Abrophyllum

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Abrophyllum
Abrophyllum ornans Elvina Bay.JPG
Leaves and fruits of Abrophyllum ornans at Elvina Bay, Australia.
Scientific classification Red Pencil Icon.png
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Asterales
Family: Rousseaceae
Subfamily: Carpodetoideae
Genus: Abrophyllum
Hook.f. ex Benth.
Species:
A. ornans
Binomial name
Abrophyllum ornans

Abrophyllum (syn.: Brachynema F.Muell.) is a monotypic genus of flowering plants in the family Saxifragaceae sensu lato according to Engler, A. in Engler & Prantl and Schulze-Menz, G. K. in Melchior, 1964; placed in Subfamily Escallonioideae, Tribe Cuttsieae, it is closely related to Cuttsia . In the APG II system Abrophyllum is placed in family Rousseaceae.

Contents

The sole species is Abrophyllum ornans. Its common name is native hydrangea, but it does not have great affinity with the true hydrangea.

Classification

It is also classified in Escalloniaceae (by Hutchinson 1967; Dahlgren; Thorne), Grossulariaceae (Cronquist 1988), Carpodetaceae (APG I 1998, Kubitzki 2007 [1] ), Rousseaceae (APG II 2003, Shipunov 2005, Thorne & Reveal 2007 [2] and Heywood et al. 2007 [3] ), or even in its own family Abrophyllaceae Nakai (Reveal and Takhtajan 1997).

Distribution

It is native to Australia (New South Wales and Queensland). Its habitat is warm-temperate and subtropical rainforest, especially along smaller watercourses or in gullies on poorer soils. The natural range of distribution is from the Illawarra of New South Wales to the McIlwraith Range in far north eastern Australia. [4]

Description

Abrophyllum ornans in Engler & Prantl Abrophyllum Nat Pfl.jpg
Abrophyllum ornans in Engler & Prantl

Shrubs or small trees to 8 m high; leaves simple, mostly 10–20 cm long, 3–8 cm wide, alternate, large, lanceolate, long-acuminate, subserrate; without stipules, petiole 20–40 mm long. Flowers in terminal or axillary cymes, yellowish. Calyx is short (c. 2 mm long.), tubular, lobes usually 5 or sometimes 6, deciduous. Petals 4–5 mm long, usually 5 or sometimes 6, valvate, spreading, deciduous. Stamens usually 5 or sometimes 6, inserted on the margin of the inconspicuous nectary disk; anthers broad oblong; filaments very short. Gynoecium of 5 carpels, receptacle patelliform. Ovary superior, 5-locular, with numerous axile ovules, stigma sessile, 5-lobed. Fruit a small (8–12 mm long, 5–7 mm wide), oblong, dark, mainly black berries, crowned by the stigma, many-seeded; seeds small, subglobose, testa deeply latticed; embryo very small; endosperm fleshy and oily.

Uses

Sometimes (locally) cultivated for its ornamental foliage and fruits.

Related Research Articles

Saxifragales Order of Eudicot flowering plants in the Superrosid clade

The Saxifragales (saxifrages) are an order of flowering plants (Angiosperms). They are an extremely diverse group of plants which include trees, shrubs, perennial herbs, succulent and aquatic plants. The degree of diversity in terms of vegetative and floral features makes it difficult to define common features that unify the order.

Liliopsida Class of flowering plants

LiliopsidaBatsch is a botanical name for the class containing the family Liliaceae. It is considered synonymous with the name monocotyledon. Publication of the name is credited to Scopoli : see author citation (botany). This name is formed by replacing the termination -aceae in the name Liliaceae by the termination -opsida.

Violaceae Family of flowering plants in the eudicot order Malpighiales, including violets and pansies

Violaceae is a family of flowering plants established in 1802, consisting of about 1000 species in about 25 genera. It takes its name from the genus Viola, the violets and pansies.

Saxifragaceae Family of flowering plants in the Eudicot order Saxifragales

Saxifragaceae is a family of herbaceous perennial flowering plants, within the core eudicot order Saxifragales. The taxonomy of the family has been greatly revised and the scope much reduced in the era of molecular phylogenetic analysis. The family is divided into ten clades, with about 640 known species in about 35 accepted genera. About half of these consist of a single species, but about 400 of the species are in the type genus Saxifraga. The family is predominantly distributed in the northern hemisphere, but also in the Andes in South America.

Ochnaceae Family of flowering plants

Ochnaceae is a family of flowering plants in the order Malpighiales. In the APG III system of classification of flowering plants, Ochnaceae is defined broadly, to include about 550 species, and encompasses what some taxonomists have treated as the separate families Medusagynaceae and Quiinaceae. In a phylogenetic study that was published in 2014, Ochnaceae was recognized in the broad sense, but two works published after APG III have accepted the small families Medusagynaceae and Quiinaceae. These have not been accepted by APG IV (2016).

