e-Key <span id="jodit_selection_marker_1710150511947_248668348971534" data-jodit_selection_marker="start" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>v3 - Gomp<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1710150511948_42917515862034916" data-jodit_selection_marker="end" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>hrena
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Amaranthaceae - Gomphrenoideae - Gomphreneae - Gomphreninae - *Gomphrena L.

Description:

  • Annual or occasionally perennial herbs, erect or prostrate, usually thickened at nodes, pubescent
  • Leaves opposite, sessile or subsessile, entire
  • Inflorescences terminal or axillary, capitate to spicate, sessile or pedunculate, solitary or glomerate, often subtended by a pair of sessile leaves, bracteate with bract persistent in fruit, axis frequently thickened
  • Flowers bisexual, solitary in axils of bracts; bracteoles 2, concave, or laterally compressed with a dorsal longitudinal keel or wing, or crested, falling with fruit
  • Tepals 5, erect, similar or dissimilar, free or almost so, ± lanate dorsally, at least inner 2 usually ± indurate at base in fruit
  • Stamens 5, hypogynous; filaments monadelphous, tube shortly 5-dentate with entire to very deeply bilobed teeth; with or without free pseudostaminodes; anthers 1-thecous
  • Ovary turbinate or subglobose; ovule solitary, pendulous; style short or long; stigmas 2 or 3, linear or short and thicker
  • Capsule a compressed, thin-walled, irregularly rupturing utricle
  • Seed compressed-ovoid, brown, smooth or faintly reticulate, shining
  • x = 13 (8, 9, 10, 11) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

  • *Gomphrena L.
    • Linnaeus: 224 (1753)
    • Linnaeus: 105 (1754)
    • Brown: 415 (1810)
    • Hooker: 40 (1880)
    • Schinz: 116 (1893)
    • Baker & Clarke: 75 (1909)
    • Cooke & Wright: 433 (1910)
    • Adamson: 362 (1950)
    • Cavaco: 165 (1962)
    • Henderson & Anderson: 118 (1966)
    • Podlech: 16 (1966)
    • Townsend: 127 (1985)
    • Townsend: 130 (1988)
    • Townsend: 167 (1993a)
    • Townsend: 89 (1993b)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Global: Species ± 120, tropics and subtropics of the New World and in Australia, some introduced and naturalised in the Old World
  • Southern Africa: Species 2, widespread weeds

References:

  • ADAMSON, R.S. 1950. Amaranthaceae Lindl. In R.S. Adamson & T.M. Salter, Flora of the Cape Peninsula. Juta, Cape Town
  • BAKER, J.G. & CLARKE, C.B. 1909. Amarantaceae. Flora of tropical Africa 6,1
  • BROWN, R. 1810. Amarantaceae Juss. Prodromus florae novae Hollandiae et Insulae van-Diemen 1. Johnson & Co., London
  • 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
  • COOKE, T. & WRIGHT, C.H. 1910. Amarantaceae. Flora capensis 5,1
  • HENDERSON, M.D. & ANDERSON, J.G. 1966. Common weeds in South Africa. Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa 37
  • HOOKER, J.D. 1880. Amarantaceae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 3,1. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
  • LINNAEUS, C. 1753. Species plantarum. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm
  • LINNAEUS, C. 1754. Genera plantarum, edn 5. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm
  • PODLECH, D. 1966. Amaranthaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 33
  • SCHINZ, H. 1893. Amarantaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien III,1a
  • 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

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