Taxonomic Aids

Taxonomic aids are the tools, techniques and stored information that help identify and classify organisms, needed across almost every branch of biology.

Keys are tools for identifying unfamiliar plants using stable, reliable characters. The most common form is the dichotomous key - a sequence of couplets, each couplet being a pair of contrasting statements (leads); the plant is identified by repeatedly choosing the lead that matches it, narrowing the possibilities at each step (e.g. a Solanaceae genus key separates Physalis, Solanum, Nicotiana and Datura purely on flower colour, corolla shape and fruit type). A Polyclave (multi-entry) key instead lists many character states at once; the user selects every state that matches the specimen, and the key is typically run by a computer algorithm.

Flora is a document listing all plant species of a given geographic area, along with flowering/fruiting season, distribution, and notes on rare/endemic species (e.g. Flora of Tamil Nadu Carnatic by K.M. Matthew). Floras are graded by scope: Local Flora (a state, city or mountain range), Regional Flora (a larger geographic region), Continental Flora (an entire continent, e.g. Flora Europaea), and Electronic Flora (e-flora) - a digitised, online flora that also works as an identification tool (e.g. e-Flora of China). …