There are approximately 2,500 plant species and 140 families of flowering plants native to the UK and getting to grips with all of these is daunting. However, 80% of flowering plants in the UK belong to just 20 key families and learning to recognise members of these families is a good way to start learning plants. If you can place an unfamiliar plant correctly in its family you are well over half way towards finding the genus and species. So for example, if you are using a standard key to identify the plant then you can move directly to the relevant family key and not start right at the beginning!
Check the following plant pages so see Dr M Goes Wild about:
- The top ten dicot families
- Eleven to twenty dicot families (Coming soon….)
- Monocot families (Coming soon….)