Famatinanthoideae
| Famatinanthus decussatus | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| (unranked): | Angiosperms |
| (unranked): | Eudicots |
| (unranked): | Asterids |
| Order: | Asterales |
| Family: | Asteraceae |
| Subfamily: | Famatinanthoideae |
| Tribe: | Famatinantheae |
| Genus: |
Famatinanthus Ariza & S.E.Freire |
| Species: | F. decussatus |
| Binomial name | |
|
Famatinanthus decussatus |
|
| Type species | |
|
Famatinanthus decussatus (Hieron.) Ariza & S.E.Freire |
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| Synonyms | |
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Famatinanthus is a genus in the daisy family that was created in 2014 and has been reassigned to its own tribe Famatinantheae and subfamily Famatinanthoideae. It contains only one known species, F. decussatus, a small shrub (½—1¾ m high) that is an endemic of the Andes of north-western Argentina, with small, entire, oppositely set leaves and flowerheads containing about ten cream-colored, ray and disk florets, with backward coiled lobes. It is locally known as sacansa. For more than 100 years, the species was known to science only from the type collection used for the 1885 description which had assigned it to the genus Aphyllocladus.
Famatinanthus is a long-lived, xerophitic, thornless shrub of ½—1¾ m high. Flowers can be found from December to February. It has fifty four chromosomes (2n=54), probably developed through multiplication of a base set of nine (n=9).
In the field, the stems are blackish in colour and look powdery. They are circular in cross section, unribbed and without secretory cavities, with side-branches approximately perpendicular to the main branch. Leaves remain attached when fully grown and are oppositely set along the branches. The leaves are leathery, have no petiole, are oval to elongated reversed egg-shaped, with the base narrowing gradually to the main vein but clasping the stem at the foot, with entire margins, a pointy tip, and its veins branching pinnately. The leaves have peculiar stomata that are raised by the surrounding tissue and hide a large chamber underneath. There are also sparse, sunken, reversed egg-shaped glandular hairs of about 50 μm high, on both surfaces of the leaf consisting of about 5 flat cells, arranged like a pile of pancakes, these excrete essential oils, and appear as dots to the naked eye. Both sides of the leaf surface further sprout sparse, erect, multi-storied T-shaped hairs of about 150 μm long. These are one cell thick, with a stalk of two to six cells and a platform of two to five increasingly wider cells, sometimes followed by a second stalk and platform.
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Wikipedia