2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Allionia (lat. Allionia) - a genus of flowering plants, consisting of only two species, reckoned by botanists to the family Nyctaginaceae (lat. Nyctaginaceae) or Nocturnal plants. Plants of the genus are distinguished by unusual flowers. You look at the bright and delicate splendor of one flower, and it turns out that this is not one flower, but three flowers at once, creating the illusion of one whole. The leaves of the plant are also picturesque, having an oval-oblong shape, wavy edge, and covered with sticky pubescence. Creeping stems of plants of the genus make their way through the surrounding plants, intricately intertwining with the stems of neighbors.
What's in your name
Carl Linnaeus, creating a harmonious classification of the plant world, loved to perpetuate the names of scientists, doctors, botanists who devoted their lives to science, including the study and description of the plants of our most amazing planet. One of these people was the Italian professor of botany, Carlo Allioni (1728 - 1804), whose name very harmoniously fit into the name of a small genus of plants from the Niktaginaceae family, or Nochiformes. This is how the genus name "Allionia" (Allionia) appeared, as delicate as the flower petals of the plants of the genus.
The genus has popular names, one of which is "Windmills" ("Windmills").
Description
Plants of the genus Allionia are annual or perennial short-lived, with pubescent aerial parts. Creeping pubescent stems reach a meter in length. They often make their way, making their way through other vegetation and intricately and firmly intertwining with other people's stems. They grow on poor dry soils.
Paired leaves up to 4 centimeters long have a shape from oval to oblong and are attached to the stem with pubescent petioles. The lateral veins, fanning out from the central vein to the edges of the leaf plate, seem to pull together the leaf tissue, forming a decorative wavy edge and giving the leaf the impression of a bulge. The surface of the leaf plate is covered with dense and sticky pubescence, through which the pest cannot get through. Therefore, Allionia has almost no enemies.
In the axils of picturesque leaves, inflorescences are born, formed by three red-purple bisexual flowers with a white center. The symmetrical arrangement of flowers in the inflorescence creates the illusion of a single flower with numerous petals and vigorously protruding numerous yellow stamens. Each flower has a pronounced inclined funnel. The still unblown flower buds are covered with whitish sticky hairs.
Fruits of plants are 5-ribbed capsules-achenes.
Two species of the genus
The Allionia genus today has only two types of plants:
* Allionia Incarnata - a perennial herb with reddish creeping stems, petiolate curly leaves and red-purple inflorescences of three flowers, giving the impression of one flower.
* Allionia choisyi Is an annual herb with reddish stems, petioled leaves and light pink flower petals.
Outwardly, both species are very similar to each other, and their botanists are distinguished by the characteristics of the fruits of each species.
In the literature, you can find the name of the plant - "Allionia rotundifolia". Although the first word of the name refers to the name of the described genus, this plant has nothing to do with the genus Allionia. This is the mistaken name for a plant belonging to the genus Mirabilis of the Niktagin family. Its scientific Latin name reads as follows - "Mirabilis rotundifolia", which in Russian corresponds to the name "Round-leaved Mirabilis".
