Keying:

Before you begin keying, examine your plant carefully. This will make it possible to move through the key much more quickly.

1) Plant habit or life form: Is the plant an annual, perennial, shrub or tree? (Hint: annuals usually have wimpy roots and they flower their first (and only) year; herbaceous perennials tend to delay flowering until the second year or later and you may be able to see remnants of last year's stems.)

2) Flowers: Is the flower perfect or imperfect? radial, bilateral, or biradial? How many sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils does the flower have? Is the ovary superior or inferior? Are any flower parts fused to each other?

3) Leaves: Are leaves simple, palmately compound, pinnately compound, or something else? Do the leaves have stipules? Are the leaves sessile? What shape are the leaves? Are the leaves opposite, alternate, or whorled?

Return to the Blackboard website and view the images for your unknown plant. Make notes on the features above.

Once you have made notes about this plant's characteristics, open the Jepson eFlora's main page (https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/) and begin with the Key to Families. Work through this key, making notes of which choices you made. There are some (many) instances in which a choice is not clear. (You may not have the plant part that the key refers to, etc.) It is useful to keep a record of your choices, make a note of where you were uncertain, and return to that branch point in the key to pursue both branches.

For this particular exercise, you will need to enter your choices (e.g., 1 or 1') on the following pages, so keep track of them.

Key as far as you can, then come back and check yourself.

For species identification, see the instructions on the last page: "Find the right species"