Congratulations, you have discovered that your plant is a woody vine because all woody vines climb wih tendrils.  East Texas has about 30 woody vines if you count the ones that have tendrils that are really modified roots. Be aware, we do count those in this key.  Do you want to know which woody vine you have well answer some more questions.

Here we learn about compound leaves.  Some times you think you are looking a leaf and you are only looking at a part of one.  Look at this example.

If your plant have compound leaves click here.
If your plant has simple leaves click here.

 If you are following my blog, you are going to see a lot of disjointed pages over the next several months.  Hopefully it will all make sense in the end.

A taxonomic key provides the investigator with a series of qusetions to be answered about the plant to be identified.  If we both do our job, you should be able to identifiy and aturally occuring woody plant in our nature center.  Have fun..

Sometimes in using a key like this one you need to learn new words.  Many of those words are scientific terms but sometimes you will see a “regular” word that in this context will have specific scientific meaning.  I’ll try to take the time to help you learn those scientific words so that you can make the best choice possible when answering the questions.  For instance to make this choice you must know what a tendril is.  A tendril is a modified part of a plant (leaf, stem, or root) that helps the plant “hold on” while it climbs.  Tendrils reach out, twist, and turn causing them to wrap around things they touch.  When they wrap around other things they contribute to the support of the plant allowing the plant to grow and climb even further.

If your plant uses tendrils to climb click here
If your plant does not use tendrils to climb click here