Never seen that before, really cool!
Right on, not only will I also work on Plantae with yāall and then Angiospermae and then Monocot and/or Dicot, I vow to include all the ones I already āreviewedā because all I did was pile them in the right place earlier. Thatāll be a good chunk to get through by the time Iām retired and then can become a biologist. ;)
Meanwhile, the subsequent idās on some other chunks of my āPlantaeā form a training set for at least getting to family more often. Thanks and Go team!
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I think itās fine to mark plants Plantae if you canāt easily put them in a lower category. (I say this as somebody who sometimes searches āPlantsā to class, to move these things on.)
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Sometimes itās about keystroke comfort, like if P happens to be easier than A, M, D that day. If no one gets to the big P pile by the time I get back around to them for M, D- no big deal, theyāll still be there later. ;)
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Please donāt call native plants āinvasiveā. That term should be reserved for introduced exotic species aka weeds.
After @blue_celery said that I looked it up, and seems Amorpha fruticosa is native to N America and introduced in Europe and Asia.
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Amorpha fruticosa is native to eastern North America and invasive here the Pacific Northwest of North America. It was introduced to gardens and escaped.
Interesting. We consider it native in California.
Hmmm. There is a whole big cluster of collections/observations in southwest California, but only scattered records north. I hypothesize that it may be native at the southern sites, but not further north. Take a look at itās Oregon range: https://oregonflora.org/taxa/index.php?taxon=2720
*Edit: I think I defined carpel wrong, so let me try again: A carpel is the basic female unit of a flower in the same way that a stamen is the basic male unit of a flower. One stamen is the anthers and filament together as a unit. One carpel is the stigma, style, and ovary together as a unit. Thus, a unicarpellate fruit is one that came from one carpel, e.g. one ovary, style and stigma. The chambers of an ovary are technically called locules.
Note that plants with multiple carpels can still appear to be one unit. Basically the carpels fused together (syncarpellous). See tomatoes below. Two chambers (two locules/bilocular) and two carpels (two carpels/bicarpellate). Iām still learning too. With that out of the way, onwards to the main course!
Ok, I think several people have already addressed this question. And Iām not a botanist. Iām a notanist, which is a portmandeau of ānotā and ābotanist.ā Is aspiring botanist close enough? But nevertheless, let me give my take on this.
I think itās been established that not all plants with something that looks like a ābean podā is a legume. But then again, thereās two ways I could interpret ālegumeā here:
- The Legume family, Fabaceae, sometimes known as the Pea family
- The fruit itself. A legume is a term for a specific type of fruit, which is typically associated with the Fabaceae, although I donāt know actually know whether they are unique to the Fabaceae.
Iām going to address the second definition since it gives context for the first. Rephrasing from James and Melinda Harrisās Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary, a legume pod is a dry fruit with one carpel that splits along two lines of dehiscence.
Ok, that was a bit hard to understand. Let me simplify some more.
Hereās a textbook definition of a legume. All the seeds are in one chamber, which is derived from the one chamber of the flowerās ovary (aka from one *carpel).
The fruit splits (or dehisces) in half along two line, two sutures. Dehiscing is a fancy botany term for a fruit opening, splitting, or whatever a fruit might do to release its seeds.
Compare this to a mustard fruit, which looks somewhat similar:
This is from a Streptanthus species, which is in the Mustard family Brassicaceae. Sure looks like a pea pod, right? Although I will note that often pods in the mustard family are a lot narrower than this, I kind-of cherry-picked that example. But from a casual notanistās perspective mustard pods look a heck lot like legume pods.
However, the structure of a mustard pod is very different, which is most evident when it splits:
Mustards have what are called siliques. Both sides of its two halves (known as valves for some reason) split apart. My way of interpreting this is like when that top part of a rocket splits to reveal the payload.
Uncanny, isnāt it?
There are seeds on both sides of the remaining membrane. Notice also that this means the silique has two *carpels split in the middle by that clear membrane.
Another thing that is often overlooked is the way the seeds are attached to the fruit, or the placentation. A certain shared characteristic of the legume family is that they all have marginal placentation.
I roughly interpret this to mean that the seeds are attached to the margins of the ovary wall, right at the suture where it splits. Go back to the above example. See it now? Iām not if this is included in the definition of a legume but Iād assume it would.
Now, in terms of family, you canāt go about splitting apart every pod you see to check if itās a legume or not, because that would be quite time-consuming! Thus, with any-sort of this stuff, multiple characteristics are used to determine a plantās identity. For legumes, I look for legume pods, compound leaves, and the typical flower types (pea-shaped, mimosa-shaped, or senna-shaped to be simple). Alone these characteristics may not be as reliable, but together they do the job well.
For example, you might not recognize that the mustard pods are legumes, but if you realize that Brassicaceae always has flowers that spiraling up on a flower stalk (a spiral raceme):
ā¦you can pretty clearly tell it is a mustard rather than a legume. Hereās some illustrated comparison flashcards I made.
I carefully checked my information, so hopefully I did not add any accidental misinformation, but Iām not a botanistāso botanists, please let me know how I did.
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Wow. As a notanist myself, you did a spectacular job of explanation. With illustrations, even! Thank you!
ETA: And interesting journal posts!
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The San Diego Museum of Natural History calls their plant survey volunteers parabotanistsāI thought that was fun.
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Uhmā¦ according to them, what should parabotanist mean?
These spiny things (Onobrychis arenaria) do no split and are one-seeded but undoubtedly are legumes.
Nature has lot of imagination, for sure.
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Just when I thought I understood legumes.
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Modeled after āparalegalā - a person trained in subsidiary legal matters but not fully qualified as a lawyer. Substitute legal/lawyer for plant/botanist.
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They didnāt really define it, but hereās the web page implying they are volunteers who completed a class about data and specimen collection techniques. I imagine @egordon88 is correct about the word origin. Does it mean something else to you?
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Unless itās short for āparanormal botanistā which suggests they are not just naturalists but supernaturalists.
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Well, I suppose youāll always have those ones that evolved beyond what you expect a legume pod to look like. My guess is those pods are evolved for animal dispersal, e.g. stick like velcro. Like with bur clovers. Still sort-of fits the definition though, at least according to this illustration:
- Dry fruit
- One section/carpel
- Appears like splits in half along two sutures? Even if it doesnāt split we see the derivative features
- Marginal placentation
They never said a legume pod needed more than one seed 
In terms of the family definition of legumes, the compounds leaves and papilionaceous flowers (fancy word for pea flowers: apparently pea flowers look like butterflies to some people!) should be a tip-off. If just fruit then yeah, that would cause some ID trouble!
It does make me curious about stuff like this Button Medick:
Itās in Fabaceae, alright. But what? How do you define the carpel? Where do you put the seeds? Where does it dehisce? Does it dehisce at all?
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