Acaulescent, perennial herbs with thick rootstock, dioecious
Leaves simple, spreading rosette-wise on ground, petiolate, ovate, lobed, with setose margins, mostly spiny on upper surface
Male flowers in a compound, stalked umbel, with an involucre of 5-7 spine-tipped bracts; sepals 5, linear-oblong; petals oblong or oblanceolate, with long, inflexed tips; disc flattened; stamens longer than petals; filaments linear; anthers oblong; style 0
Female flowers in sessile umbels surrounded by 4(5) connate, spine-tipped bracts; sepals usually 5, spinose-acute, becoming rigid; petals sepal-like; styles linear, longer than sepals
Fruit ± oblong, usually beaked; carpophore undivided; mericarps flat on inner face, with primary veins spiny, without oil ducts
Seeds ± elliptic, flat on one face, slightly convex on other
x = 9 (1 report)
Nomenclature:
Arctopus L.
Linnaeus: 1058 (1753)
Sonder: 564 (1862)
Burtt: 184 (1991)
Pimenov & Leonov: 23 (1993)
Distribution & Notes:
Southern Africa: Species 3, from Calvinia District (Northern Cape) to Cape Peninsula (Western Cape) and eastwards along the coast to Grahamstown (Eastern Cape)
References:
BURTT, B.L. 1991. Umbelliferae of southern Africa: an introduction and annotated checklist. Edinburgh Journal of Botany 48
LINNAEUS, C. 1753. Species plantarum. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm
PIMENOV, M.G. & LEONOV, M.V. 1993. The genera of the Umbelliferae. A nomenclator. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
SONDER, W. 1862. Umbelliferae. Flora capensis 2
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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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