e-Key v3 - Echiostachys
SANBI Flora Keys Logo
Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Boraginaceae - Boraginoideae - Echieae - Echiostachys Levyns

Description :

  • Perennial herbs with somewhat woody rootstocks
  • Leaves linear-lanceolate, often tufted
  • Flowers in a dense pseudospike which is composed of many short cymes on a stout axis, occasionally interrupted at base, but rarely branched, elongating somewhat in fruit
  • Calyx of 5 free or nearly free sepals, conspicuously densely villous
  • Corolla white, pale blue or pink; with narrowly funnel-shaped tube and 5 obtuse, regular lobes
  • Stamens equal or subequal, arising in corolla tube, exserted; filaments with hairs at or near base, usually tufted
  • Ovary 4-lobed; gynobase disc-like; style simple, gynobasic; stigma small, obscurely 2-fid
  • Fruit of 4 nutlets; nutlets rugose-tuberculate or almost smooth

Nomenclature:

  • Echiostachys Levyns
    • Levyns: 445 (1934)
    • Phillips: 632 (1951)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Southern Africa : Species 3, endemic in Western Cape

References:

  • LEVYNS, M.R. 1934. A revision of Lobostemon Lehm., and a discussion of the species problem. Journal of the Linnean Society, Botany 49
  • PHILLIPS, E.P. 1951. The genera of South African flowering plants. Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa No. 25