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Electronic Flora of South Australia genus Fact Sheet

Family: Boraginaceae
Plagiobothrys

Citation: Fischer & C. Meyer, Ind. Semin. Petrop. 2:46 (1835).

Derivation: Greek plagios, oblique or lateral; bothros, a pit; alluding to the scar on the side of the mericarps.

Synonymy: Maccoya F. Muell., Fragm. Phyt. Aust. 1:127 (1859).

Common name: None

Description:
Annuals with usually more or less appressed forward-directed hairs of similar size, branched mainly from the base; leaves opposite, clustered and with a broad sheath in the basal rosette becoming alternate, scattered and without a sheath above.

Inflorescence with scorpioid cymes with widely spaced flowers, with leaf-like bracts; sepals 5-8, scarcely connate basally, elongating somewhat after flowering; corolla regular, cylindrical, glabrous, without pouches in the throat; stamens inserted at about the middle of the corolla tube, with anthers almost sessile, constricted at the apex but without an appendage; ovary 4-lobed, without a nectary, with a style inserted near the base, short (one-third to one-half the length of the corolla tube) and a capitate stigma.

Fruit with 2-4 mericarps more or less easily splitting from the central gynobase; mericarps ovoid, gradually tapering into an apical point with a vertical ridge usually becoming part of the rugose-tuberculate reticulum with a scar of attachment lanceolate and in the lower third on the inside.

Distribution:  About 100 species in the western parts of America except for the 4 species native to temperate regions of Australia; 1 species naturalised in Australia.

Biology: No text

Key to Species:
1. Calyx 5-8, woody and clasping the fruit but apices spreading to recurved
P. plurisepaleus 3.
1. Calyx 5, tough, erect and loosely sheathing the fruits and with erect apices
 
2. Basal leaves linear-oblanceolate, obtuse; mericarps coarsely reticulate and with the scar of attachment raised
P. elachanthus 1.
2. Basal leaves linear-triangular, tapering into a point; mericarps finely rugose-reticulate, granulate to tubereulate
P. orthostatus 2.

Author: Not yet available


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