Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Flower families

Orchid

The Orchid family is the largest family of flowering plants, containing some 25,000 species. Orchids, like the grasses and the palms, which they resemble in some ways—for instance the form of their leaves—are monocotyledons. They have one cotyledon, or embryonic leaf, in contrast to the two of most flowering plants. Orchids have simple leaves with parallel veins. Their shape is highly variable between species.

Vanilla
Lady's Slipper
Orchid

Lily

Plants in this family have linear leaves, mostly with parallel veins, and flower parts in threes.

Turk's Cap Lily
Wild Garlic
Onion
Trillium
Fawn Lily
Tulip
Hyacinth

Mustard

The family was formerly named Cruciferae ("cross-bearing"), because the four petals of their flowers are reminiscent of crosses.

Cabbage
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Brussels sprouts
Mustard
Horseradish
Watercress

Pink

The leaves are almost always opposite, rarely whorled. The blades are entire, petiolate and often stipulate. These stipules are not sheathforming. The flowers are regular and mostly have 5-way symmetry, i.e. with 5 petals and 5 sepals, but sometimes with 4 petals. The sepals are free from one another or united. The petals are fringed or deeply cleft at the end.

Carnation
Bladder Campion
Swamp Milkweed
Common Milkweed
Butterfly Plant
Sand Milkweed
Whorled Milkweed
Deptford Pink

Buttercup

Plants in the Buttercup family are mostly herbaceous plants, but with some woody climbers (such as Clematis) and subshrubs (e.g. Xanthorhiza). Leaves are very often more or less palmately compound. The flowers have many free stamens arranged in a spiral and usually many free pistils. Flowers are most often grouped in terminal racemes, panicles or cymes.

Delphinium
Columbine
Marsh Marigold
Thimbleweed
Clematis
Hellbore
Larkspur
Buttercup

Cactus

Cacti are distinctive and unusual plants, which are adapted to extremely arid and hot environments, showing a wide range of anatomical and physiological features which conserve water. Their stems have expanded into green succulent structures containing the chlorophyll necessary for life and growth, while the leaves have become the spines for which cacti are so well known.

Saguaro
Barrel Cactus
Prickly Pear
Rabbit Ear

Rose

Members of the Rose family have 5 sepals and 5 petals which are flat and wavy at the margins. Each flower has at least ten stamens. All members of the rose family have a hypanthium, which is a bowl-shaped part of a flower consisting of the bottoms of the sepals, petals, and stamens stuck together.

Rose
Apple
Blackberry
Strawberry
Raspberry
Apple
Plum
Peach
Cherry
Pear

Bean

All members of this family have five-petaled flowers in which the superior ovary ripens to form a "pod", technically called a legume, whose two sides split apart, releasing the seeds which are attached to one or both seams. A significant characteristic of legumes is that they host bacteria in their roots, within structures called root nodules. These bacteria have the ability to take nitrogen gas out of the air and convert it to a form of nitrogen that is usable to the host plant. This process is called nitrogen fixation.

Bean
Lupins
Clover
Alfalfa
Peas
Peanuts
Soybeans
Lentils
Mimosa
Kudzu

Parsley

The parsley family has flower clusters being in the form of a compound "umbel". The small flowers are radially symmetrical with 5 small sepals, 5 petals and 5 stamens.

Cumin
Parsley
Carrot (Queen Anne's Lace)
Dill
Caraway
Fennel
Angelica

Smartweed

The seeds of the plants belonging to the smartweed family have a triangular shape. Leaves of these plants have a peculiar pair of sheathing stipules known as ocreae.

Buckwheat
Sorrel
Rhubarb
Knotgrass

Bellflower

The Bellflower family consists mostly of herbs, shrubs, and more rarely small trees, which usually have milky non-toxic sap. Leaves of these species are often alternate, more rarely opposite. They are also simple and without stipules. Flowers are bisexual, bell-shape, consisting of a narrow tube-like corolla with small spreading lobes. Flowers are fairly often blue. Fruits are often berries, but can also be capsules.

Bluebell
Harebell
Lobelia
Balloonflower

Mint

The flowers in the Mint family typically have petals fused into an upper lip and a lower lip. The leaves emerge oppositely, each pair at right angles to the previous one or whorled. The stems are frequently square in cross section, but this is not found in all members of the family, and is sometimes found in other plant families. The flowers are bilaterally symmetrical with 5 united petals, 5 united sepals. They are usually bisexual and have a flower cluster that looks like a whorl of flowers but actually consists of two crowded clusters.

Basil
Mint
Rosemary
Sage
Savory
Marjoram
Oregano
Thyme
Lavender
Perilla
Self-heal

Aster (Daisy)

Plants in the Aster family typically have one or both of two kinds of florets. The outer perimeter of a flower head like that of a sunflower is composed of florets possessing a long strap-like petal, termed a ligule; these are the ray florets. The inner portion of the flower head (or disc) is composed of small flowers with tubular corollas; these are the disc florets. The composition of asteraceous inflorescences varies from all ray flowers (like dandelions, genus Taraxacum) to all disc flowers (like pineapple weeds).

Aster
Common Daisy
Oxeye Daisy
Black-eyed Susan
Lettuce
Chicory
Sunflower
Safflower
Jerusalem Artichoke
Goldenrod
Chrysanthemum
Dandelion
Boneset
Strawflower
Ragwort

Snapdragon

The plants are annual or perennial herbs with flowers that are zygomorphic (can be divided by only a single plane into two mirror-image halves, much like a person's face), or rarely actinomorphic (can be divided into symmetrical halves by more than one longitudinal plane passing through the axis, much as a pie can be cut into several equal and identical pieces).

Butterfly Bush
Figwort
Foxglove
Mullein

Internal links

Hydroponics for orchid cultivation Creative Idea: Use a foldable to record / organize this information. Go here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6K0RnlNM7E to learn how.