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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Phyllanthaceae
Poranthera triandra

Citation: J. Black, Trans. R.Soc. S. Aust. 40:00 (1916).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Three-petal poranthera.

Description:
Dwarf slender compact ascending glabrous annual; stems few to several, filiform, 1-2 rarely 3-4 cm long; leaves green, seldom red-marked, mostly opposite, obovate to spathulate, attenuate into indistinct petioles, lamina 2-7 x 0.5-3 mm, generally flat; stipules narrow-triangular, nearly filiform, 0.5-0.8 mm long, white-leathery, sometimes tinted red; monoecious.

Flowers on distinct pedicels 0.5-2.5 mm long, subtended by a smaller leaf longer or shorter than the flower, few in corymbs on filiform peduncles 2-10 mm long, shorter or longer than the supporting leaf; calyx segments mostly 3, ovate, c. 1.5 mm long, white, sometimes red-marked; stamens 3, the filaments half the length of the segments; anthers semiglobular, yellow, c. 0.15 mm across; rudimentary ovary minute, globular, glandlike; in female flowers occasionally 4 calyx segments present, the fourth being slightly smaller, hardly c. 1 mm long; ovary at anthesis c. 0.5 mm across, green; styles 3, short, obtuse, thick, merely notched at the summit, red-brown.

Capsule depressed-globular, 1-1.5 mm across, distinctly 3-6-lobed or indistinctly green-yellow, sometimes tinted brown, 6-seeded; seed wedge-shaped reniform, dorsally globular, c. 0.5 mm long, light-brown and smooth or often white-powdered or white-granulate-tuberculate.

image of FSA2_Poranthera_tri.jpg Poranthera triandra habit, male flower and stamen, side and ventral view of female flower, fruit and seed, and embryo.
Image source: fig 408 in Jessop J.P. & Toelken H.R. (Ed.) 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Distribution:  S.Aust.: EP, NL, MU, YP, SL, KI, SE.

Conservation status: native

Flowering time: Aug. — Nov.


SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: As in P. microphylla the male flowers after anthesis are deciduous and in later stages the plant bears only female floral parts.

Taxonomic notes: Resembles P. microphylla which is usually a larger plant in which some flowers have 4 calyx segments but the male flowers always have 5 stamens and female have 3 styles distinctly cleft into 6 white segments with brown tips only.

Author: Not yet available


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