A botanical key helps you identify plants by offering choices about leaf arrangement, appearance, or even smell. Answer enough questions, and theoretically, you can identify the plant.
The beauty of this key is that you don't need a degree in botany to use it. Regular people can identify the most common urban trees of San Francisco using good observational skills. Kelaine Vargas and I designed the logic, and I wrote the tree descriptions. Last December I had a great time with photographer Adam Warmington taking pictures for this key. Most of them were in my own neighborhood within walking distance! The amazing thing is that even at that time of year, most of the trees were in leaf, and many were even blooming. 12 trees or so were dormant and I had to find internet links to appropriate pictures.
We really don't have a good simple i.d. key for trees of Western North America. With the right funding, this key could have so many more trees added to it and be very useful to students, professionals and tree afficionados alike. Right now, if you live in San Francisco, the most popular trees found in sidewalks and parks can be identified.
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