Perennial, slender, grass-like, dioecious, marine herbs, with a creeping rhizome, rooting at nodes
Leaves distichous, 2-4 per shoot, linear to setaceous, straight, flat, dark green, midrib and margins ending in short apical teeth; stipular sheath long, attached to lamina, convolute, flat, forming 2 rounded auricles above; ligule a narrow apical ridge
Flowers solitary, on short side branches, surrounded by membranous leaf sheaths
Male flowers consisting of a double fused stamen, with 2-locular, sometimes apiculate anthers arising at different heights and facing in opposite directions, attached dorsally to filament, occasionally with 3 small protuberances arising at different heights on connective; pollen confervoid
Female flowers consisting of 2 collateral carpels on a short, clavate, verrucose peduncle; style long, subulate; ovule solitary, pendulous
Fruit a globose, hard drupelet
x = 1 (polyploidy)
Nomenclature:
Halodule Endl.
Endlicher: 1368 (1841)
Obermeyer: 76 (1966)
Den Hartog: 146 (1970)
Cook: 66 (1990)
Distribution & Notes:
Global: Species 7, fairly widespread under tropical marine conditions
Southern Africa: Species 1: Halodule uninervis (Forssk.) Aschers., northern coast of KwaZulu-Natal
DEN HARTOG, C. 1970. The seagrasses of the world. North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam
ENDLICHER, S.F.L. 1841. Genera plantarum. Beck, Vienna
OBERMEYER, A.A. 1966. Zannichelliaceae. Flora of southern Africa 1
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Welcome to Biodiversity Advisor 2.0!
Biodiversity Advisor, developed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and its Data Partners, is a system that will provide integrated biodiversity information to a wide range of users who will have access to geospatial data, plant and animal species distribution data, ecosystem-level data, literature, images and metadata.
The integrated information comes from our much-loved Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA) also known as Plants of Southern Africa (POSA), Zoological Database of Southern Africa (ZODATSA), Biodiversity Geographic Information System (BGIS), SANBI's institutional repository (Opus) and others.
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