Witch herbs
| Witch herbs | ||||||||||||
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Alpine witchweed ( Circaea alpina ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Circaea | ||||||||||||
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The witch herbs ( Circaea ) are a genus of plants within the evening primrose family (Onagraceae).
description
Vegetative characteristics
The witch herbs are herbaceous plants with a creeping rhizome . Usually they form numerous runners . The leaves are opposite, their shape is ovate to ovate-lanceolate, the leaf edge is often serrated.
Generative characteristics
The flowers are in clusters . The relatively small flowers are radial symmetry and twofold.
The flower cup can protrude above the ovary in a narrow tube and is crowned by a nectar disc (discus). The perianth is double. The petals are two-columned, their coloration white or reddish. Sepals and petals fall off after anthesis .
The two stamens are in front of the sepals. The scar is club-shaped or has two columns. Functionally, they are disc flowers that are mainly pollinated by dipteras , especially hover flies ( fly flowers ).
The nut-like closing fruits have hook bristles. A fruit has one or two compartments with one or two seeds without a head of hair.
The number of chromosomes is 2n = 22.
Systematics
The genus Circaea was established by Carl von Linné .
There are seven to ten species in the genus Circaea :
- Alpine witchweed ( Circaea alpina L. ): It occurs in at least six subspecies in Eurasia and North America .
- Circaea cordata Royle : It is distributed from northern India , Kashmir , Pakistan , Korea , Japan , Taiwan to China and Russia's Far East .
- Circaea erubescens Franch. & Sav. : It occurs in Japan, southern Korea and China.
- Circaea glabrescens (Pamp.) Hand .-- Mazz. : It thrives in deciduous forests at altitudes of 700 to 2500 meters in southeastern Gansu , western Hubei , Shaanxi , southwestern Shanxi , northern Sichuan and Taiwan .
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Greater witch's herb ( Circaea lutetiana L. ): There are three subspecies:
- Circaea lutetiana subsp. canadensis (L.) Ash. & Magnus (Syn .: Circaea canadensis (L.) Hill ): It occurs in North America.
- Circaea lutetiana subsp. lutetiana : It occurs in Eurasia and North Africa .
- Circaea lutetiana subsp. quadrisulcata (Maxim.) Ash. & Magnus (Syn .: Circaea quadrisulcata (Maxim.) Franch. & Sav. , Circaea canadensis subsp. Quadrisulcata (Maxim.) Boufford ): It occurs in Asia and in places also in Europe (Carinthia, East Tyrol).
- Circaea mollis Siebold & Zucc. : It occurs in India, Cambodia , Laos , Myanmar , northern Vietnam, Japan, Korea, southeast Russia and China.
- Circaea repens Wall. ex ash. & Magnus : It occurs in Pakistan, India, Nepal , Bhutan , Tibet and in the Chinese provinces of Hubei, Sichuan and Yunnan.
The Circaea species can form nature hybrids with each other , including:
- Middle witch's herb ( Circaea × intermedia Ehrh. )
literature
- Siegmund Seybold (Ed.): Schmeil-Fitschen interactive . CD-ROM, version 1.1. Quelle & Meyer, Wiebelsheim 2002, ISBN 3-494-01327-6 .
- David John Mabberley: The Plant Book. A portable dictionary of the higher plants. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987, ISBN 0-521-34060-8 .
- Jiarui Chen, David E. Boufford: Circaea. In: Wu Zheng-yi, Peter H. Raven, Deyuan Hong (Eds.): Flora of China . tape 13 : Clusiaceae through Araliaceae . Science Press / Missouri Botanical Garden Press, Beijing / St. Louis 2007, ISBN 978-1-930723-59-7 , pp. 404 (English, online, PDF file ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Jiarui Chen, David E. Boufford: Onagraceae. : Circaea Linnaeus - online with the same text as the printed work , In: Wu Zheng-yi, Peter H. Raven, Deyuan Hong (Ed.): Flora of China. Volume 13: Clusiaceae through Araliaceae , Science Press and Missouri Botanical Garden Press, Beijing and St. Louis 2007, ISBN 978-1-930723-59-7 .
- ↑ Walter Erhardt , Erich Götz, Nils Bödeker, Siegmund Seybold: The great zander. Encyclopedia of Plant Names. Volume 2. Types and varieties. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-8001-5406-7 .