Limnanthaceae Family of flowering plants

The Limnanthaceae are a small family of annual herbs occurring throughout temperate North America. There are eight species and nineteen taxa currently recognized. Members of this family are prominent in vernal pool communities of California. Some taxa have been domesticated for use as an oil seed crop. Some members are listed as threatened or endangered and have been the focus of disputes over development plans

Parnassiaceae Family of flowering plants

Parnassiaceae Gray were a family of flowering plants in the eudicot order Celastrales. The family is not recognized in the APG III system of plant classification. When that system was published in 2009, Parnassiaceae were treated as subfamily Parnassioideae of an expanded family Celastraceae.

Sympetalae Historical subclass of flowering plants with fused petals

Sympetaly is a flower characteristic that historically was used to classify a grouping of plants termed Sympetalae, but this term has been abandoned in newer molecular based classifications, although the grouping has similarity to the modern term asterids.

Campynemataceae Family of flowering plants

Campynemataceae (Campynemaceae) is a family of flowering plants. The family consists of two genera and four species of perennial herbaceous plants endemic to New Caledonia and Tasmania.

Lilianae Order of flowering plants

Lilianae is a botanical name for a superorder of flowering plants. Such a superorder of necessity includes the type family Liliaceae. Terminations at the rank of superorder are not standardized by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN), although the suffix -anae has been proposed.

Limnocharitaceae Family of flowering plants

Limnocharitaceae was a family of flowering plants in the monocot order Alismatales. In the APG IV system, it is included in the family Alismataceae. It is commonly known as the water poppy family. Species that have been placed in this taxon are small, perennial, aquatic herbs, native to the tropics, but adventive or naturalized in the subtropics as a result of cultivation.

Cardiopteridaceae Family of flowering plants

Cardiopteridaceae is a eudicot family of flowering plants. It consists of about 43 species of trees, shrubs, and woody vines, mostly of the tropics, but with a few in temperate regions. It contains six genera, the largest of which is Citronella, with 21 species. The other genera are much smaller.

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

Cuttsia viburnea is a shrub or bushy tree which has toothed leaves and panicles of white flowers, and that is endemic to eastern Australia. It is sometimes called silver-leaved cuttsia, and confusingly also native elderberry, honey bush or native hydrangea. C. viburnea is the only species assigned to the genus Cuttsia.

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

Tetracarpaea is the only genus in the flowering plant family Tetracarpaeaceae. Some taxonomists place it in the family Haloragaceae sensu lato, expanding that family from its traditional circumscription to include Penthorum and Tetracarpaea, and sometimes Aphanopetalum as well.

Rousseaceae Family of shrubs

Rousseaceae is a plant family in the order Asterales containing trees and shrubs. The fruit is a berry or capsule. Leaves are simple, with toothed margins. Leaf stipules are not seen in this group.

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

Lepidobotrys is a flowering plant genus in the family Lepidobotryaceae. It contains only one species, Lepidobotrys staudtii. L. staudtii is a small African tree, ranging from Cameroon eastward to Ethiopia.

Taxonomy of Liliaceae Classification of the lily family Liliaceae

The taxonomy of Liliaceae has had a complex history since the first description of this flowering plant family in the mid-eighteenth century. Originally, the Liliaceae or Lily family were defined as having a "calix" (perianth) of six equal-coloured parts, six stamens, a single style, and a superior, three-chambered (trilocular) ovary turning into a capsule fruit at maturity. The taxonomic circumscription of the family Liliaceae progressively expanded until it became the largest plant family and also extremely diverse, being somewhat arbitrarily defined as all species of plants with six tepals and a superior ovary. It eventually came to encompass about 300 genera and 4,500 species, and was thus a "catch-all" and hence paraphyletic taxon. Only since the more modern taxonomic systems developed by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) and based on phylogenetic principles, has it been possible to identify the many separate taxonomic groupings within the original family and redistribute them, leaving a relatively small core as the modern family Liliaceae, with fifteen genera and 600 species.

Allioideae Large subfamily of flowering plants in the family Amaryllidaceae

Allioideae is a subfamily of monocot flowering plants in the family Amaryllidaceae, order Asparagales. It was formerly treated as a separate family, Alliaceae. The subfamily name is derived from the generic name of the type genus, Allium. It is composed of about 18 genera.

Coronariae Historical term for group of flowering plants, including lilies

Coronariae is a term used historically to refer to a group of flowering plants, generally including the lilies (Liliaceae), and later replaced by the order Liliales. First used in the 17th century by John Ray, it referred to flowers used to insert in garlands. Coronariae soon came to be associated with Liliaceae in the Linnaean system. The term was abandoned at the end of the 19th century, being replaced with Liliiflorae and then Liliales.

References

  1. Gustafsson, M.H.G. (2007). "Carpodetaceae". In Kubitzki, K.; Kadereit, J. W.; Jeffrey, C. (eds.). The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants. 8. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. ISBN   3-540-31050-9.
  2. Thorne, R. F. & Reveal, J. L. 2007. An updated classification of the class Magnolipsida ("Angiospermae"). Bot. Rev. 73(2): 67-182.
  3. Heywood, V. H.; Brummitt, R. K.; Culham, A.; Seberg, O. (2007). Flowering Plant Families of the World. Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada: Firefly Books. ISBN   1-55407-206-9.

Bibliography