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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 C4: rooted aquatics with basal and simple, linear leaves

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1 Leaves thread-like or quill-like, about as thick as wide.
  2 Plants bulbous at base, and with the leaf bases expanded and containing sporangia; plant tufted or with very short rhizomes; [Lycophytes]
  2 Plants either somewhat bulbous or not at the base, the leaf-bases not containing sporangia; plant rhizomatous; [Pteridophytes, Eudicots, Monocots].
    3 New leaves unfurling with circinate vernation (a fiddlehead); plants reproducing by spores, from sporocarps on short stalks from the rhizome; [Pteridophytes]
    3 New leaves lacking circinate vernation; plants reproducing by flowers and seeds.
      4 Perianth differentiated, with either 3 sepals and 3 petals or 5 sepals and 5 petals; stamens either 7-many or stamens 4.
        5 Sepals 3; petals 3; stamens 7-many; [Monocots]
        5 Sepals 5; petals 5; stamens 4; [Eudicots]
      4 Perianth undifferentiated, with 0, 3, or 6 tepals; stamens 1, 2, or 3; [Monocots].
          6 Gynoecium of 2 or more pistils, each pistil with 1 carpel and with 1 stigma
          6 Gynoecium of 1 pistil, each pistil with (2-) 3 carpels and (2-) 3 stigmas.
1 Leaves ribbon-like or strap-like, distinctly flattened (sometimes only near the tip of the leaf).
               8 Subterranean portions of plant bearing bladder-traps; flowers yellow or purple, bilaterally symmetrical
               8 Subterranean portions of plant lacking bladder traps; flowers white, green, gray, radially symmetrical (except bilaterally symmetrical in Glossostigma in PHRYMACEAE).
                 9 Leaves broadened towards the tip; [Monocots, Eudicots].
                     11 Leaves phyllodial, with obvious cross-partitions (septa); leaves alternate
                 9 Leaves parallel-margined or tapering towards the apex over much of their length; [Monocots].
                       12 Leaves tapering towards the apex over much of their length; plant either tufted and not rhizomatous, or short rhizomatous;.
                          13 Plant tufted, not rhizomatous; leaves spreading radially; inflorescence a tightly button-like head of very numerous small flowers, white, gray, tan, yellowish, or blackish; roots thickened, septate (not requiring magnification), unbranched
                          13 Planted short-rhizomatous; leaves distichous, equitant; inflorescence either a subglobular, ovoid, or cylindrical head, of spirally imbricate scales, or a diffuse corymb; roots not thickened, not septate, branched.
                            14 Inflorescence a subglobular, ovoid, or cylindrical head of spirally imbricate scales subtending individual flowers; rhizomes and roots not bright red
                       12 Leaves parallel-margined; plant usually rhizomatous.
                              15 Plants of marine habitats, growing submersed in salt water; [FL and the Gulf Coast of AL, MS, and LA]
                              15 Plants of freshwater or slightly to somewhat brackish habitats; [collectively widespread].
                                16 Leaves with a midvein; flowers and fruits solitary or in diffuse inflorescences.
                                  17 Leaves lacking a distinct lacunar band along the midvein.