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Electronic Flora of South Australia genus Fact Sheet

Family: Apiaceae
Xanthosia

Citation: Rudge, Trans. Linn. Soc. 10:301 (1811).

Derivation: Greek xanthos, yellow; the colour of the hairs of some species or of the flower of the type.

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Xanthosias.

Description:
Perennial woody herbs or small shrubs; leaves divided 'or simple, herbaceous or coriaceous and evergreen, entire or pungent-dentate and broad-pinnatinerved.

Umbels leaf-opposed or terminating short leafy branches, usually compound or reduced, sometimes to a single flower; compound umbels usually with 3 or 4 involucral bracts and 3 or 4 rays; umbellules with 2 or 3 bracteoles and several almost sessile flowers; sepals conspicuous, broad-ovate to broad-lanceolate, acute, articulate at the apex of the fruit and later deciduous; petals narrow at the apex and much inflexed; styles very long with a thick globular base forming half of the 2-lobed stylopodium.

Fruit laterally compressed; carpophore adnate to the narrowed commissure and appearing absent or free, more or less persistent; mericarps dorsally obtuse, more or less 9-ribbed, the primary and often the secondary ribs prominent and incurved at the base; vittae absent.

Distribution:  Endemic to temperate Australia, about 25 species.

Biology: No text

Key to Species:
1. Leaves repeatedly ternately divided; petioles much longer than the leaf blades; inflorescence a cluster of 3- or 4-flowered pedunculate umbels
X. dissecta 1.
1. Leaves 3-lobed or divided into 3 leaflets; petioles about as long as or shorter than the leaf blades; simple umbels solitary, sessile or very shortly pedunculate
 
2. Leaves broad-oblanceolate in outline, distinctly longer than broad, villous; segments linear-lanceolate, usually entire; umbels 3-6- flowered; fruit oblong, 3-4 mm long
X. pusilla 2.
2. Leaves roundish to cuneate-semicircular in outline, glabrescent;terminal segments often 3-lobed; lateral segments often deeply 2-sect; umbels 1- or 2-flowered; fruit about as broad as long, c. 2.5 mm
X. tasmanica 3.

Author: Not yet available


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