Name That Family
These trees have simple leaves and large aromatic flowers, with their many floral parts spirally arranged on elongated receptacles.
What is the Magnoliaceae?
The point on a stem where the leaves attach
What is the node?
This "frat house" of a floral whorl is made up of stamens.
What is the androecium?
This northwest-to-southeast ecotone bisects the state of Wisconsin and marks a significant change in vegetation types.
What is the tension zone?
It states that "If you're not sure, DON'T EAT IT."
What is the first rule of foraging?
These little herbs have 5-merous corollas (often purple), 3-carpellate fruits, and either cordate or palmately-divided leaves. Their tropical cousins get much bigger and woodier.
What is the Violaceae?
The sum of all petals, sepals, and/or tepals
What is the perianth?
These parts, the basic unit of the gynoecium, are what you count when you write the G of a floral formula.
What are carpels?
The Great Plains mostly consist of this grass-dominated ecosystem, which also makes its way east into southern Wisconsin and beyond.
What is prairie?
What is a perianth?
The ocrea, a stem-sheathing stipular structure, indicates this "knobby-kneed" caryophyllid family.
What is the Polygonaceae?
Egg-shaped, with the widest part closer to the tip
What is obovate?
A hypanthium forms from the fusion of these three whorls.
What are the calyx, corolla, and androecium?
This genus of small, pointy trees, with ovate-to-spatulate leaves and small greenish 5-merous flowers, contains one of Wisconsin's nastiest invasive species.
What is Rhamnus?
Plants in the Fabaceae can "fix" this gas into a bioavailable form, which makes them very ecologically and economically important.
What is nitrogen?
These evergreen trees' leaves are small, sturdy, decussate, and either scale- or awl-shaped.
What is the Cupressaceae?
Fusion between floral parts in the same whorl
What is connation?
An ovary whose ovules all connect to the central angles where the tips of the carpels join is said to have this.
What is axile placentation?
The approximate number of vascular plant species in Wisconsin (within an order of magnitude).
What is 2000?
(2450, to be exact)
These plants' cold tolerance and underground storage organs allow them to sprout very early each year, before the forest's canopy closes up and makes their habitat too shady to survive in.
What are spring ephemerals?
The most familiar members of this family are paleoherbs with meat-colored 3-merous flowers.
What is the Aristolochiaceae?
The process that turns a dichasium into a cyme, or a leaf shaped like Robinia's into one more like Dryopteris’
What is compounding?
Horsetails and many lycophytes carry their spores in these cone-shaped reproductive structures.
What are strobili?
This "element", or group of species, is named after the place where it weathered the last glaciations. It now dominates Wisconsin’s southern mesic deciduous forests.
What is the Alleghenian element?
These are the only vascular plants in Wisconsin with microphylls, rather than megaphylls.
What are lycophytes?