Southern leatherwood or ironwood (Cyrilla racemiflora) is found from southern Virginia to Florida and west to Texas. This species is mostly found in lowlands near the coast typically along streams or in swamps. This shrub or small tree can be up to 35 feet tall. The somewhat oval leaves are from two to four inches long. The thick leaves are long persistent.

Cyrilla genus is native to the southeastern United States, the West Indies, and northern South America. Although the 1913 Brown & Britton notes that there are three or four species in this genus, a recent English author notes that there is only one species in the genus. The leaves are thick, entire, and alternate. Kartesz shows two species growing in greater North America, including the West Indies and Puerto Rico.

Cyrilla (Cyrillaceae) family is found in the south eastern United States, eastern lowland Mexico, and northern South America primarily north of the Amazon. This family contains smooth shrubs and small trees with simple entire thick alternate leaves. There are 14 species in this family arranged in three different genera. (Some authors reduce this to only two species.) The leaves are long-persistent and frequently evergreen. Greater North America, which includes the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, currently supports three species in two different genera: Cyrilla and Cliftonia.

Sapindales Order is a diverse group of mostly trees and shrubs. In older taxonomic works there were about 25 different families in this order. Some modern authors retain only about 10 families. This order is very widespread in the world, and seemingly only absent from a few dry deserts.

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.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species. Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.

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