Question

1. Complete a dichotomous key for the 10 leaves on the Common Leaves sheet. The chart provided here allows for 11 pairs of statements. Depending on how you build your dichotomous key, you may or may not need all of them, or you may need to add some.

Answer 1

dichotomous keys are kind of tricky, but first start by splitting your leaves according to a characteristic they either do, or don't have

for example, the first step could be "if the leaf has a rough edge, go to step 2; if the leaf has a smooth edge, to go step 3"

then, add another step that will further sort the leaves within each category, such as being a simple leaf/compound leaf, etc. and keep going until your key can correctly sort out every individual leaf with no ambiguity