e-Key v3 - Key to Caesalpinioideae Genera
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.
Backtrack a
  • Leaves simple, emarginate apically to deeply bilobed, sometimes with a pair of leaflets
002
b
  • Leaves pinnately or bipinnately compound with more than 2 leaflets, very seldom leaves reduced to green, ± terete, 'needle-like' pinna-rachillae with or without minute inconspicuous leaflets, or the rachillae laterally winged and appearing flattened, '± phyllodial', with many pairs of small leaflets
002
Backtrack a
  • Petals 0
  • Leaves with a single pair of leaflets
002
b
  • Petals 5
  • Leaves emarginate apically to deeply bilobed, occasionally with a single pair of leaflets
002
Backtrack a
  • Stamens (8-)10(-12)
  • Inflorescence an axillary or terminal panicle
  • Leaflets with a midrib and lateral nerves or without a midrib but with 3-6 conspicuous nerves arising from the base
  • Pods pale yellowish brown, reniform, indehiscent
  • Seeds with small sticky reddish resin glands
Colophospermum
b
  • Stamens 20-25
  • Inflorescence a slender raceme or panicle
  • Leaflets with 7-12 prominent nerves arising from the base, without a midrib
  • Pods brown or reddish brown, obliquely semiorbicular, ovate or ovate-oblong, dehiscent or indehiscent
  • Seeds not as above
Guibourtia
Backtrack a
  • Plants with trailing or climbing, mostly herbaceous stems arising from a large underground tuber
  • Tendrils usually present
  • Fertile stamens 2, accompanied by staminodes
  • Calyx with the 2 upper sepals partly or completely fused, the rest free
Tylosema
b
  • Plants growing as a shrub or small tree, seldom scandent or climbing but then woody and without tendrils
002
Backtrack a
  • Flowers normally unisexual and plants dioecious
  • Female flowers with the stigma sessile on the ovary, capitate, flattened-globose
  • Male flowers with 10 fertile stamens
  • Calyx turbinate with 4 or 5 short broad lobes
Piliostigma
b
  • Flowers bisexual
  • Style elongate
  • Fertile stamens 1-10
  • Calyx spathaceous or campanulate with 5 short lobes or teeth
002
Backtrack a
  • Calyx spathaceous, splitting to the base down one side only, with the sepals fused or sometimes partly separated
  • Fertile stamens 1-10, sometimes accompanied by staminodes
  • Pods oblong or oblanceolate-oblong, valves thinly woody
Bauhinia
b
  • Calyx campanulate, with 5 short teeth or lobes
  • Fertile stamens 10
  • Plants often conspicuously glandular
  • Pods semiorbicular, valves papery, with or without stalked glands
Adenolobus
Backtrack a
  • Leaves reduced, the pinna-rachillae green, ± terete and 'needle-like', with or without minute inconspicuous leaflets, or the rachillae laterally winged and appearing flattened, '± phyllodial', with many pairs of leaflets up to 9 x 3 mm
  • Plant armed with stout spines
Parkinsonia
b
  • Leaves not reduced, pinna-rachillae not 'needle-like' or '± phyllodial'
  • Plant unarmed or armed with recurved prickles, rarely armed with spines
002
Backtrack a
  • Leaves bipinnate
002
b
  • Leaves simply pinnate
002
Backtrack a
  • Plant unarmed
002
b
  • Plant armed with prickles or spines
002
Backtrack a
  • Leaflets alternate
  • Flowers small (petals 2-5 mm long, white to cream-coloured or pale green)
  • Sepals open from a very early stage, leaving the petals covering the flower until anthesis
002
b
  • Leaflets opposite
  • Flowers usually medium to large (petals 7-32 mm long, seldom smaller, yellow, orange, red or magenta)
  • Sepals valvate or imbricate
002
Backtrack a
  • Flowers pedicellate
  • Petals narrow, ± densely pubescent, at least on the margins
  • Anthers 0.5-0.75 mm long
