Clave vegetativa para la identificación de árboles de la familia Fabaceae de la ciudad de Mérida, Venezuela

Abstract

There is a great diversity of legume trees (Fabaceae) of ecologic and economic importance in the city of Merida, Venezuela. Trees of this family are frequent and conspicuous in parks, gardens, squares and urban forest within the city. The present work includes descriptions and a general key to species, based on vegetative characters. As a result of the investigation, 25 genera and 42 species within 3 subfamilies are reported. Mimosoideae characterized by having bipinnate leaves, is the best represented subfamily (17 species); Caesalpinioideae is defined mainly having compound pinnately paripinnate leaves (except Bauhinia spp.) and Faboideae by having compound three-foliate and pinnately compound leaves.