Boraginaceae

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Boraginaceae
Changing Forget-me-not 600.jpg
Changing forget-me-not (Myosotis discolor)
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Boraginales
Family: Boraginaceae
Juss. [1]
Subfamilies [2]

Boraginaceae, the borage or forget-me-not family, includes about 2,000 species of shrubs, trees, and herbs in 146 [3] to 156 genera with a worldwide distribution. [4]

Contents

The APG IV system from 2016 classifies the Boraginaceae as single family of the order Boraginales within the asterids. [5] Under the older Cronquist system, it was included in the Lamiales, but clearly is no more similar to the other families in this order than it is to families in several other asterid orders. A revision of the Boraginales, also from 2016, split the Boraginaceae into 11 distinct families: [6] Boraginaceae sensu stricto, Codonaceae, Coldeniaceae, Cordiaceae, Ehretiaceae, Heliotropiaceae, Hoplestigmataceae, Hydrophyllaceae, Lennoaceae, Namaceae, and Wellstediaceae.

These plants have alternately arranged leaves, or a combination of alternate and opposite leaves. The leaf blades usually have a narrow shape; many are linear or lance-shaped. They are smooth-edged or toothed, and some have petioles. Most species have bisexual flowers, but some taxa are dioecious. Most pollination is by hymenopterans, such as bees. Most species have inflorescences that have a coiling shape, at least when new, called scorpioid cymes. [7] The flower has a usually five-lobed calyx. The corolla varies in shape from rotate to bell-shaped to tubular, but it generally has five lobes. It can be green, white, yellow, orange, pink, purple, or blue. There are five stamens and one style with one or two stigmas. The fruit is a drupe, sometimes fleshy. [8]

Most members of this family have hairy leaves. The coarse character of the hairs is due to cystoliths of silicon dioxide and calcium carbonate. These hairs can induce an adverse skin reaction, including itching and rash in some individuals, particularly among people who handle the plants regularly, such as gardeners. In some species, anthocyanins cause the flowers to change color from red to blue with age. This may be a signal to pollinators that a flower is old and depleted of pollen and nectar. [9]

Well-known members of the family include:

Genera

According to Kew; [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solanales</span> Order of dicot flowering plants

The Solanales are an order of flowering plants, included in the asterid group of dicotyledons. Some older sources used the name Polemoniales for this order.

<i>Borago</i> Genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae

Borago, or borage, is a genus of five species of herbs native to the Mediterranean, with one species, Borago officinalis, cultivated and naturalized throughout the world.

<i>Anchusa</i> Genus of flowering plants in the borage family Boraginaceae

The genus Anchusa belongs to the borage family (Boraginaceae). It includes about 35 species found growing in Europe, North Africa, South Africa and Western Asia. They are introduced in the United States.

<i>Mertensia</i> Genus of flowering plants in the borage family Boraginaceae

Mertensia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae. They are perennial herbaceous plants with blue or sometimes white flowers that open from pink-tinged buds. Such a change in flower color is common in Boraginaceae and is caused by an increase of pH in the flower tissue. Mertensia is one of several plants that are commonly called "bluebell". In spite of their common name, the flowers are usually salverform (trumpet-shaped) rather than campanulate (bell-shaped).

<i>Heliotropium</i> Genus of flowering plants in the borage family Boraginaceae

Heliotropium is a genus of flowering plants traditionally included in the family Boraginaceae s.l., but placed in the family Heliotropiaceae within the Boraginales order, by the Boraginales Working Group.. There are around 325 species in this almost cosmopolitan genus, which are commonly known as heliotropes. They are highly toxic to dogs and cats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asterids</span> Clade of eudicot angiosperms

In the APG IV system (2016) for the classification of flowering plants, the name asterids denotes a clade. Asterids is the largest group of flowering plants, with more than 80,000 species, about a third of the total flowering plant species. Well-known plants in this clade include the common daisy, forget-me-nots, nightshades, the common sunflower, petunias, yacon, morning glory, lettuce, sweet potato, coffee, lavender, lilac, olive, jasmine, honeysuckle, ash tree, teak, snapdragon, sesame, psyllium, garden sage, table herbs such as mint, basil, and rosemary, and rainforest trees such as Brazil nut.

The APG II system of plant classification is the second, now obsolete, version of a modern, mostly molecular-based, system of plant taxonomy that was published in April 2003 by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. It was a revision of the first APG system, published in 1998, and was superseded in 2009 by a further revision, the APG III system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boraginales</span> Order of flowering plants within the lammiid clade of eudicots

Boraginales is an order of flowering plants in the asterid clade, with a total of about 125 genera and 2,700 species. Different taxonomic treatments either include only a single family, the Boraginaceae, or divide it into up to eleven families. Its herbs, shrubs, trees and lianas (vines) have a worldwide distribution.

