Keyed out Plants – BIOL F190: Intro to Alaska Flora

Hi everyone,

I spent the weekend out of range of wifi and cell service, but I’ve got the day off to catch up today. I am really enjoying learning a new vocabulary.

I used both the Cody and Hulten keys for keying out the violets. The second violet specimen was easy enough with the Cody key, but I had to use the Hulten to get the 1st. The Cody key used the roots, which weren’t present in the specimen. The Hulten key also referred more to descriptions of the flowers.

My conclusion is the 1st specimen is V. epipsila subsp. repens and the 2nd violet is V. renifolia var. brainerdii.

Then, for the spruce specimens, the 1st is P. glauca (white spruce) and the 2nd is P. mariana (black spruce, with hairy branchlets).

I tried to make my key in google docs, but the formatting with tabs & letters was working how I wanted it to. Trying to decide which characteristics to include was challenging. Here is what I came up with, which is very simplified. I feel like I should go into more detail about the flowers because they were so unique and different from each other. I think starting with larger categories makes the most sense, so I chose colors. (I know I am posting late, but I haven’t read the email conclusion of the assignment yet.)

A. Plants with needles
B. Branchlets glabrous………………………….Bin 1
B’. Branchlets pubescent

A’. Plants with leaves
C. Unisexual inflorescence (catkins)……..Bin 4
C’. Bisexual inflorescence
D. Purple flowers……………………..Bin 3
D’. White flowers………………………Bin 2

Author: Sundance Visser

Hello, I'm a Midwest transplant and have lived in Alaska for over a decade. For two years, I worked in Anchorage at a vocational skills program that operates a hydroponic farm called Alaska Seeds of Change. The part of the job that I loved the most was watching our young staff interact with the plants that we grew. In 2018, I enrolled in UAF’s Ethnobotany program, and it has absolutely changed the way I look at the world. I have been fortunate enough to attend classes while working and while traveling. I am a graduate student at Prescott College, in the dual MBA and Master’s of Science in Sustainable Food Systems program. I love learning about plants, gathering wild foods (and eating them!), and making connections between people, plants, and place.

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4 Comments

Rachel

June 18, 2018 at 4:21 pm 6 years ago

Hello Sunshine,

You make this look so easy – lol. It seems most of us, including me, made this much more difficult than necessary. I think the lesson learned for me is to “keep it simple.” However, working more with this terminology was good practice.

It’s logical to start from the largest category and work down to the details. Flower color is usually an easy place to find common ground. I think it’s best to stick with the features that are prominent and have easy-to-see the details. I tend to focus on leaf descriptions more than any other parts because they’re visible most of the time and I understand more of the terminology for leaves 🙂

Steffi Ickert-Bond

June 21, 2018 at 1:32 pm 6 years ago

Thanks Sunshine,
you do not always have to have two choices, so A would just be plants with needles and Bin 1, and under A’ you would start you next choices with B and B’ instead of C and C’.

svisser

June 24, 2018 at 11:23 pm 6 years ago

Thanks! Yeah, I wasn’t sure if I had to make there be two options even when there weren’t examples for one of the options.