For reliable determination, mature fruits and plants with well-developed inflorescences are essential. Immature and depauperate collections may be impossible to name. Before it was realized that there were several entities in Corispermum in the Great Lakes region, mature fruits were not considered essential for collections and some very immature specimens are mapped here based on tentative determinations. See Mosyakin (1995) for more information.

All our species are native to North America, but none were collected from Michigan before 1900, though much earlier collections of C. pallasii are known from Lake Michigan shores in Wisconsin. It is surely native.  Corispermum americanum and C. hookeri are also considered native, even though some collections of C. americanum are from weedy sites. All collections of C. villosum are from weedy habitats or urban settings, and it is treated as introduced. These are unassuming plants that are often overlooked or bypassed as weeds. 

All measurements in the key are from Great Lakes region collections, and may not apply to the species from elsewhere in its range.

1. Fruit essentially wingless or with narrow, translucent, hardened edges to at most 0.2 mm wide.

  2. Larger fruits 2.6-3 mm long, 1.7-2.1 mm wide.

C. villosum

  2. Larger fruits 3.2-3.7 mm long, 2.2-2.6 mm wide.

C. hookeri

1. Fruit usually conspicuously winged, the wing papery at maturity and 0.25-0.6 mm wide.

  3. Inflorescences elongate-linear, rather loosely flowered; larger fruits 1.9-2.6 mm wide.

C. americanum

  3. Inflorescences narrowly clavate to ovate in outline, densely flowered except at the very base; larger fruits 2.3-3.3 mm wide.

C. pallasii