Ten Plant Families You Should Recognize
Peterson's has a very useful key to plant families. Buy one from the Book page...
These families are either very common, very attractive, or both. They represent the majority of plants that you have been walking past on most any hike in this area. They are often the plants that make you stop for a better look or to take a picture. The point is, these are families which you can learn recognize at a glance because they are quite common. If you want a book, the Peterson's Guide to Pacific Wildflowers still offers one of the easiest keys to learning this stuff. Learn to recognize these ten families and you will be well on your way to enlightenment, Grasshopper!
[Note: the numbers represent the number of species found in and near El Dorado County]
Asteraceae (181)
Sunflowers and daisies: A huge group that will surprise (and confuse) you with variety. Aster family flowers can be composites (made up of both ray flowers and disc flowers), discoid (disc flowers only, such as a thistle) or ligulate (made up of the ray flowers only, such as a dandelion). Aster family flowers are common and, for the most part, easy to recognize to family. With composite (sunflower type) flowers, the individual disc flowers are the ones that will become seeds. With ligulate flowers (dandelions) the ray flowers will develop achenes with the pappus becoming the seed head that kids love to blow on to disperse the parachutes. Discoid thistle flowers have a pappus that turns into a fluff that is also dispersed by wind. Read more about the various species...
Ericaceae (29)
Heath family flowers are typically urn-shaped or bell-shaped flowers with five (some species have only four) united petals and with either the same number or twice the number of stamens! The five sepals are united; this helps when there could be confusion with Campanulaceae which also has five petals but with five stamens and five separate sepals. One good example of a flower that looks like it is not Ericaceae but is is our wild azalea (Rhododendron californica), and another plant that might be a surprise is snowplant (Sarcodes sanguinea). Other local species include madrone, kalmia, pyrola, and mountain heather.
Fabaceae (69)
Legumes (beans and peas) gave this family its old name of Leguminaceae. Fabaceae also includes clover, wisteria, lupines, astragalus, and desert plants such as acacia and mesquite. The flowers are generally very easy to recognize because of the distinctive banner, wings, and keel arrangement of the petals. Seed pods are recognized as bean or pea pods, though sometimes quite flat. Members of this family come in many forms, from trees and shrubs (see the Redbud, below) to the many forms of clovers and lupines everyone enjoys. While the banner-wing-keel is a giveaway to family, identification to species will require a little more work, usually involving pulling apart the flower to reveal secrets of the keel and the position of hairs along its top edge.
Note that many lupine flowers will change color or develop a color spot to signal that that flower has been pollinated, thus saving a bee from wasting its energy!
There are three groups of Fabaceae, based on variations of the flower types:
Group 1 is Mimosa, with flowers like Australian bottle-brush; Group 2 is Caesalpinioideae, with reversed construction of the banner-wing-keel arrangement with the upper petals inside the lateral petals. When the redbud appears along Hwy 50, take a closer look at the flowers; they are our only representative of this group; The majority of our local Fabaceae plants are in Group 3, the Papilionoideae, and that long word simply means butterfly-like.
Apiaceae (32)
This family includes carrots and celery, but also Queen Anne's Lace (which is wild carrot) and poison hemlock! Apiaceae was once called Umbelliferae because of the flat-top flower cluster (called an umbel) that is characteristic of the family. Note: the umbel is not unique to Apiaceae so don't jump to conclusions. Look also to see if there are leaf petioles that form sheathing on the stem; that's Apiaceae. “Apium” was the Roman word for the plant we know as celery. While munching on wild plants is sometimes acceptable, you won't want to be just trying to taste members of Apiaceae, despite its connection to celery. It is in fact also the family that gives us Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum)! Spotted stems on a wet-area plant are a good sign to step away from the salad bar and avoid chewing on any plants unless you really know what you're doing.
Scrophulariaceae (9, plus 33 now in Orobanchaceae)
Often referred to as the Snapdragon family, members of Scrophulariaceae all share square stems, opposite leaves and open, two-lipped flowers forming clusters at the end of their stems. Recent genetic work has now put many Scrophularia plants into other groups: Castilleja, Cordylanthus, Pedicularis, and Boschniakia joined the Orobanche group, and Mimulus (monkeyflowers) were put into their own group, Phrymaceae. Antirrhinum, Collinsia, Digitalis, Keckiella, Limosella, Linaria, Mohavea, Penstemon, Triphysaria, and Veronica became members of Plantaginaceae. Even though this is in effect now, most any current flower guide will still list all of these plants as Scrophulariaceae.
Rosaceaee (54)
In the forest, Rose family flowers are regular (identical petals rotate around a central point) flowers with five sepals, five petals, but numerous stamens. It is the numerous stamens that help you see a five-petaled flower as a member of the Rose family because most five-petaled flowers have five or maybe ten stamens; Roses have so many as to be hard to count. In fact garden roses have way more petals because the stamens have been tricked into becoming petals!
A quirk of nature allows the doubling up of petals in garden roses. What happens is this: the stamens of the flower mutate into petals over many years so that eventually, by means of selection, we have a 'double-flowered' rose. The wild species roses are undoubtedly beautiful, but it is the multiplication of their petals that has made possible the great wealth of beauty we now find in garden roses. It is by the reflection of the light between the petals and through the petals — and the many effects thereby produced — that all the beauty of the garden rose becomes possible. There are, in fact, no double roses in nature. —The English Roses
It might surprise you to learn that the Rose family includes apples, quinces, pears, peaches, plums, apricots, cherries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries!
Brassicaceae (40)
Mustard family flowers always have four petals and six stamens (two short and four long) and they often appear as a 'cross' of four petals, thus the general name crucifers for the plants such as cabbage (brassica was what the Romans called cabbage), broccoli, and cauliflower. Mustard (the sandwich spread) gets its name from two Latin words (mustum ardens) which means “burning must” because Romans prepared the seeds with must, which is what grape juice is called before or during fermentation; the seeds impart the "burning" taste we like on hot dogs.
Boraginaceae (39, plus 9 moved in from Hydrophyllaceae)
Borage flowers are in helicoid cymes and often have herbage that is coarsely hairy. The leaves are simple, mostly entire, and alternate; stipules are lacking. The calyx consists of 5 distinct or connate sepals. The corolla is 5-merous. If you are already familiar with plants like baby blue eyes and fivespot (both forms of Nemophila), you are probably going to be surprised to learn that these plants have been moved out of Hydrophyllaceae and into Boraginaceae. Other common plants include Amsinckia, Cryptantha, Hacklia, and Phacelia.
Liliaceae (38)
The Lily family includes onions, calochortus, fritillary, and many other easily found species, some of which have recently been placed into their own families (ex: onions are now Alliaceae). Lily family members are easy to spot with their parallel veins in the leaves and radial flowers with three petals plus three sepals (basically identical), collectively identified as tepals. When you have a chance to see a lily in the wild you will easily see the arrangement of their perianth, but even in a garden tulip flower you can see that three tepals are outside and three tepals are inside.
One easy way to tell if you are looking at a Lily family member is count the petals: three or six, yes. There are no dicots with six petals. Compare this with Orchidaceae...
Orchidaceae (12)
Orchids: bilateral flowers, sometimes spurred; generally three sepals that are more petal-like, uppermost generally erect; three petals, the lowest making a different "lip". The orchids found in the Eldorado Nat'l Forest and around Carson Pass are typically found in loose soils and take nutrients from the substrate; one exception is the Spotted Coralroot orchid which lacks chlorophyll and takes its nutrients from decaying plant matter.
Ready for more? Here are ten MORE families to review...
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