Wild ID Describing Flowers

The FSC Describing flowers guide describes and illustrates the main characters used in identification.

• Overview of flowers (such as whorl, calyx, sepals, petals, stamens, carpels).
• Flower symmetry: actinomorphic and zygomorphic.
• Perianth (such as anther, filament; shape and arrangement).
• Carpel (such as stigma, style, ovary, ovule; inferior and superior ovaries).
• Leaf: venation, arrangement, position, margins, bases, shape, stipules; simple and compound leaves.

Accompanying text on the reverse side includes a checklist of the main characters you can record in the field. The authors have included a guide to describing flowers (spike, panicle, rhizome, etc), fruits (berry, drupe, achene, nut, capsule, etc), plant form (herb, shrub, tree), and organs of vegetative reproduction (stolon, rhizome, etc). Also featured are instructions to writing a floral formula. This provides a very useful shorthand for describing flowers.