e-Key <span id="jodit_selection_marker_1711451732538_9155488249490586" data-jodit_selection_marker="start" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>v3 - Nothos<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1711451732538_43630018436161877" data-jodit_selection_marker="end" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>aerva
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Amaranthaceae - Amaranthoideae - Amarantheae - Aervinae - Nothosaerva Wight

Description:

  • Annual herbs
  • Leaves opposite or alternate, entire
  • Inflorescences in dense, sessile, solitary or clustered spikes, or flowers solitary in axils of scarious bracts
  • Flowers bisexual, very small; bracteoles 2, very small
  • Tepals 3 or 4(5), free, hyaline, villous, with a green band, subtended by 2 very small bracteoles
  • Stamens 1 or 2; filaments filiform; intermediate pseudostaminodes 0; anthers 2-thecous
  • Ovary globose-ovoid; ovule solitary, pendulous, radicle ascending; style short; stigma capitate
  • Capsule delicate, irregularly rupturing
  • Seed rounded, compressed; perisperm/endosperm copious

Nomenclature:

  • Nothosaerva Wight
    • Wight: 1 (1853)
    • Hooker: 34 (1880)
    • Schinz: 109 (1893)
    • Schinz: 52 (1934)
    • Cavaco: 104 (1962)
    • Townsend: 88 (1985)
    • Townsend: 97 (1988)
    • Townsend: 161 (1993a)
    • Townsend: 85 (1993b)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Global: Monotypic: Nothosaerva brachiata (L.) Wight in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Mauritius and tropical Africa from Senegal eastwards to Ethiopia and N Somalia southwards to southern Africa
  • Southern Africa: Northern Province and N KwaZulu-Natal

References:

  • CAVACO, A. 1962. Les Amaranthaceae de l'Afrique au sud du Tropique du Cancer et de Madagascar. Mémoires du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, Série B, Botanique 13
  • HOOKER, J.D. 1880. Amarantaceae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 3,1. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
  • SCHINZ, H. 1893. Amarantaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien III,1a
  • SCHINZ, H. 1934. Amaranthaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, edn 2, 16c
  • TOWNSEND, C.C. 1985. Flora of tropical East Africa. Amaranthaceae
  • TOWNSEND, C.C. 1988. Amaranthaceae. Flora zambesiaca 9,1
  • TOWNSEND, C.C. 1993a. Amaranthaceae. Flora of Somalia 1
  • TOWNSEND, C.C. 1993b. Amaranthaceae. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
  • WIGHT, R. 1853. Notosaerva brachiata Wight. Icones plantarum Indiae orientalis 6

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