Computerized databases offer another tool for identifying plants through interactive keys.
The ability and desire to perform detailed observations is absolutely necessary for learning about the natural world. It is also the essential skill that college science teachers most often find lacking in students entering college directly from high school. The tree puzzle makes an optimal learning tool because it gives sequentially increasing positive feedback for increasingly detailed observations. The Miami Tree Puzzle is an interactive key currently including 248 species of trees that are found here in the wild. Although some of these trees are used for landscaping in and around Miami, species that are found only in cultivation are usually not included.