Crossyne

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Crossyne
Crossyne guttata IMG 2410c.jpg
Young mature Crossyne guttata in leaf
Scientific classification Red Pencil Icon.png
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Monocots
Order: Asparagales
Family: Amaryllidaceae
Subfamily: Amaryllidoideae
Tribe: Amaryllideae
Subtribe: Strumariinae
Genus: Crossyne
Salisb.
Type species
Crossyne guttata
(L.) D.Müll.-Doblies & U.Müll.-Doblies
Inflorescence of Crossyne guttata Crossyne guttata (Amaryllidaceae) (4495116388).jpg
Inflorescence of Crossyne guttata
Flowers of Crossyne guttata Crossyne guttata (Amaryllidaceae) (4494476585).jpg
Flowers of Crossyne guttata
Lorate immature leaves of Crossyne guttata Fragmenta botanica, figuris coloratis illustrata (T. 44) BHL287673.jpg
Lorate immature leaves of Crossyne guttata

Crossyne is a genus of African plants in the Amaryllis family. [1]

Contents

Taxonomy and features

There are two known species, both of which are native to Cape Province in South Africa: [2] [3]

Crossyne Salisb., Gen. Pl.: 116 (1866). [2]

After being included in the genus Boophone for many decades, Crossyne was raised to genus status in the 1990s, most conspicuously on the basis that:

General biology

If not disturbed, which in the wild they seldom are, being dangerously poisonous, the bulbs grow for decades at least. As the bulb grows larger it produces more leaves, some six or eight in a season when mature. The leaves grow in a radial arrangement around the top of the bulb, emerging from a flat slit. The leaves are a decorative dark green, coriaceous in texture and mottled or spotted beneath, especially near the base. The margins of the leaves of all ages are elegantly ciliate, being fringed with eyelash-like bristles. The plant is strictly deciduous and endemic to a mainly winter-rainfall, partly semi-arid, region; the leaves emerging near the time of the first rains, about when the plant sheds the infructescence. The leaves dry out, curl up somewhat and detach towards late springtime or mid-summer, leaving little sign of the whereabouts of the dormant, buried bulb. If torn, whether live or as yet undecayed, the leaves dried sap forms silky threads that in past times cattle herders used to apply to bleeding cuts as a styptic.

Related Research Articles

<i>Amaryllis</i> Genus of plants

Amaryllis is the only genus in the subtribe Amaryllidinae. It is a small genus of flowering bulbs, with two species. The better known of the two, Amaryllis belladonna, is a native of the Western Cape region of South Africa, particularly the rocky southwest area between the Olifants River Valley and Knysna.

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

The genus Helichrysum consists of an estimated 600 species of flowering plants in the sunflower family (Asteraceae). The type species is Helichrysum orientale. They often go by the names everlasting, immortelle, and strawflower. The name is derived from the Anicent Greek words ἥλιος and χρῡσός.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scilloideae</span> Subfamily of bulbous monocot plants

Scilloideae is a subfamily of bulbous plants within the family Asparagaceae. Scilloideae is sometimes treated as a separate family Hyacinthaceae, named after the genus Hyacinthus. Scilloideae or Hyacinthaceae include many familiar garden plants such as Hyacinthus (hyacinths), Hyacinthoides (bluebells), Muscari and Scilla and Puschkinia. Some are important as cut flowers.

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

Haworthia is a large genus of small succulent plants endemic to Southern Africa (Mozambique, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini and South Africa).

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

Massonia is a genus of bulbous perennial flowering plants in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Scilloideae. It is native to southern Africa, and is found in localities such as Namaqualand with hot and dry summers, being dormant in summer and growing during winter. The genus Whiteheadia has been merged into Massonia. It is classed as a cryptophyte.

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

Brunsvigia is a genus of African flowering plants in the family Amaryllidaceae, subfamily Amaryllidoideae. It contains about 20 species native to southeastern and southern Africa from Tanzania to the Cape Provinces of South Africa.

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

Gethyllis, commonly called Kukumakranka, Koekemakranka, or Kroekemakrank, is a genus of bulbous plant in the Amaryllid family with some 33 accepted species.. It is native to the Cape Provinces, the Northern Provinces and the Free State of South Africa, as well as Botswana and Namibia.

<i>Strumaria</i> Genus of plants

Strumaria is a genus of African plants in Amaryllis family, subfamily Amaryllidoideae. The genus is known in nature only from South Africa, Lesotho and Namibia. Almost all species flower in the autumn and are cultivated as ornamental bulbous plants.

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

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<i>Boophone</i> Genus of plants

Boophone is a small genus of herbaceous, perennial and bulbous plants in the Amaryllis family It consists of two confirmed species distributed across South Africa to Kenya and Uganda. It is closely related to Crossyne, a genus whose species have prostrate leaves. They are drought tolerant but not cold-hardy, and are very poisonous to livestock.

<i>Ammocharis longifolia</i> Species of flowering plant

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Boophone disticha is a bulbous tropical and subtropical flowering plant, endemic to Africa. Commonly called the century plant or tumbleweed, Boophone disticha was first collected in 1781 from South Africa by Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg and described by Carl Linnaeus as Amaryllis disticha. Since that time it has been placed in the genera Brunsvigia and Haemanthus, finally coming to rest as Boophone. The genus itself was written in three ways by the author William Herbert, straining the procedures of the rules of nomenclature. The etymology of the genus is from the Greek bous = ox, and phontes= killer of, a clear warning that eating the plant can be fatal to livestock.

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

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<i>Eucomis regia</i> Species of flowering plant

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<i>Felicia</i> (plant) Genus of shrublets, perennials and annuals in the daisy family

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References