New Key To Flowering Plant Genera Released
A major obstacle to experienced and inexperienced botanists alike is how to get to a family or genus when you have a flowering plant you don’t know. Traditionally two methods were used, neither particularly easy.
The first was to use a key to families in a volume of the New Zealand flora series, followed by using a key to genus within the family. The problem with this method is that it usually required very complete plant material, with flowers or fruit or both. Family keys for flowering plants are the most difficult keys to operate, being long and relying on technical characters like placentation (position of ovules within the ovary).
The second method was to become familiar with the families and genera of flowering plants, a method we all use to become familiar with our native plants. This method works well for the native flora where we only have 200 genera, but requires dedication to become familiar with the 800 non-native genera and their families.
A new interactive key is now online which shortcuts this process. It keys you directly to the genus for the 1085 flowering genera that are wild or casual in New Zealand. The key does not require you to identify the family first, but the genera are organised in the key into families, so using the key will remind you of the families.
The key largely runs on simple characters like division of leaves, leaves opposite or alternate, leaf length and width, presence of hairs, flower colour, and fruit colour. Having flowers or fruit will certainly help with an identification but the key can be used without. Using just leaves may take you to a number of genera at which point flicking through the images of the key is likely to result in your deciding on a genus. The key has 7000 images, an average of 7 images per genus.
This key has been funded by TFBIS (Terrestrial & Freshwater Biodiversity Information System), a fund administered by Department of Conservation. The project has another year to run. Work remains to fill gaps in the image set (117 genera don’t have images) and to improve the key using feedback from users.
We welcome comments and corrections to the key, please contact David Glenny at [Enable JavaScript to view protected content]
The key can be found at:
Or easier, go to Google and type in “flowering genus key”.
Posted: 16/10/2012