e-Key v<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1699879810810_624867547150185" data-jodit_selection_marker="start" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>3 - *Spa<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1699879810810_5931081769626432" data-jodit_selection_marker="end" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>rtium
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Fabaceae - Papilionoideae - Genisteae - Genistinae - *Spartium L.

Description:

  • Unarmed shrubs, often with leafless branches
  • Leaves rare, 1-foliolate; stipules 0
  • Flowers showy, bright yellow, in terminal, many-flowered racemes; bracts and bracteoles minute, caducous
  • Calyx subspathaceously split at back; teeth 5, short, upper 2 free, lower 3 connate into a lip
  • Petals: vexillum large; wings obovate; keel incurved, acuminate, longer than wings, claw adnate to staminal tube
  • Stamens monadelphous; alternate anthers short and versatile, alternately longer and basifixed
  • Ovary sessile, many-ovuled; style incurved, glabrous; stigma oblong, decurrent on inside
  • Pod linear-oblong, glabrous, flat, dehiscent, 2-valved, subseptate between seeds inside
  • Seeds many, estrophiolate
  • x = 6, 8, 9, 13 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

  • *Spartium L.
    • Linnaeus 708 (1753)
    • Hutchinson: 354 (1964)
    • Heywood: 101 (1968)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Global: Species 1: *Spartium junceum L., Mediterranean region and SW Europe
  • Southern Africa: Naturalised in Gauteng and the S Western and Eastern Cape Provinces

References:

  • HEYWOOD, V.H. 1968. Leguminosae. Spartium. Flora europaea 2
  • HUTCHINSON, J. 1964. Order LEGUMINALES. The genera of flowering plants 1. Oxford University Press, Oxford
  • LINNAEUS, C. 1753. Species plantarum, edn 1. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm

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