Welcome to the
Bio 332 Flower Identification Page!


This website was constructed for students in my upper-division Biology course in Vascular Plant Diversity (BIO332). It is designed to test your ability to identify plants to the proper family for a subset of 29 flowering plant families that we study in lab each year. The quiz provides images of representative flowers from each family in a randomized order (three to five images are available per family, with 114 images total in the quiz). You must correctly identify the family name for each flower to proceed with the quiz. The quiz will end only when you decide to stop - images will continue to load as long as you continue to provide answers. Your success is not monitored by the quiz, so you need to keep track for yourself if you want a tally of the number of images you've correctly identified.

If you would like to see these same flower images presented in a more orderly fashion (by family), there is a slide show available that does this.

INSTRUCTIONS: When you start the quiz you will be shown a picture of a randomly selected flower, and you will be asked to type in the family name for that flower (spelled properly and capitalized, of course!). When you finish typing in the name, you can either hit "RETURN" or click on the button labeled "Submit Answer." If your answer is correct, you can acknowledge your success by responding "OK" to the Java prompt (just hit RETURN) and you will be given a new flower image. If your answer is incorrect, you will be given a chance to try again with a new answer (after responding "OK" to the Java prompt, just start typing or use the button labeled "Clear Form"). If you give up, you can always ask for the answer by clicking the button "I give up". You will still have to type in the correct answer, however, to proceed directly to a new flower image. Because the randomization occurs with replacement, you will occasionally get the same image twice.

HELP: To help you if you get stuck, there are some reference materials about family diagnostic characteristics in the frame to the left. The families covered in this quiz are all listed there, and each family name is directly linked to a page providing more information (these are similar to the handouts received in lab each week). Clicking on any of the family names will open a new window so you can look at the picture and the descriptions simultaneously.

HOW TO BEGIN: To start the quiz, click on the words "Start Family Quiz" that you see below in the bottom frame. When the quiz starts, the bottom frame will have a link that you can click whenever you get stuck and want to move on to another picture. You will also be able to click on a link that will return you to these instructions. A third link will take you to the BIO 332 homepage.

Important Notes:


Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Send e-mail to kkaroly@reed.edu

(Last Modified 11/19/97)