Ten Plant Families You Should Recognize...

botanyDay Botany in a Day is a helpful way to learn plant families.

These 10 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 another book, the Peterson's Guide to Pacific Wildflowers also offers an easy key to learning this stuff. Learn to recognize these 10 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 this complex family...

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, and keel is a give-away 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)

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.This family includes carrots and celery, and also Queen Anne's Lace, which is wild carrot; when you find Queen Anne's Lace, break off a stem and smell it (it's safe) and see if it isn't way better than the smell of a grocery store carrot? The family also includes poison hemlock, so don't just assume everything is edible. Socrates was a victim of this very plant: 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.

Orobanche was a small group of plants that are best known as parasytic plants, commonly called broom-rape because early botanists were finding these associated with broom plants (Ex: Scotch broom). In fact now it is known that there are a few hundred species of Orobanche with a wide range of specific host plants. Still, the broom-rape name persists. These plants grow close to their specific host plant, sending down a root to tap into the roots of the host to take their nourishment; no chlorophyll required for these parasitic plants.

Rosaceae (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)

Brassicaceae, the 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"cruci" = cross
"-fer" = bearing 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.

Important members of this family include broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, radishes, and watercress. As you see with the number 40 next to the name, there are many species of this family in the Eldorado Nat'l Forest, including the famous wild mustard that covers the state in Spring.

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 five-spot (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 to count the petals: three or six, yes, a lily family flower. There are few dicotsA dicot is a flowering plant with two emerging leaves. Dicots can have 0, 4, 5, or numerous petals. with six petals. (Read about true lilies...) 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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