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(Last Modified On 6/23/2016)
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Description:
Large to small seasonal perennials, sometimes acaulescent. Rootstock a tunicate corm consisting of a single internode, roots arising from base of shoot as apex of corm; tunics coarsely to finely fibrous or woody with layers unbroken or fragmenting irregularly. Leaves few to several, lowermost without blades, thus cataphylls, these usually membranous and pale, turning brown with age, occasionally coarsely fibrous; foliage leaves several to solitary, blades bifacial, channeled to flat, or margins inrolled, or sometimes terete, without central vein; 1–several sheathing bract-like leaves without blades usually present, up to 1 internode long. Flowering stem simple or branched, sometimes with 1 long terminal internode, then branches and foliage leaf(or leaves) crowded apically, entirely subterranean in several species. Inflorescences 1–several rhipidia usually enclosed by large paired opposed bracts (spathes), usually entirely sheathing one another, occasionally outer free distally (rarely rhipidia indistinguishable from leaves; rhipidia 1–several-flowered; spathes green or becoming dry, usually firm to leathery, inner spathe usually longer, both tightly sheathing or outer spathe curving outward distally, obtuse to attenuate at apex; floral bracts enclosed, shorter than spathes, membranous, with 2 green keels. Flowers radially symmetric, mostly ± Iris-like, fugaceous or lasting up to 3(4) days, pedicellate (rarely sessile), often blue to violet or yellow, also white, pink, red, usually with a yellow(white) mark (nectar guide) at base of outer tepal limbs, sometimes sweetly or unpleasantly scented, often producing nectar from perigonal nectaries at bases of outer or all tepals; tepals usually free, or united in a solid tube, usually clawed, claws ascending or short and clasping base of filament column, outer tepals often larger than inner or tepals subequal, limbs spreading to reflexed or those of inner tepals erect to suberect, inner sometimes tricuspidate to hair-like, or inner tepals occasionally lacking. Stamens symmetrically arranged with filaments partly to completely united, occasionally ± free; anthers mostly appressed to style branches (rarely alternate with them). Ovary exserted or included in spathes, sometimes extending upward as hollow tube (beak); style slender below, dividing near base or at apex of filament column into 3 branches, these often compressed, petal-like and wider than anther, terminating in large paired, entire, petaloid crests (crests single and fringed in M. lugubris), stigma usually transverse, sometimes 2-lobed or 2, at base of crests, or style branches reduced and narrow, 2-lobed sometimes with stigma terminal and crests vestigial or lacking, rarely style branches filiform or each divided into paired filiform arms extending between anthers, then stigmatic at tips. Capsules globose to ovoid or club-shaped, apex truncate or shortly beaked (rarely beak elongate), leathery to woody or submembranous, usually exserted, or included when ovary ± sessile. Seeds angular and prismatic, ± globose or compressed and discoid; surface cells domed, plane or concave, outlines ± smooth to reticulate. Pollen grains monosulcate, exine reticulate to retipilate. Basic chromosome number x = 10, but a wide range of other numbers present.
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Etymology:
Named by Philip Miller for the English botanist Robert More, and originally spelled Morea; later changed by Linnaeus to Moraea, thus honouring his wife, Elisabeth Moraea and her father Johan Moraeus, physician in Falun, Sweden.
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General Notes:
Species ± 230, 209 in southern Africa; mainly sub-Saharan Africa, also Mediterranean Basin and Middle East, most diverse and species-rich in western southern Africa, and with marked secondary centers in the mountains of eastern southern Africa and the East African highlands, favoring open habitats, including desert scrub, rocky grassland, rock outcrops, and shrubland, often flowering well only after fires.
Remarkably diverse in floral morphology, Moraea is immediately recognized by the rootstock, a corm consisting of a single internode and produced annually, that of the past season being completely resorbed, and the dorsiventral leaf (unless terete). Plants are almost universally seasonal, thus deciduous in the dry season. Flowers range from the typical Iris-type, with larger outer tepals bearing markings at the base of the limbs, smaller outer tepals usually spreading to reflexed and petaloid style branches with paired, plane appendages, the crests. The stamens are tyically united at least partially, sometimes entirely and each anther is appressed to a style branch and typclly held below the transverse, simple or bilobed stigma. Departures from this apparently ancestral condition include reduction of the style branches, then often lacking crests and associated development of subequal inner and outer tepals both of which usually bear markings, as in all members of subg. Homeria and several of other subgenera. In M. lugubris (only species of subg. Plumarieae) the style branches bear fringed, feathery crests and the stigmatic surfaces are located at the tips of apically divergent style branches, both features reminiscent of Ferraria. The tepals are usually free (unlike Iris in which they are joined basally in a cup or tube) but united in subg. Galaxia, in the past regarded as a separate genus as the plants themselves hve an underground stem. The style branches are further reduced in sect. Hexaglottis and a few unrelated species into paired filiform arms extended horizontally between the stamens. In the Roggeveldia group of sect. Pseudospicatae and in M. simplex (subg. Visciramosae) the style branches are each reduced o a single filiform arm extended between the stamens.
The tepals are typically divided into an ascending claw and spreading (or reflexed) limb, the claw ranging from about as long as the limb and concealing the anthers to much shorter than the limbs, thus leaving the stamens exposed and often prominently displayed. Tepals are united in a short, solid tube in a few species scattered across the genus as well as in subg. Galaxia. Species of subg. Acaules have an underground stem and the flowers are raised well above the ground on a contactile stipe (possibly the pedicel) that contrats after fertiliztion pull the developing capsule back to ground level. In most species of subg. Vieusseuxia the inner tepals are reduced to three-lobed structures, often with a prominent central lobe, but in the M. tripetala species group into a thread- or cusp-like structure or may evne be absent.
Leaf number is variable, ranging from several (e.g. Moraea ramosissima) to a single folige leaf, other foliar organs represented by large, often dry, bract-like leaves sheahting the stem. Leaves are occasionally finely hairy, notably in M. villosa and its close allies. The nodes and upper internodes of the stem are sticky and viscid in subg. Visciramosae. Molecular studies (Goldblatt et al. 2013) using both plastid and nuclear gene sequences have shwon that Moraea as here circumscribed is monophyletic and that Ferraria is its closest relative. the infrageneric classification, which recognizes 11 subgenera, is based on the phylogeny obtained from the molecular study.
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