e-Key <span id="jodit_selection_marker_1709024550025_970981135314704" data-jodit_selection_marker="start" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>v3 - Dalech<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1709024550025_18031740211629566" data-jodit_selection_marker="end" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>ampia
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Euphorbiaceae - Acalyphoideae - Plukenetieae - Dalechampia L.

Description:

  • Subshrubs or herbs, twining or climbing, sometimes from woody rootstock; monoecious
  • Leaves alternate, petiolate, entire, 3-5-lobed or -partite
  • Inflorescences few-flowered, surrounded by 2 large, veined and usually brightly coloured, simple or lobed bracts
  • Petals 0
  • Disc 0
  • Male flowers: calyx splitting into 4-6 valvate lobes; stamens usually 9-30; filaments united into a short or long column; pistil 0
  • Female flowers: calyx usually 6-partite; segments often coriaceous and accrescent in fruit; ovary 3(4)-locular with a single ovule in each locule, usually hairy; style simple, often thickening upwards, hollow at apex
  • Fruit a 3(4)-didymous capsule, somewhat woody, breaking into bivalved cocci
  • Seeds globose or ellipsoid, with raised, vein-like markings from base and with apical cap
  • x = 9, 11 (1 report each)

Nomenclature:

  • Dalechampia L.
    • Linnaeus: 1054 (1753)
    • Prain: 497 (1920)
    • Webster: 95 (1994)
    • Radcliffe-Smith: 238 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Global: Species 110, fairly cosmopolitan in warm regions
  • Southern Africa: Species 4, widespread

References:

  • LINNAEUS, C. 1753. Species plantarum, edn 1. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm
  • PRAIN, D. 1920. Euphorbiaceae [in part]. Flora capensis 5, 2
  • RADCLIFFE-SMITH, A. 1996. Euphorbiaceae. Flora zambesiaca 9, 4
  • WEBSTER, G.L. 1994. Synopsis of the genera and suprageneric taxa of Euphorbiaceae. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 81