [subfamily Dodonaeoideae, tribe Dodonaeae]