This paper deals with turbulent free convection in a horizontal fluid layer above a heated surface. Experiments have been carried out on a heated surface to obtain and analyze the planform structure and the heat transfer under different conditions. Water is the working fluid and the range of flux Rayleigh numbers (Ra) covered is 3 × 107 - 2 × 1010. The different conditions correspond to Rayleigh-Bénard convection, convection with either the top water surface open to atmosphere or covered with an insulating plate, and with an imposed external flow on the heated boundary. Without the external flow the planform is one of randomly oriented line plumes. At large Rayleigh number Ra and small aspect ratio (AR), these line plumes seem to align along the diagonal, presumably due to a large scale flow. The side views show inclined dyelines, again indicating a large scale flow. When the external flow is imposed, the line plumes clearly align in the direction of external flow. The nondimensional average plume spacing, R1/3λ, varies between 40 and 90. The heat transfer rate, for all the experiments conducted, represented as Ra-1/3δT, where δT is the conduction layer thickness, varies only between 0.1-0.2, showing that in turbulent convection the heat transfer rates are similar under the different conditions. © 2000 American Institute of Physics.