Teaching

BIOL F488/688, Arctic Vegetation Ecology: Geobotany (3 credits)

Plant Family Characteristics

The following documents provide basic familiy characteristics for most of the families covered in the lab. These pages have been compiled from a combination of sources. Some are from pages developed by Carolyn Parker for the plant systematics course. Others have been compiled from:

Judd, W.S. Campbell, C.S., Kellogg, E.A., and Stevens, P.F. 1999. Plant Systematics: A Phylogenetic Approach. Sunderland, MA, Sinauer Associates, Inc.

Supplemental information can be found at:

Anon. British Mosses and Liverworts. British Bryological Society. Last Accessed: 2013-Feb-25. (illustrations and descriptions, PDF).

Skinner, Q.D., Wright, S.J., Henszey, J.L., Henszey, R.J., Wyman, S.K.. 2012. A Field Guide to Alaska Grasses. Education Resources Publishing. Georgia. ISBN 978-0-615-64886-6. http://digital.ipcprintservices.com/publication/?i=116723&pre=1.

Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 1992 onwards. The families of flowering plants: descriptions, illustrations, identification, and information retrieval. Version: 23rd October 2005. URL: http://delta-intkey.com/angio/. Last Accessed: 2006-Feb-03.

S.G. Aiken, M.J. Dallwitz, L.L. Consaul, C.L. McJannet, L.J. Gillespie, R.L. Boles, G.W. Argus, J.M. Gillett, P.J. Scott, R. Elven, M.C. LeBlanc, A.K. Brysting and H. Solstad (1999 onwards). Flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification, and Information Retrieval. Version: 29th April 2003. URL: http://nature.ca/en/research-collections/our-research/areas-expertise/botany/flora-canadian-arctic-archipelago. Last Accessed: 2014-Jan-15.

Diagnostic characters of plant families for which sight recognition is expected (except Cyperaceae, Poaceae and Juncaceae; informal document used in Biology 331, from Amy Breen).

The original source material was scanned and converted to PDF files with the ABBYY Fine Reader OCR software.

All of the plant family descriptions are available in the PlantFamilies.pdf (3,240 kb) document. The following documents contain information on a single plant family.

Flora of Alaska

Plant identification keys (PDFs)

  1. Trees (needle and broadleaf)
  2. Low shrubs (40-200 cm tall)
  3. Erect dwarf shrubs (5-40 cm tall)
  4. Forbs (6 families)
  5. Forbs (8 families)
  6. Forbs (4 families)
  7. Graminoids
  8. Horsetails, club mosses, and ferns
  9. Bryophytes
  10. Lichens

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