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Symphytum

Name Status: Current

Scientific Description
H.R. Coleman, Friday 3 October 2008

Family Boraginaceae.

Habit and leaf form. Herbs; without essential oils. Autotrophic. Perennial. Leaves basal, or cauline. Plants with a basal concentration of leaves, or with neither basal nor terminal concentrations of leaves; to 0.05–5 m high. Helophytic, or mesophytic, or xerophytic. Leaves medium-sized; alternate, or alternate and opposite (then opposite below); petiolate (lower leaves), or subsessile to sessile (upper leaves); non-sheathing; not gland-dotted; simple; epulvinate. Leaf blades dorsiventral, or isobilateral; entire; flat; linear to lanceolate; ovate, or obovate; cross-venulate. Mature leaf blades adaxially pubescent; abaxially pubescent. Leaves without stipules. Leaf blade margins entire (always?). Leaves without a persistent basal meristem. Leaf anatomy. Urticating hairs absent. Stem anatomy. Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring.

Reproductive type, pollination. Fertile flowers hermaphrodite. Unisexual flowers absent. Plants hermaphrodite. Entomophilous.

Inflorescence and flower features. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in cymes. Inflorescences simple. The terminal inflorescence unit cymose (coiled at first). Inflorescences terminal; not pseudanthial. Flowers ebracteate; bracteolate; small; regular; 5 merous; cyclic; tetracyclic. Free hypanthium absent. Hypogynous disk present, or absent. Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla; 10; 2 -whorled; isomerous. Calyx present; 5; 1 -whorled; gamosepalous; lobed. Calyx lobes markedly longer than the tube. Calyx imbricate, or open in bud, or valvate. Degree of gamosepaly, maximum length joined/total calyx length to 0.25. Calyx persistent. Calyx lobes triangular. Corolla present; 5; 1 -whorled; appendiculate (with a corona of 5 scales from the throat protecting the nectar); gamopetalous; lobed. Corolla lobes markedly shorter than the tube. Corolla imbricate, or contorted; tubular; regular; inconspicuously hairy abaxially, or glabrous abaxially; scales hairy adaxially (with marginal papillae), or glabrous adaxially; violet, or blue. Corolla lobes triangular, or orbicular. Androecial members definite in number. Androecium 5. Androecial members unbranched; adnate (to the corolla); all equal, or markedly unequal; free of one another; 1 -whorled. Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 5. Staminal insertion midway down the corolla tube. Stamens remaining included; isomerous with the perianth; oppositisepalous. Filaments appendiculate, or not appendiculate. Anthers dorsifixed to basifixed; dehiscing via longitudinal slits; introrse; tetrasporangiate. Gynoecium 2 carpelled. The pistil 4 celled. Carpels reduced in number relative to the perianth. Gynoecium syncarpous; eu-syncarpous; superior. Ovary plurilocular (4-lobed); 2 locular (‘really’, but rarely ostensibly so), or 4 locular (ostensibly, via false septa). Locules secondarily divided by ‘false septa’. Gynoecium median; stylate. Styles 1; from a depression at the top of the ovary; ‘gynobasic’; becoming exserted. Stigmas 1; 1 - lobed. Placentation axile to basal. Ovules differentiated; 2 per locule (i.e. per true locule), or 1 per locule (per cell, when the gynoecium separating into one-ovuled portions); horizontal to ascending; epitropous; non-arillate; anatropous, or hemianatropous.

Fruit and seed features. Fruit aerial; fleshy, or non-fleshy; a schizocarp. Mericarps 4; comprising nutlets. Seeds endospermic, or non-endospermic. Cotyledons 2. Embryo straight, or curved.

Special features. Corolla tube straight.

Etymology. From the Greek for "growing together of bones" and "plant". It was reputed to heal broken bones.

Taxonomic Literature

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