<i>Pentaglottis</i> Species of flowering plant in the borage family Boraginaceae

Pentaglottis is a monotypic genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae. It is represented by a single species, Pentaglottis sempervirens, commonly known as green alkanet or evergreen bugloss, and it is one of several related plants known as alkanet. It is a bristly, perennial plant native to southwestern Europe, in northwest Iberia and France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loasaceae</span> Family of flowering plants

Loasaceae is a family of 15–20 genera and about 200–260 species of flowering plants in the order Cornales, native to the Americas and Africa. Members of the family include annual, biennial and perennial herbaceous plants, and a few shrubs and small trees. Members of the subfamily Loasoideae are known to exhibit rapid thigmonastic stamen movement when pollinators are present.

Hoplestigma is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae, although this is disputed, and it has been placed in its own family Hoplestigmataceae. Its two species are native to Cameroon, Gabon, Ivory Coast and Liberia in western tropical Africa.

Alkanet is the common name of several related plants in the borage family (Boraginaceae):

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heliotropioideae</span> Subfamily of flowering plants

Heliotropioideae was a subfamily of the flowering plant family Boraginaceae, comprising roughly 450 species. A 2016 revision of the Boraginales recognises it as a distinct family, Heliotropiaceae.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boraginoideae</span> Subfamily of plants within the borage family (Boraginaceae)

Boraginoideae is a subfamily of the plant family Boraginaceae s.s, with about 42 genera. That family is defined in a much broader sense in the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) system of classification for flowering plants. The APG has not specified any subfamilial structure within Boraginaceae s.l.

<i>Coleophora pennella</i> Species of moth

Coleophora pennella is a moth of the family Coleophoridae. It is found in most of Europe.

Heliotropiaceae are a cosmopolitan family of flowering plants with approximately 450 species worldwide, though it is concentrated especially in the tropics and subtropics.

<i>Coldenia</i> Genus of flowering plants

Coldenia, named after C. Colden, is a monotypic genus of flowering plants traditionally included in the borage family, Boraginaceae sensu lato. It was assigned to the subfamily Ehretioideae, but molecular data revealed it to be more closely related to the genus Cordia, so that other authors placed in Cordioideae. Subsequently, it was placed in its own family, Coldeniaceae, within the Boraginales order, by the Boraginales Working Group.

<i>Euploca</i> Genus of flowering plants in the borage family Boraginaceae

Euploca is an almost cosmopolitan genus of plants with around 100 species. It was first described by Thomas Nuttall in 1837. While part of the broadly defined Boraginaceae in the APG IV system from 2016, a revision of the order Boraginales from the same year includes Euploca in the separate family Heliotropiaceae. Its species used to be classified in the genera Hilgeria and Schleidenia and in Heliotropium sect. Orthostachys, but were found to form an independent lineage in a molecular phylogenetic analysis, more closely related to Myriopus than to Heliotropium. While many species use the C4 photosynthetic pathway, there are also C3–C4 intermediate species. Species have leaves with a C4-typical Kranz anatomy.

References

  1. Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2009). "An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG III". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 161 (2): 105–121. doi: 10.1111/j.1095-8339.2009.00996.x .
  2. "Boraginaceae Juss., nom. cons". Germplasm Resources Information Network . United States Department of Agriculture. 2007-04-12. Retrieved 2009-04-02.
  3. Boraginaceae. Archived 2015-09-23 at the Wayback Machine Diversityoflife.com
  4. 1 2 "Boraginaceae Juss. | Plants of the World Online | Kew Science". Plants of the World Online. Retrieved 24 June 2022.
  5. Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2016). "An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG IV". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 181 (1): 1–20. doi: 10.1111/boj.12385 . Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  6. Luebert, F.; Cecchi, L.; Frohlich, M.W.; et al. (2016). "Familial classification of the Boraginales". Taxon. 65 (3): 502–522. doi:10.12705/653.5. hdl: 2158/1062790 . ISSN   0040-0262 . Retrieved 16 June 2018.
  7. Buys, Matt H.; Hilger, Hartmut H. (2003). "Boraginaceae Cymes Are Exclusively Scorpioid and Not Helicoid". Taxon. 52 (4): 719–724. doi:10.2307/3647346. ISSN   0040-0262. JSTOR   3647346.
  8. Watson, L. and M. J. Dallwitz. 1992 onwards. Boraginaceae Juss. Archived July 1, 2005, at the Wayback Machine The Families of Flowering Plants. Version: 19 August 2013.
  9. Hess, D. 2005. Systematische Botanik. ISBN   3-8252-2673-5

Further reading