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Exercise 02 - Interactive Keys

By 2 Feb, read the following in preparation:

1. Read chapter on vegetative terminology (modify terminology as per lecture).

2. Read Dallwitz et al. 2002-onwards.

3. Read information about SLIKS.

4. Bring your copy of the "Plants of Pennsylvania" keys.

By 9 Feb, score your 15 tree species from your mashups assignment for the characters in the list here: score-sheet.pdf

The primary sources of information for this scoring are pictures or text in the following references (please note that the books listed below are not to leave the herbarium; see your email for the code to the herbarium door, Roddy 270):

1. PA Flora Project Species pages at (http://www.paflora.org/Web3/Searchbyplantname_search_form.asp)

2. Rhoads AF, TA Block. 2005. Trees of Pennsylvania: A Complete Reference Guide. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Available in the herbarium library, on the section of shelves devoted to trees. (Older editions will do just fine.)

3. Rhoads AF, TA Block. 2007. The Plants of Pennsylvania: An Illustrated Manual, 2nd Edition. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Available in the herbarium library, on the section of shelves devoted to trees (Older editions will do just fine.) In this last reference, sometimes information about leaf arrangement for a given species is not included in each species' description b/c it is redundant with all species with, let's say, the genus or family. In that case, you may have to read the genus or even the family description to get the description.

4. There are other useful books in this section of the library.

5. In some cases there may be actual herbarium specimens of the species your are scoring. Ask me.