  • Stigma minute, cup-shaped-punctiform on a narrow conical style
  • Stamen filaments pubescent or tomentose to near the apex
  • Hairs (when present) on vegetative buds and young branchlets grey-brown to yellowish
Erythrophleum
b
  • Flowers sessile
  • Petals glabrous or almost so
  • Anthers 1.5-2.0 mm long
  • Style very short, ending in a funnel-shaped stigma slit down one side
  • Stamen filaments glabrous
  • Hairs on vegetative buds, young branchlets and inflorescence axes rusty red
Burkea
Backtrack a
  • Leaves imparipinnate
  • Herb or low shrub up to 0.5 m high
  • Stems, leaves and calyces with many dark sessile glands
  • Petals up to 9 mm long
Hoffmannseggia
b
  • Leaves paripinnate
  • Tree or large shrub
  • Petals 7-32 mm long
002
Backtrack a
  • Stigma broadly peltate
  • Inflorescence axes, calyces and ovaries rusty tomentose
  • Petals yellow
  • Stipules up to 14 mm long, linear-subulate with up to 7 linear, alternate lateral appendages up to 6 mm long
Peltophorum
b
  • Stigma not broadly peltate
  • Inflorescence axes, calyces and ovaries not rusty tomentose
  • Petals yellow, pink, red or magenta
  • Stipules not as above
Caesalpinia
Backtrack a
  • Calyx lobes valvate
  • Flowers small, greenish to white
  • Spines usually branched
* Gleditsia
b
  • Calyx lobes or teeth imbricate
  • Flowers yellow, pale yellowish white, pink, red or magenta
  • Spines not branched
002
Backtrack a
  • Petals 2-3 mm long
  • Pods samaroid, with a basal seed-containing portion whose upper suture is greatly extended beyond the seed-containing part and is broadly winged on its lower side
Pterolobium
b
  • Petals 6-25 mm long
  • Pods unwinged
Caesalpinia
Backtrack a
  • Plants armed with spines
002
b
  • Plant unarmed
002
Backtrack a
  • Leaves with 3 pairs of opposite leaflets
  • Inflorescence a relatively few-flowered lateral or terminal raceme
  • Petals yellow, 8-10 x 5-7 mm
  • Ovary glandular
Haematoxylum
b
  • Leaves with (3-)5-10(-12) pairs of subopposite or irregularly alternate leaflets
  • Inflorescence a short, lax panicle or many-flowered, drooping raceme
  • Petals greenish or white
  • Ovary eglandular
002
Backtrack a
  • Inflorescence a lax panicle
  • Pods 30-50 mm long, 9-12 mm wide, straight or almost so, dehiscent
Umtiza
b
  • Inflorescence a dense drooping raceme
  • Pods large, 150-300 mm long, 25-35 mm wide, usually slightly falcate but often twisting with age, indehiscent
* Gleditsia
Backtrack a
  • Bracteoles paired, valvate throughout, well developed, completely enclosing the flower bud, usually persistent
002
b
  • Bracteoles nonvalvate, often scale-like, often caducous or 0, seldom enclosing the flower bud, but, if so, then one or both margins of one bracteole overlapping the other, at least at the base, and the flower with only 1 petal
002
Backtrack a
  • Bracteoles enclosing the young flower bud but soon caducous, exposing the bud enclosed by the calyx
  • Stamen and staminode filaments all united basally for ± half their length
  • Fertile stamens 3, alternating with 5 sterile teeth or short filaments
  • Larger petals 3, subequal, gold with red veins
Tamarindus
b
  • Bracteoles enclosing the young flower bud and persistent below the open flower
  • Stamens not as above and more than 3 fertile
  • Petals or tepals not coloured as above
002
Backtrack a
  • Perianth clearly differentiated into 5 obvious petals and 5 sepals
Julbernardia
b
  • Perianth 0 or of 1-7(-11) parts, usually 4-7 all sepaloid and of similar form, grading inwards from broader to narrower
Brachystegia
Backtrack a
  • Petals 0 or sometimes petals present but reduced to minute, linear, inconspicuous filaments and apparently absent
