Dichotomous Key

  • Cones present, non-flowering … plant 1
  • No cones, flowering
    • Complete flower… plant 2
    • B. Incomplete flower
      • Petal-like sepals… plant 3
      • No sepals, flowers in catkin… plant 4

2 Comments

  1. Emma

    Hi Owen! I would suggest numbering or adding letters to the bullet points to make it easier to follow. Also, for the second point where you say “No cones, flowering” maybe focus on describing the things it has instead of the things it hasn’t. I made the same mistake in mine and said “with needles” and “without needles” for the other. Overall, I like your simplicity, which would make identifying the plants easy.

  2. Alison Staudinger

    I agree that this was easy to understand immediately, even with my limited botanical knowledge. I wonder if there are different levels of keys depending on the professionalism? I’m realizing now that some of the common apps for identifying birds, for example, use a sort of dichotomous key in combination with the area where the bird is found to make a guess at the species–but without the user needing to have any technical understanding. But with plants, it seems like it gets technical very quick (i.e. what is a petal vs. a sepal etc.)

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