e-Key <span id="jodit_selection_marker_1707205684145_06408720579040916" data-jodit_selection_marker="start" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>v3 - B<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1707205684145_25398460822459024" data-jodit_selection_marker="end" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>ehnia
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Luzuriagaceae - Behnia Didr.

Description:

  • Slender forest climbers with much-branched woody stems from rhizomes with swollen roots
  • Leaves alternate, sessile, parallel-veined with slight reticulate venation; stipules and similar structures 0
  • Flowers regular, bisexual, small, in few-flowered, lax, axillary cymes
  • Tepals 3 + 3, forming a short broad tube with lobes equal, spreading
  • Stamens 3 + 3, arising from lower half of perianth tube, extending to mouth; filaments free, terete; anthers introrse, versatile
  • Ovary superior, 3-locular, attenuate at base; ovules axile, few; style trigonous; stigma apical, obtuse, tripartite
  • Fruit a berry with a short basal stipe, white
  • Seeds 3-15

Nomenclature:

  • Behnia Didr.
    • Didrichsen: 182 (1855)
    • Baker: 561 (1875)
    • Baker: 274 (1896)
    • Hutchinson: 772 (1973)
    • Obermeyer: 83 (1992)
  • Dictyopsis Harv.
    • Harvey: t. 5638 (1867)
    • Harvey: 406 (1868)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Southern Africa: Monotypic: Behnia reticulata (Thunb.) Didr., Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, SE Western and Eastern Cape

References:

  • BAKER, J.G. 1875. Revision of the genera and species of Asparagaceae. Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Botany 14
  • BAKER, J.G. 1896. Asparagus. Flora capensis 6
  • DIDRICHSEN, D.F. 1855. Behnia. Videnskabelige Meddelelser fra Dansk naturhistorisk Forening i Kjöbenhavn 1854
  • HARVEY, W.H. 1867. Dictyopsis thunbergii. Curtis's Botanical Magazine 93
  • HARVEY, W.H. 1868. The genera of South African plants, edn 2. Juta, Cape Town
  • HUTCHINSON, J. 1973. The families of flowering plants, edn 3. Clarendon, Oxford
  • OBERMEYER, A.A. 1992. Luzuriagaceae. Flora of southern Africa 5,3

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