002
b
  • Petals 1-5, well developed
002
Backtrack a
  • Stamens 10, filaments united basally for 1.5-3.5 mm, tube entire or split down one side
  • Calyx leathery, 4-(rarely 5-)lobed, red or scarlet, glabrous or sparingly puberulous
  • Ovary glabrous
  • Inflorescence a dense, congested, subglobose panicle, usually cauliflorous on older branches but occasionally terminal
Schotia
b
  • Stamens 5-10, filaments free
  • Sepals 5, fulvous or rusty brown puberulous outside
  • Ovary densely ferruginous-hirsute
  • Inflorescence a many-flowered panicle or raceme
002
Backtrack a
  • Inflorescence a many-flowered panicle
  • Ovules 2
  • Pod ovoid-ellipsoid, densely brown velutinous-puberulous
Dialium
b
  • Inflorescence a dense raceme
  • Ovules many
  • Pod elongated, compressed, thick and coriaceous, glabrous
* Ceratonia
Backtrack a
  • Petals 1-4
002
b
  • Petals 5
002
Backtrack a
  • Petals 1, pubescent and green outside, dark red inside, 25-45 mm long, with a long claw suddenly widening into a deeply bilobed lamina 22-31 mm wide
  • Fertile stamens usually 7 (rarely 9)
Afzelia
b
  • Petals 1-4, pale pink or red throughout, smaller than above and not widened above into a deeply bilobed lamina
  • Fertile stamens 10
Schotia
Backtrack a
  • Anthers opening by terminal or basal pores or short slits, usually basifixed
  • Petals mostly yellow
  • Glands often present on petiole or leaf rachis
002
b
  • Anthers opening by longitudinal slits which are as long as the anther, usually dorsifixed
  • Petals pink, red, mauve, magenta or sometimes yellow
  • Conspicuous glands not present on petiole or rachis
002
Backtrack a
  • Filaments of the 3 adaxial stamens sigmoidally incurved, many times longer than their small anther
  • Filaments of other stamens straight, shorter, the anthers dehiscing by basal pores
  • Pedicels 2-bracteolate at or just above their base
  • Pod elongate, usually cylindric, indehiscent
  • Seed coat smooth, without areoles
  • Tree
Cassia
b
  • Filaments of all stamens straight, either shorter or not more than twice as long as their anthers, if longer, then the anthers dehiscing by apical pores
  • Pods various, but if cylindric and indehiscent then the pedicels without bracts
002
Backtrack a
  • Bracteoles 0
  • Pod either indehiscent, or breaking inelastically through one or both sutures, if through both, then the valves not coiling
  • Androecium often irregular, the members tending to decrease in size from the abaxial to the adaxial side of the flower
  • Anther thecae naked along the sutures
  • Seed coat often with a closed areole on each face or margins
  • Tree, shrub or herb
Senna
b
  • Bracteoles 2
  • Pod elastically indehiscent, the valves coiling at or after dehiscence
  • Androecium virtually regular, the two cycles sometimes of different lengths but not decreasing regularly from abaxial to adaxial side of the flower
  • Anther thecae ciliolate along the sutures
  • Seed-coat without areoles
  • Usually a herb
Chamaecrista
Backtrack a
  • Petals yellow
  • Small shrub to 2 m high
  • Leaves up 12 mm long with 3 pairs of obcordate or broadly obovate to obovate-suborbicular leaflets
Haematoxylum
b
  • Petals pink, red, mauve or magenta
  • Large shrub or tree
  • Leaves much larger than above
002
Backtrack a
  • Inflorescence a short raceme or panicle
  • Calyx glabrous or almost so
  • Petals pink, red or scarlet
  • Ovary glabrous or almost so
Schotia
b
  • Inflorescence a stout raceme up to 350 mm long
  • Sepals densely fulvous-tomentose outside
  • Petals pink, mauve or magenta
  • Ovary fulvous-tomentose
Baikiaea

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