Angiosperms (Flowering Plants) • Earth.com

Ceropegia clavigera clavigera

(Ceropegia clavigera clavigera)

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en

Description

Huernia barbata is a leafless succulent forming dense clumps to 60 cm. Flowers creamy, urn-shaped, with triangular, acuminate, spreading lobes, the tube entirely or irregularly and concentrically marked with delicate maroon speckling, with long stiff, purple, often clavate (club shaped), hairs in mouth of tube and onto petals. The dense hairs of the corolla tube, which give the plant its name, make the flowers especially charming and exclude any confusion with any other species. This species is quite variable, especially the ground colour of the corolla and covering of dark purple-brown warts and small blood-red spots varies considerably from plant to plant; moreover the stiff clavate purple hairs in the tube are very variable in size and length. Huernia barbata was already described and the name validly published by Francis Masson. It was Adrian Hardy Haworth, however, who reclassified it into todays valid botanical systematics in 1812. Stems: Erect, richly branched at the base, up to 6 (or more under cultivation) cm long, 12-20 mm thick, acutely 4–5-angled, glabrous, grey-green or glaucous-green. Angles with spreading deltoid pointed teeth c. 3 mm long. Flowers: In groups of 2 (or more), successively developed near the base of the young stems. Pedicels 6-10 mm long, rather slender, glabrous. Sepals about 6 mm long, lanceolate-subulate, glabrous. Corolla acutely pointed and pentagonal in bud, when expanded 3-5 cm in diameter, campanulate, with a long, bell-shaped tube and ascending-spreading or gradually recurving lobes, glabrous and without spots outside, clear or dirty sulphur-yellow to pale buff on the inside, marked on the lobes and upper part of the tube with blood-red dots, which pass into transverse interrupted lines on the lower part of the tube, covered from the middle of the tube to the base or to 2/3 of the way up the lobes with long stiff clavate purple hairs, which become minute upon the lobes, each seated on a purple-brown papilla, with the tips and margins of the lobes papillate. Tube 1.5-2 mm long. Corolla lobes 12-18 mm long and nearly as broad, deltoid, acuminate. Outer-corona 5-lobed, blackish or blackish-crimson, lobes subquadrate, emarginate or shortly and obtusely bifid. Inner corona-lobes 3-4 mm long, subulate, slightly gibbous at the base, connivent over the style-apex at the basal part, then divergent-ascending, with suberect tips, purple. Occasionally 6-lobed flowers are produced, but this is not a constant character, the plant always reverts to the normal 5-lobed flowers. Fruits: The fruit are paired spindle-shaped capsules (follicles), resembling the horns of an antelope, with the tightly packed seeds inside. At maturity they split open to release numerous small brown seeds crowned with long white hairs.

Taxonomic tree:

Domain:
Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum:
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order:Gentianales
Family:Apocynaceae
Genus:Ceropegia
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