Family: Lamiaceae
Stachys byzantina
Citation:
C. Koch, Linnaea 21:686 (1848).
Synonymy: S. lanata Jacq., Icon. Pl. Rar. 1:11 (1781), non Crantz; S. olympica sensu J. Black, Fl. S. Aust. 741 (1957).
Common name: Woolly stachys.
Description:
Perennial herbs with a few quadrangular branches from a basal rosette, hardly branched, to 80 cm tall, white-woolly with fine long and often coiled hairs; basal leaves oblong-spathulate, 5-8 x 1.5-3.5 cm, denticulate to entire, woolly-villous; cauline leaves with a petiole 0.5-2.5 cm long, with a blade elliptic to oblong-lanceolate, becoming shorter upwards.
Inflorescence a thyrse without a peduncle, with sessile cymose part-inflorescences forming dense clusters around the nodes and with a pair of bracts at first longer but shorter than subtending clusters towards the apex, with internodes slightly elongated and visible at the base; sepals connate to two-thirds their length, 10-veined, 8-10 mm long, almost regular, with pointed lobes narrower on the anterior side as compared with the posterior ones, villous outside and inside; corolla rose-pink, 2-lipped with tube about as long as the anterior lip, 12-15 mm long, villous on the outside of both lips, with the posterior lip obovate, hooded, with the anterior lip with 2 short lateral lobes and a 2-lobed central one; stamens inserted in the throat, with filaments hairy; anthers with 2 cells fertile and strongly diverging so that they are ultimately above one another in a vertical line, glabrous, more or less enclosed in the hood of the posterior lip of the corolla; ovary on a thick disk, deeply 4-lobed, with a slender style inserted near the base and curved along the posterior lip of the corolla, with a shortly 2-fid stigma.
Mericarps broadly obovoid, 2.5-3 mm long, with the 2 lateral and inner margins keeled, with the attachment scar circular and protruding, smooth to finely granulate.
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Image source: fig. 557I in Jessop J.P. & Toelken H.R. (Ed.) 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).
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Distribution:
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S.Aust.: SL. Native to north-western Iran and adjoining Caucasia.
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Conservation status:
naturalised
Flowering time: not available.
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SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia
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Biology:
The species has not been recorded for S.Aust. since the original collection made in 1914.
Author:
Not yet available
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