Herbs, small, creeping and sometimes in marshy places, monoecious
Leaves opposite or alternate, entire or toothed
Flowers very small, in axillary fascicles
Male flowers long-pedicelled; calyx 4-lobed, tube short, lobes longer than tube; petals 4, linear-oblong, concave; stamens 4-8, as long as petals, anthers linear, subsessile; ovary 0; stigmas 4, rudimentary
Female flowers sessile or subsessile; calyx 4-lobed, tube short, ovoid, 8-ribbed, lobes ± as long as tube, deciduous; petals as in male flowers; stamens 0; ovary 1-locular with 1-4 pendulous ovules, styles 4, very short, feathery or hairy
Fruit a fleshy nut, 8-ribbed
Seed 1, cylindric
Nomenclature:
Laurembergia P.J.Bergius
Bergius 350 (1767)
Obermeyer: 116 (1973)
Serpicula L.
Linnaeus: 16 (1767)
Harvey: 572 (1862)
Distribution & Notes:
Global: Species 4, Africa to East Indies and New Zealand
Southern Africa: Species 1: Laurembergia repens P.J.Bergius subsp. brachypoda (Hiern) Oberm., Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape
References:
BERGIUS, P.J. 1767. Descriptiones plantarum ex capitate bonae spei. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm
HARVEY, W.H. 1862. Halorageae. Flora capensis 2
LINNAEUS, C. 1767. Mantissa plantarum. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm
OBERMEYER, A.A. 1973. A note on Laurembergia repens. Bothalia 11
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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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