Flowering Plant Families, UH Botany

The Papaveraceae are herbs or rarely shrubs or trees comprising 40 genera and 770 species that often have milky or colored sap. The leaves are simple to much divided or dissected, alternate or rarely subopposite, lacking stipules. The flowers are actinomorphic with several or only 2 planes of symmetry to zygomorphic, showy, and bisexual. The calyx consists of 2 or 3 distinct or rarely completely connate sepals that are usually torn off the receptacle as the bud opens. The corolla comprises 4-12 distinct petals in 1 or 2 whorls. The petals are often crumpled in bud. Stamens 6 and diadelphous or frequently distinct and numerous. The gynoecium consists of a single compound pistil with a superior ovary and usually many parietal ovules in a single locule. The two to many carpels equal the number of placentae. The fruit is generally capsular, commonly dehiscing by way of valves or pores or sometimes transversely.

Argemone glauca, pua kala, kala, naule, pokalakala. Note large, open, bowl-shaped flower typical of beetle pollination, 6 petals, numerous stamens and compound pistil in this Hawaiian native plant.

Argemone mexicana

Argemone munita

Dendromecon rigida, tree poppy. Note the two sepals on the flower bud and none on the open flower.

Eschscholzia californica, California poppy.

Eschscholzia lobbii

Glaucium cf. flavum

Meconopsis cambrica, Welsh poppy, OSU, Corvallis, OR, 2003.

Papaver orientale, poppy. 1. Note crumpled petals in bud and sepals being torn off the receptacle by expansion of the corolla. 2. Note Some petals and stamens removed to show the pistil with its radiating stigmas.

Papaver commutatum, poppy

Papaver sp., poppy. Note the two sepals being lifted off the receptacle by the expansion of the crumpled petals.

Platystemon californicus

Stylomecon heterophylla

Corydalis sp.

Dicentra chrysantha, golden ear-drops.

Dicentra formosa, 3 - bleeding heart, Alsea Falls, OR, 2002.

Dicentra sp., bleeding heart.