so i thought about this question because i was trying to identify a plume thistle (genus Cirsium) photo i stumbled upon on inaturalist (🔗), because it was proving difficult to find a dichotomous key that encompassed all the options in the general area, all i could find was gobotany.
(dont get me wrong, i love go botany and am very happy the project exists, but it's limited to a small region and therefore only really useful in that region.)
so, my question is: how do you guys find dichotomous keys for specific genuses that arent limited to one region? is there a database somewhere? or what other methods do you use for identifying unfamiliar taxa?
by Much_Effort_6216
3 Comments
Reach out to people for the region that know a good key.
Ask on a local Native Plant Society page.
College botany programs normally know who the leading classifiers are as well.
Where are you?
Everything you can find will be local and limited.
Such Thesaurus would be huge and discussed and finally disparaged.