Keyed Out #035 — Hydrangea macrophylla

Question 1

Each small seed-setting flower opens four or five quite separate {petals} backed by eight or more free {stamens}, and its {ovary} sits sunk below them, drying into a many-seeded pod rather than showing petals welded into a tube with a few {stamens} fixed inside it above a fleshy, single-stoned fruit.

Accepted Answer

hydrangea family

Question 2

Its leaves come in opposite pairs at every {node}, each pair set across the pair below, with no small leafy flaps where the stalks meet the stem, rather than blades set singly and spirally up the shoot with a pair of such flaps at each base.

Accepted Answer

Hydrangeaceae

Question 3

Its head carries two kinds of bloom: big showy ones round the rim that set no seed and take their colour from about four enlarged {sepals}, ringing a crowd of tiny seed-setting flowers behind, not a cluster in which every flower is alike, fertile, and shows its colour in true {petals}.

Accepted Answer

Hydrangea

Question 4

Rub a young shoot and the underside of a leaf: what hairs there are run singly, straight and unbranched, leaving the surface clean, not a coat of minute star-shaped tufts that gives it a scurfy, mealy feel.

Accepted Answer

Hydrangea

Question 5

Its bloom cluster is a broad flat-topped to domed head 6 to 10 inches (15 to 25 cm) across, wider than it is deep and sitting squat on the shoot, never a narrow pyramid of blossom tapering to a point at the tip.

Accepted Answer

Hydrangea macrophylla

Question 6

Its blades are thick and firm between the fingers with a distinctly glossy upper surface, 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 cm) long on stout shoots, not thin and matt-textured on slender twigs.

Accepted Answer

Hydrangea macrophylla