The Interactive Key to Southeast Asian Flowering Plants (a follow up of the cd-rom under the name Interactive Key to Malesian Seed Plants) is an identification system for all native and naturalized (introduced with self-maintaining 'wild' populations) families and genera of the Flora Malesiana region (Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Timor Lest and Papua New Guinea) and parts of mainland Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam). Efforts have been made to include the most up-to-date taxonomic information (APG IV), although - as several groups are still under revision or need revision - the family list will require updating from time to time. Similarly, there may be taxa yet unknown to science, or presently known only in horticulture, which may in future become naturalized in the region.
This project has started as a follow up of the Spotcharacter project of Max van Balgooy (see the three volumes of Malesian Seed Plants) and in collaboration with the herbaria from Kew and Leiden. The first project was a cd-rom version to the families only. This online version contains all families and genera known in the area. In cases where the spotcharacters were referring to species, the species are taken up in the interactive key as well. The spotcharacters are checked with the most recent Spotcharacter book (2015).
Please cite this publication as follows;
The Malesian Key Group (2020) Interactive Key to Southeast Asian Flowering Plants (online, Linnaeus). The Nationaal Herbarium Nederland Leiden and The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
The Malesian Key Group is a collaboration between partners at Naturalis (NHN Leiden) Leiden and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. NHN Leiden - Max van Balgooy, Jeannette Ridder-Numan, Colin Ridsdale (deceased). RBG Kew - Damien Hicks, Don Kirkup, Rogier de Kok, Tim Utteridge
Warnings and caveats
This is a continuing long-term project, and the key, notes and descriptions will need further improvements and updating. The default family key with 64 characters has been tested by various people, but miscodings may still be found. Later the full set of spotcharacters used by Max van Balgooy were added as well as a set of characters required to identify the Leguminosae/Fabaceae in the area leading to a set of characters of circa 170.
Please note that apart from the families and their genera also some species have been taken up in the key. This is a far from complete set of species and usually shows the species that are a bit different within the genus they belong to and show spot characters mentined in the first addition of the Spotcharacter book. Also, some species are taken up in the text of the taxon card of the genus when showing a specific spot character. At a later stage these extra species (dating from later updates of the Spot-character book) will be taken up in the Key.
Some very large family, e.g., Orchidaceae are only represented by those genera that are taken up in the Spotcharacter and Plant Portraits by Max van Balgooy. We will work on completing these later.
Identification Characters
The characters included in the key relate to vegetative, floral and fruit morphology and ecology. The characters which we have chosen are relatively easy to assess from any reasonably intact flowering and/or fruiting specimen and are readily interpreted in conjunction with the character state notes and illustrations. It should be possible to identify without much more than a hand lens. To facilitate identification, we also added characters that refer to the distribution in the area (TDWG level 2 and 3).
Some types of data are more reliable than others however: Characters which show continuous variation (such as ecology or the shape of a structure) will generally be less reliable than those with a discrete value (such as leaf insertion, presence/absence of tendrils, or number of corolla lobes). Characters which are prone to misinterpretation but nevertheless constitute valuable data (such as sap colour) have been coded broadly or coded for the most probable misinterpretation (see below) by the user.
For each included family, characters have been assessed across a broad range of material. In many cases this has been with reference to the relevant published taxonomic literature (where the author may have seen many hundreds of specimens of the taxa) and this has been checked by keying-out material in the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew and Nationaal Herbarium Nederland, Leiden.
Nevertheless even 'reliable' characters can be rendered unreliable later. We recommend that any identification done with this key should be treated with caution and ideally cross-checked with reference to additional material, i.e., well-named herbarium material or the relevant taxonomic literature.
Character coding and user friendliness.
When building the key, we have endeavoured to code the correct state(s) for each character, but also to identify and code for common mistakes in user interpretation. The distinction between sepals and petals can sometimes be obscure, for instance. In this instance we have coded families with e.g., only three sepals as 'sepal number: 3’ and to account for misinterpretation we have also coded 'petal number: 3' for this character. The taxon in question will thus not be discarded when either state is selected. Consequently, the expert user may at times be surprised to find families in the Remaining Taxa list apparently in error. We feel that this trade-off of identification power has been necessary in order to make the key more user-friendly for the non-specialist.
References
Van Balgooy M.M.J (1997) Malesian Seed Plants - Volume 1 Spot Characters. Rijksherbarium / Hortus Botanicus, Leiden
Van Balgooy M.M.J (1998) Malesian Seed Plants - Volume 2 Portraits of Tree Families. Rijksherbarium / Hortus Botanicus, Leiden
Van Balgooy M.M.J (2001) Malesian Seed Plants - Volume 3 Portraits of Non-Tree Families. Nationaal Herbarium Nederland / Universiteit Leiden Branch, Leiden
Van Balgooy M.M.J., Low Y.W., Wong K.M. (2015) Spot-characters for the identification of Malesian Seed Plants. Natural History Publications (Borneo) Sdn. Bhd.
Watson L. and Dallwitz M.J. (1992 -) The Families of Flowering Plants; Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification and Information retrieval. Version 14 December 2000 http://delta-intkey.com/
Nickrent, D.L., Costea, M., Barcelona, J.F., Pelser, P.B. & Nixon, K. (2006 onwards) PhytoImages. Available from: http://www.phytoimages.siu.edu
GBIF.org (19 July 2021) GBIF Occurrence Download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.8h4ngn