Name That Family
These asterids have opposite leaves, square stems, zygomorphic flowers with "two-lipped" corollas, gynobasic styles, and deeply lobed carpels -- but you could get this one just from those first two characteristics.
What is Lamiaceae, the mint family?
Flowers in the Liliaceae have three petals and three sepals, though they're so hard to tell apart that we often just resort to calling them this.
What are tepals (the perianth)?
This is any inflorescence that both looks and functions rather like a single flower.
What is a pseudanthium ("fake flower")?
These dry fruits have a hard, stony outer layer defending the seed. Squirrels and other rodents love to cache them: they go ___ about ___.
What are nuts?
This biennial Brassicaceae is one of our most invasive understory herbs.
What is Alliaria petiolata, garlic mustard?
Most monocot leaves have veins that run in this pattern.
What is parallel venation?
This genus from the Anacardiaceae, one species of which is very common in our area, gives most people an itchy, persistent rash soon after touching it.
What is Toxicodendron, poison ivy/oak/sumac?
This woody, wind-pollinated rosid family contains Wisconsin's state tree.
What is Fagaceae, the oak family?
This diagnostic character of the Poaceae is found where the leaf sheath meets the leaf blade. It might be a flap of tissue, a line of hairs, a barely-detectable ridge, or just about absent.
What is the ligule?
This collection of bracts, found just underneath the inflorescence, serves as the "fake calyx" of a "fake flower".
What is the involucre?
This modified calyx is sometimes a set of barbs to catch in fur; it's sometimes a parachute to catch the wind; and sometimes it just gets out of the way to let the seed fall.
What is the pappus?
This small, spiky tree (or large, spiky shrub) takes over forest understories. Birds love its little blue-black fruits.
What is Rhamnus, buckthorn?
This is the Araceae's distinctive inflorescence: a spike of tiny flowers plus a single much larger, showier bract.
What is the spadix and spathe?
It mostly generates heat to better disperse its floral stench, but this Araceae herb also sprouts so early in spring that it must often use that heat to melt its way up through the snow.
What is skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus?
This family has triangular "edged" stems, separate male and female inflorescence sections, a bract under each individual flower, and a reputation for difficult ID.
What is Cyperaceae, the sedge family?
It's the clearest way to tell the Adoxaceae (elderberry family) apart from the Caprifoliaceae (honeysuckle family).
What is a short style?
These two types of modified capsule are unique to the Brassicaceae. One is flattened perpendicular to its false septum, the other parallel.
What are siliques and silicles?
In this unusual outcrossing mechanism, the flower removes pollen from its own anthers and serves it up on a different surface.
What is secondary pollen presentation?
This genus of opposite-branching trees with pinnately compound leaves is currently dying out due to an invasive, jewel-colored beetle.
What is Fraxinus, ash trees?
This pouchlike bract wraps around the ovary of each sedge flower, leaving only a small gap for the styles to emerge.
What is the perigynium?
These two carnivorous asterid genera thrive in low-nutrient habitats. One forms passive pitfall traps while the other creates active suction underwater -- but both lure tiny animals to their deaths.
What are Sarracenia, pitcher plant, and Utricularia, bladderwort?
With small but often showy 5-merous flowers and a wide array of secondary chemistry, this asterid family has little in common with the grasses except that the base of its leaves also sheathe the stem.
What is Apiaceae, the carrot and parsley family?
It's a close symbiosis between plant roots and soil fungi, though sometimes it turns parasitic. Without it, neither orchids (Orchidaceae) nor blueberries (Ericaceae) could ever be the same.
What is mycorrhizal association?
These waxy, fused masses of pollen are associated with an "all-or-nothing" pollination strategy.
What are pollinia?
This type of inflorescence, composed of many bracts and many tiny, drab, perianth-less flowers, dangles in the wind to disperse its pollen.
What is an ament / catkin?
This climbing shrub has abundant sweet-scented flowers, distinctive fringed stipules, and a penchant for choking out everything else around it.
What is Rosa multiflora, multiflora rose?
The similarity or differentiation of these two floral whorls is a key character for distinguishing the Liliaceae and Melanthiaceae -- showing what trilliums have that lilies don't.
What are the calyx and corolla?
This asterid family is famous for buzz pollination, 2-carpellate berries, several important food plants, and at least one poison that will kill you horribly unless you're already dying horribly.
What is Solanaceae, the nightshade family?
Around here, this opposite-leaved, woody rosid family is best known for a genus with notable sap, palmately-lobed leaves, and paired samaras that whirl down to earth.
What is Sapindaceae, the soapberry family?
These tiny, needle-shaped calcium oxalate crystals make most of Araceae a very unpleasant mouthful.
What are raphides?
This massive structure results from fusion of the androecium and gynoecium, towers over the rest of the flower, is unique to the Apocynaceae, and sounds like it's named after a dinosaur.
What is the gynostegium?
It's an outcrossing mechanism involving three levels of sexual parts in any given flower: long, medium, and short. All the flowers on a given plant have the same length of style, which can only pick up pollen deposited on a pollinator by that length of stamen.
What is trimorphic heterostyly?
This Brassicaceae herb isn't yet a huge problem, but it's well on its way to becoming one: its mélange of pretty, lilac-scented, pink or purple or white flowers is becoming much too common a sight in our summer woodlands.
What is Hesperis matronalis, dame's rocket?
This family with tiny non-showy flowers is one of the Big 3 that dominates prairies alongside the Fabaceae and Asteraceae. Robust root systems and intercalary meristems (at the base of the plant) allow plants in this family to regrow after being burnt nearly to ground level.
What is Poaceae, the grass family?
This neon orange parasitic vine has tiny "morning-glory" flowers and modified roots that burrow straight into the flesh of its host's stems.
What is Cuscuta, dodder?