Source:
SSA
Description:
Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes undershrubs. Leaves +/- crowded at base of stem, lax above, entire and grass-like, attentuate to base and sometimes stem-clasping. Flowers in compound umbels, with or without bracts. Calyx with small or obsolete teeth. Petals subcircular, obovate or oblong, +/- deeply concave, inflexed at apex, keeled on inner face. Disc flat, depressed, rarely subconical. Stamens longer than petals. Styles very short. Fruit +/- laterally flattened, sometimes subdidynamous, oblong, crowned with disc; mericarps with 5 acute wings or prominent veins, rarely veins obsolete; oil ducts present or 0; carpophore 2-fid or 2-partite. Seeds subterete. x = 7, 8 (6, 11) ( polyploidy, B-chromosomes).
Distribution:
Species +/- 180, mainly Europe, Asia and Africa; 1 in sthn Afr.: Bupleurum mundii Cham. & Schltdl.; widespread in the southern, eastern and northeastern parts of sthn Afr.; *B. rotundifolium L. occurs rarely as an escape in the northern parts of South Africa.
Classification:
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