e-Key <span id="jodit_selection_marker_1710152753295_7649645566636483" data-jodit_selection_marker="start" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>v3 - Guet<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1710152753295_6615922359640696" data-jodit_selection_marker="end" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>tarda
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Rubiaceae - Antirheoideae - Guettardeae - Guettarda L.

Description:

  • Shrubs or trees
  • Leaves petiolate; stipules interpetiolar or intrapetiolar, simple, free or connate, deciduous
  • Flowers bisexual or polygamodioecious, showing limited heterostyly; usually sessile, mostly secundly arranged in axillary, pedunculate, apically dichotomously branched inflorescences; bracteoles 0 or present
  • Calyx: limb truncate or 2-9-toothed; tube short, campanulate or globose
  • Corolla 4-9-lobed, white, yellowish or red to reddish purple; lobes spreading, imbricate in bud; tube cylindric, elongate, glabrous or thinly bearded within
  • Stamens 4-9, arising on corolla tube, sessile or subsessile; anthers linear, slightly lobed, included or shortly exserted
  • Ovary 2-9-locular; ovules solitary, pendulous; style slender; stigma ± capitate, slightly bifid
  • Fruit a ± globose drupe, 2-9-locular, containing 2-9 pyrenes
  • x = 11 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

  • Guettarda L.
    • Linnaeus: 991 (1753)
    • Hiern: 125 (1877)
    • Verdcourt & Bridson: 923 (1991)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Global: Species ± 60, New Caledonia and tropical America
  • Southern Africa: Species 1: Guettarda speciosa L., in coastal sand dune bush of N KwaZulu-Natal

References:

  • HIERN, W.P. 1877. Rubiaceae. Flora of tropical Africa 3
  • LINNAEUS, C. 1753. Species plantarum. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm.
  • VERDCOURT, B. & BRIDSON, D.M. 1991. Flora of tropical East Africa. Rubiaceae (part 3)