KEY TO THE 

 SEED PLANTS OF WESTERN MIDDLE 

 CALIFORNIA 



GYMNOSPERM/E. 



Ovules borne naked on a scale; cotyledons 3 to 15, sometimes 2; flowers 

 monoecious or dioecious; leave* needle-like, scale-like or linear; 

 trees or shrubs, ours evergreen. 

 Flowers solitary; ovule 1 to each cup-shaped disk or fleshy envelope, 



becoming a bony seed Taxace^e, p. 17. 



Flowers in cone-like aments, the pistillate anient becoming a scaly 

 cone, rarely a berry; ovules 2 or more at the base of each scale. 



Conifers, p. 18. 



ANGIOSPERM /E. 



Ovules borne in a closed sac or ovary, which becomes the fruit; 

 cotvledons 1 or 2. 



CLASS \ .—MONOCOTYLEDONS* 



Leaves with parallel veins (except Trillium); parts of the flowers 

 usually in 3's, never in 4's or 5's; vascular bundles scattered 

 irregularly through the pithy tissue, not in rings or annual layers; 

 embryo with 1 cotyledon; all ours herbs, when perennial mostly 

 with rootstocks or bulbs. 

 A. Flowers without perianth and enveloped by chatty bracts, or 

 the perianth dry and scarious. 

 Flowers (in ours) sessile, in dense spikelets, with imbricate bract- 

 lets; spikelets borne in spikes, racemes, panicles or umbels; 

 perianth none or reduced to bristles; fruit an achene. 

 Stems mostly terete and hollow; leaves in 2 rows; sheaths mostly 

 split open opposite the blade; ligule mostly conspicuous; 

 bractlets 2 subtending each flower, or the upper (the palea) 

 rarely obsolete; anthers mostly versatile; seed (in ours) 



adnate to the pericarp Gramine^e, p. 26. 



Stems mostly triangular, solid; leaves in 3 rows; sheaths entire; 

 ligule obsolete or minute; bractlet only 1 subtending each 



flower: anthers erect: seed free from the pericarp. 



Cyperace.e, p. 83. 



(*) 



