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The key comprises any of the 30 genera, 134 species, 7 subspecies, 38 varieties, 1 form, and thus all 180 taxa recognized by FARJON (2001). The key uses 123 morphological characters. These characters are divided into 19 character subsets (habit, trunk, bark, crown, branch, branchlet, leaves, needle leaves, scale leaves, lateral leaves, facial leaves, male cone, male cone scales, female cone, female cone scales, columella, seeds, seed wings, supplements). If all characters are included, the identification of each taxon is possible. The key contains 13,889 evaluated pieces of information (94.62 % of possible data) about character states of more than 55,000 "unevaluated" data from literature and own examinations. In addition, the key contains all in all 1,112 macroscopic photos in order to test the plausibility of the identification result. The choice of the character states is furthermore supported by 100 photographical character boards.