Narrative

American paw paw (Asimina triloba) is found from southern New England west to Ontario and Missouri, and south to northern Florida and Texas. This can be a tall shrub or a tree up to 45 feet tall. The purple flowers appear with the leaves.

The purple color will help identify this lilfeform.

This lifeform is found east of the Continental Divide in North America.

Asimina genus is native to eastern North America. There are eight known species. These are shrubs or small trees with alternate entire leaves and nodding flowers. Although there are six petals, they are arranged in two series. The fruit is a large oblong fleshy berry.

Custard Apple Family is found primarily in the tropics. A few species are found in temperate zones. There are approximately 2,000 species divided into about 125 genera. These are trees or shrubs, generally aromatic, with alternate, entire pinnately veined leaves. There are usually six petals. There are 22 species arranged in seven genera found in greater North America.

Ranales Order has been broken down into nineteen different families. The water lilies, buttercups, magnolias, and other groups are included in this order. Large pretty flowers seem to be a common characteristic of this order.

Dicots (Dicotyledoneae Class) are the predominant group of vascular plants on earth. With the exception of the grasses (Monocots) and the Conifers (Gymnosperms), most of the larger plants that one encounters are Dicots. Dicots are characterized by having a seed with two outer shell coverings.

Some of the more primitive Dicots are the typical hardwood trees (oaks, birches, hickories, etc). The more advanced Dicots include many of the Composite (Aster) Family flowers like the Dandelion, Aster, Thistles, and Sunflowers. Although many Monocots reach a very high degree of specialization, most botanists feel that the Dicots represent the most advanced group of plants.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.