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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 Sambucus

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1 Inflorescence paniculate, normally longer than broad; fruits red when ripe; pith of stems and second-year branches brown; leaves with 5-7 leaflets, these never further divided; [primarily of the Mountains, extending into the Piedmont in VA]
1 Inflorescence cymose, normally broader than long; fruits black or deep purple when ripe; pith of stems and second-year branches white; leaves with 5-11 leaflets, the lower leaflets sometimes further divided; [collectively widespread].
  2 Leaflets (5-) 7-9 (-13 or more); pyrenes smooth or faintly rugose; fruits purplish black, 3-6 mm in diameter; stipels often prominent, linear, to 10 mm long; [common, widespread, and native]
  2 Leaflets 5 (-7); pyrenes strongly rugose; fruits black, 6-8 mm in diameter; stipels usually absent; [rare and exotic]