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Published In: Species Plantarum 1: 111. 1753. (1 May 1753) (Sp. Pl.) Name publication detailView in BotanicusView in Biodiversity Heritage Library
 

Project Name Data (Last Modified On 5/4/2020)
Acceptance : Accepted
Note : Tribe Mitchelleae
Project Data     (Last Modified On 4/27/2020)
Notes:

This genus of small herbs is widespread, and unusual in Rubiaceae in several features. These include its herbaceous habit, temperate habitat, and flowers fused in pairs (or three's) to produce a multiple fruit. The fruits are nearly always formed from two flowers and have two persistent calyx limbs that look like a pair of eyes on the top, and the common name "twinberry" refers to the unusual fruits. The plants of Mitchella are usually evergreen, even in some regions with quite snowy winters. Mitchella is an attractive, appreciated wildflower in many temperate regions. The fruits are frquently noted to be thinly juicy and insipid, and these plants were named at one point Perdicesca in reference to the lack of nutrition in the fruits. 

Mitchella includes two temperate species, one in eastern Asia and one in eastern North America, and is one of the classic genera cited for the Eastern Asia-Eastern North America phytogeographic disjunction. This disjunction is considered relictual from wider forest distributions in the world in the Tertiary (Wen, 1999). The two species of Mitchella are similar enough morphologically that they have been regarded as conspecific, with two widely disjunct populations, but they are generally regarded as separate now (e.g., Chen et al., 2011). 

The genus Disperma J.F. Gmel. and its single species, Disperma repens, was based on Walter's Carolina flora, and these names would seem to be a restatement of Linnaeus's names but no citations in their prologues link them, no descriptive elements are shared, and no type elements seem to be shared either between them.  

Author: C.M. Taylor.
The content of this web page was last revised on 27 April 2020.
Taylor web page: http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/Research/curators/taylor.shtml

Distribution: Understory of humid temperate forest, widely in the eastern and northern tropical Americas, from Canada to northern Central America, and in eastern Asia, in Korea, Japan, eastern China, and Taiwan.
References:

 

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Prostrate herbs, unarmed, terrestrial, with raphides in the tissues, with trailing stems rooting at the nodes. Leaves opposite, petiolate, entire, with higher order venation not lineolate, without domatia; stipules interpetiolar and fused to bases of petioles, truncate to triangular and sometimes 3--5-lobed with segments usually glandular, erect to reflexed and apparently valvate in bud, persistent. Inflorescences terminal and pseudoaxillary, unbranched, 2(3)-flowered, bracts reduced. Flowers of an inflorescence fused together by their hypanthia (i.e., ovary portions), sessile or pedunculate as a group, bisexual, distylous, apparently diurnal; calyx limb reveloped and 3()4(--6)-lobed, without calycophylls; corolla funnelform, white, glabrous inside except pilose in throat and on lobes, lobes (3)4(--6), triangular, valvate in bud, without appendages; stamens 4(5), inserted in upper part of corolla tube, exserted or positioned in throat, anthers oblong, basifixed, dehiscent by linear slits, apparently without appendages; ovary 4-locular, with ovules solitary in each locule, axile, stigmas 4, linear, included or exserted. Fruit drupaceous and multiple, sublglobose to oblate, juicy, orange to red, with calyx limb persistent; pyenes 4 per flower and 8(--12) per fruit, 1-locular, angled, bony, dehiscence mode unknown; seeds 1 per pyrene.

 
 
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