Descripción del género Tarenaya

Annual or perennial herbs to subshrubs or shrubs or rarely scandent shrubs or treelets; stems and branches puberulent, pubescent, or glandular-puberulent, glandular-pubescent, glandular-pilose, velutinous, hirsute, pilose, or glabrescent to glabrous. A pair of prickles (stipular prickles) at base of petioles; prickles straight or curved, missing in some individuals or absent as in Tarenaya crenopetala (DC.) Soares Neto & Roalson, T. inermis (Malme) Soares Neto & Roalson, and T. siliculifera (Eichler) Soares Neto & Roalson. Leaves alternate, petiolate, palmately compound, 3- to 9(to 12)-foliolate; petioles covered by an indumentum or glabrous, armed with slender or stout prickles or unarmed; leaflets petiolulate or sessile; margin entire, ciliate, serrate, serrulate, or sinuose; midrib and secondary veins with an indumentum or glabrous, with prickles abaxially or without them. Inflorescence of racemes, corymbiform racemes, or panicles (only in T. longipes), terminal and/or axillary; bracts subtending each flower, or bracts subtending the lower flowers, leaflike, with 3 to 5 leaflets becoming 1-foliolate or filiform, caducous (in T. longipes) or absent (in T. virens (J. F. Macbr.) Soares Neto & Roalson); petioles without or with a pair of prickles at base. Flowers pedicellate, tetramerous, zygomorphic; sepals free, reflexed, greenish, sometimes persistent in fruit; petals unguiculate, unilateral and ascending or erect in open flower, all of the same color or 1 of the 2 pairs bicolorous, yellow or greenish yellow, green with yellowish hue, white, basally white becoming pink to purple apically, white with dark purple to reddish strips or spots apically, white very faintly purple-tinged, pink, deep pink, deep pink-purple, pink to purple, purple, deep purple, basally purple becoming pink apically, or red. Androgynophore surrounded by an annular nectary. Nectary fleshy or not, persistent, or obsolete in fruit. Stamens 6, elongated by the androgynophore; filaments glabrous, purple, purplish, wine, green, or white; anthers dorsifixed, yellow. Ovary borne on a long (= 30 cm) or a short (= 1.5 cm) gynophore, bicarpellate, glabrous or covered by an indumentum when young; style absent or, when present, persistent in fruit; stigma sessile or on the elongated style, capitate, truncated, discoid, or not expanded. Capsule cylindric, fusiform, ellipsoid, oblong, obovoid, or oblanceoloid, slightly torulose, greenish or purple, on elongated short to long stalks reported as gynophores. Seeds horseshoe-shaped, longitudinally striate, transversely ridged with a hard excrescence; cleft, covered by a thin membrane, dry, or sometimes covered by a white aril or oil-filled cells.

Distribución:

Desde el centro de México hasta el centro de Argentina y Uruguay (excepto Chile), pasando por las Antillas Mayores y Menores.

Publicación:

Sylva Tellur. : 111. 1838

Observaciones: