1. Woody Plants with alternate, simple  leaves, toothed and pinnately veined, often deeply lobed.
2. Monoecious with staminate flowers in amets (catkins) or dense globose heads; pistillate flowers in reduced cymes.
3. Fruits are nutes subtended by an involucre; in beeches and chestnuts, the involucre is spiny and splits open to release the nut. In acorns (produced by oaks), the involcres stays attached as acorn 'cap'

1. Woody plants with alternate, simple leaves, toothed and pinnatley veined
2. Monoecious with all flowers in amets (Catkins)
3. Fruits are tiny or medium sized nuts, nutlets, winged or unwinged (if winged then called samaras)

1. Leaves: Simple, sometimes pinnately loved to highly dissected
2. Flowers: 4-merous with 2+4 stamens (tetradynamous). The old family name (Crucifaceae) refers to the cross-shaped flowers
3. Fruits: generally siliques or silicles though berries and capsules are also found in the family. The fruits form from a 2-locular ovary with parietal placentation and have a dinstinctive morphology: the replum is the margin to which the ovules attach and encirecles the edge of the fruit, the septum is the partition between two locules, and the valves are the outer coverings, which usually dehisce
4. 2 follicle fruit types:Siliques (ca 2-3 times longer than broad) silicle:wider than long or about as wide as log.
5. Glucosinolates: the acrid juces (mustard oild) that give kale, cabbage, radishes, and horseradish their "bite" are present.

1. Woody plants- generally trees or shrubs
2. Leaves: opposite, palmatel lobed or veined, in some species, trifolate or pinnately compound
3. Flowers: small, commonly with intrastaminal nectary disk
4. Fruits: generally double samaras (winged achenes)

1. Leaves: Typically coriaceaous (Leathery), evergreen, alternate, and simple
2. Flower: More or less pendulous with some exceptions. The pollen disperses from terminal pores in the anthers
3. Fruits: Capsules or berries
4. Habit: Acidophilic (love to grow on low PH soil) shrubby plants with mycorrhizal roots. Look for this family on nutrient-poor soils, generally sand or peat

1. Leaves: opposite excepts in one aptly-named species (Cornus alternifolia),  arcuate veins with vessel elements containining strong coiled spiral wall thickenings that unravel to form threads between broke leaf halves.
2. Flowers: actinomorphic
3. Fruits: berries, whitish in some species and much beloved by songbirds
4. Habit: trees or shrubs

1. Leaves: Mostly opposite and simple. Exstipulate
2. Flowers: Perfect, hypogynous, usually showy, tube-shaped or salveform (a slender corolla tube with an abruptly expanded, flat top)
3. Fruits: 3-valved loculidal capsule
4. Habit: usually with a noxious odor

Asclepiadaceae: the milkweed family

1. Leaves: Simple, entire, opposite or whorled, descussate
2. Laticifers: present in most species (exude a white latex when plant is broken)
3. Flowers: 5 merous with androecium and gynoecium fused to form a gynostegium, pollen sacs fused to form pollinia and corona.
4. Fruits: follicles, dehiscent along the adaxial suture and filled with seeds that each have a tuft of long, silku hairs (a coma).
5. Habit: Erect Herbs in our flora, plus one invasive vine (vincetoxicum)

1. Leaves: opposite or whorled, generally very small (at least in temperate regions), some evergreen
2. flowers: generally perfect, 4 merous
3. Fruits: Capsules or schizocarps, generally splitting into 2 segments
4. Habit: shrubs or herbs

1. Leaves: variable, usually serrate, almost always opposite, without stipules
2. stems: generally square, the combination of leaves and square stems is almost unique to mints- the family verbenaceae has some members that show this combination as do some members of Urtica.
3. Flowers: Usually zygomorphic, perfect, hypogynous, bilabiate sympetalous corolla. This family is unique in having styles that are gynobasic, meaning that each flower has its stylw arising from a depression in the ovary.
4. FruitsL 2-locular but appearing 4 locular due to the ovary wall intrusions (false septa)
5. Habit: many species are aromatic, especially when crushed , in wis, only herbs

1. Leaves: Simple, sometimes scale, without stipules
2. Flowersp: zygomorphic, perfect, hypogynous
3. Fruits: Usually a septicidal capsule ( a capsule that splits along the paritions between the locules) many small seeds
4. Habit: herbaceous to shrubby plants. On most species the flowers are quite attractive. Varying from autotrophs to hemiparasites to obligate parasites.

Leaves: simple or pinnately compouns, opposite, no stipules

Flowers: actinomorphic, hypogynous, reduced (small)

Fruits: a drupe, loculicidal capsule, or samara. The samara are reminiscent of maple fruits, except that in fraxinus the fruits are not found in pairs as they are with acer

Habit: shrubs or trees. Our only genus of the trees with opposite, pinnately compound leaces is found in this family.

Apiaceae: the Parley or Carrot Family

Synonym : Umbelliferae

1. Leaves- usually dissescted with sheathing petiole bases. The degree of dissectionis fairly plastic in some species (varying from one habitat to another) Basal leaves are common
2. Stems- internodes: generally hollow
3. Flowers: Perfect: 5 merous. Separate petals, actinomorphic, in umbels, inferior 2 fused carpels.
4. Fruits: schizocarps (Split into two, one-seeded segments)
5. Ethereal oils, resins, or gums present throughout, Often Aromatic, in many cases toxic (surficially or internally) this family is said to include hemolck of which socrates drank while his students wept.
6. Habit: herbs with some coarse, tall "shrubs"

1.  Leaves: similar to apiaceae
2. Stems: similar to apiaceae
3. Flowers: perfect, 5 merous, separate petals, actinomorphic, in umbels, inferior 5 fused carpels
4. Fruits: berries
5. Ethereal oils, resins, or gums present throughout
6. Habit: Herbs. Coarse, "shrubs", vines, or trees in tropics

1. Leaves: simple, opposite, without stipules
2. Flowers: zygomorphic, with floral tubes constricted below the calyx lobes
3. Fruits: Berries, drupes, Capsules or achenes, generally small. The berries of some common shrubs in this family are much beloved of birds
4. Habit: Woody vines, shrubs, sometimes perennial herbs.

• Leaves: Highly variable. Resins and latex common.
• Flowers: Actinomorphic disc flowers and zygomorphic ray or ligulate flowers, perfect or imperfect, epigynous, small, sometimes subtended by bracts.
• Inflorescences: A head that may be ligulate (possessing only ligulate florets, as in dandelions, Taraxacum), discoid (possessing only disc florets, as in thistles, Cirsium) or radiate (possessing both ray and disc florets, as in daisies, Leucanthemum). Often in paniculate, racemose, cymose, or corymbose arrangement. Each head subtended by an involucre of bracts, terminal or axillary.
• Fruits: An achene, compressed, sometimes winged or spiny, endosperm absent.
• Habit: Annual or perennial herbs, often with taproots or tubers, some trees / shrubs.