Limonium
Sea-lavender | |
---|---|
Limonium perezii at the San Francisco Botanical Garden | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Clade: | Tracheophytes |
Clade: | Angiosperms |
Clade: | Eudicots |
Order: | Caryophyllales |
Family: | Plumbaginaceae |
Genus: | Limonium Mill. |
Species | |
About 120–150 species; see text |
Limonium is a genus of 120 flowering plant species. Members are also known as sea-lavender, statice, caspia or marsh-rosemary. Despite their common names, species are not related to the lavenders or to rosemary. They are instead in Plumbaginaceae, the plumbago or leadwort family. The generic name is from the Latin līmōnion, used by Pliny for a wild plant and is ultimately derived from the Ancient Greek leimon (λειμών, ‘meadow’).[1]
Distribution[]
The genus has a subcosmopolitan distribution in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and North America. By far the greatest diversity (over 100 species) is in the area stretching from the Canary Islands east through the Mediterranean region to central Asia; for comparison, North America only has three native Limonium species.[2]
Description[]
Sea-lavenders normally grow as herbaceous perennial plants, growing 10–70 cm tall from a rhizome; a few (mainly from the Canary Islands) are woody shrubs up to 2 metres tall. Many species flourish in saline soils, and are therefore common near coasts and in salt marshes, and also on saline, gypsum and alkaline soils in continental interiors.
The leaves are simple, entire to lobed, and from 1–30 cm long and 0.5–10 cm broad; most of the leaves are produced in a dense basal rosette, with the flowering stems bearing only small brown scale-leaves (bracts). The flowers are produced on a branched panicle or corymb, the individual flowers are small (4–10 mm long) with a five-lobed calyx and corolla, and five stamens; the flower colour is pink or violet to purple in most species, white or yellow in a few. Many of the species are apomictic. The fruit is a small capsule containing a single seed, partly enclosed by the persistent calyx.
Features[]
Several species are popular garden flowers; they are generally known to gardeners as statices. They are grown both for their flowers and for the appearance of the calyx, which remains on the plant after the true flowers have fallen, and are known as "everlasting flowers".
Species[]
There are between 120-150 species in the genus, many of them local endemic species with a very restricted range. Species not given a common name here are generally referred to simply as "sea-lavender", "statice," or "marsh-rosemary".
- (Monegros, endemic)
- Limonium arboreum (tree limonium or Statice arborca; Tenerife, endemic)
- (central Asia: Siberia, Mongolia, northwest China)
- (Alderney sea-lavender; southwest Europe, northwest Africa)
- Limonium australe (Australia)
- Limonium bellidifolium (matted sea-lavender; Europe, southwest Asia)
- (Mongolia, northwest China)
- Limonium binervosum (rock sea-lavender; western Europe)
- (Lanzarote, endemic)
- (Canary Islands, Statice brassicifolia)
- Limonium braunii (Cape Verde)
- Limonium brunneri (Cape Verde)
- (western Mediterranean)
- Limonium californicum (California sea-lavender; western North America, Oregon to Baja California)
- (western China: Xinjiang)
- (eastern Mediterranean Croatia)
- Limonium carolinianum (Carolina sea-lavender; eastern North America, Newfoundland to Bermuda, Florida and Tamaulipas; syn. L. angustatum, L. nashii)
- (central Europe east to central Asia)
- (central Asia)
- (western Mediterranean)
- (central Asia)
- (central Asia)
- (central Mediterranean)
- (eastern Mediterranean)
- (western Mediterranean)
- (central Asia)
- (western China: Gansu, Qinghai)
- (Natal statice; South Africa)
- (Mediterranean)
- Limonium emarginatum (southern Spain)
- (western Mediterranean)
- (central Asia)
- (east coastal China)
- (Tenerife, endemic)
- (eastern Europe, northern Asia, Siberia)
- (western Mediterranean)
- Limonium humile (lax-flowered sea-lavender; northwest Europe)
- (Tenerife, endemic)
- (southeast Spain, endemic)
- Limonium jovibarba (Cape Verde)
- (central Asia)
- (Iran)[3]
- (western China, Tibet, Kashmir)
- (central Asia)
- (statice; central Asia)
- (central Turkey, endemic)
- Limonium limbatum (Transpecos sea-lavender; interior southwest United States)
- Limonium lobinii (Cape Verde)
- (Tenerife)
- (Canary Islands)
- (Ladakh)
- (Malta)
- (southeast France, endemic)
- (Morocco)
- (central Asia)
- Limonium narbonense (Southern Europe, North Africa, Southwest Asia)
- Limonium nashii (Maritime North America)
- (Morocco)
- (Saltmarsh sea-lavender; southwest and central Asia)
- (Great Britain, Ireland,[4] endemic)
- Limonium paulayanum (Yemen, endemic)
- Limonium pectinatum (Canary Islands)
- (South Africa)
- Limonium perezii (Perez's sea-lavender; Canary Islands)
- (German statice; central and southeast Europe)
- (western China: Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu)
- (Canary Islands)
- (Canary Islands)
- Limonium ramosissimum (Mediterranean)
- (kidneyleaf sea-lavender; Iran)
- (central Asia)
- Kuntze (South Africa)
- (eastern Mediterranean)
- (eastern Asia coasts: China, Ryukyu Islands, Vietnam)
- Limonium sinuatum (wavyleaf sea-lavender; Mediterranean)
- Limonium sokotranum (Yemen, endemic)
- Limonium solanderi (Australia)
- (Mediterranean)
- (Canary islands)
- Limonium strictissimum (Mediterranean: France, Italy)
- (western and central Asia)
- (Mongolia, northwest China)
- (autumn statice or square-stem statice; eastern Asia south to New Caledonia)
- (Mediterranean)
- (Black Sea region)
- (western Mediterranean)
- Limonium vulgare (common sea-lavender; western Europe, northwest Africa)
- (Japan, Taiwan)
- (Malta)
Some species formerly included in Limonium, e.g. L. tataricum, have now been transferred to the separate genus Goniolimon.
References[]
- ^ "limonium". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
- ^ Flora of North America
- ^ Mozaffarian, V. 1996. A dictionary of Iranian plant names: Latin, English, Persian. Tehran: Farhang-e Moʻaser.
- ^ Flora Europaea
External links[]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Limonium. |
- Limonium
- Caryophyllales genera
- Halophytes
- Taxa named by Philip Miller