Menispermum
American Moonseed ( Menispermum canadense )
The Moon Seeds ( Menispermum ) are a genus of deciduous shrubs from East Asia and North America, carrying the blue-black drupes.
Description
The Moon Seeds are deciduous, left squirming, climbing, lush growing shrubs with thin, shiny olive green to dark red-brown branches. The buds are hidden in the cup-shaped, circular or ausgerandeten at the top hem leaf scar. The leaves are alternate. They are long-petiolate, three to siebenlappig, provided by more or less shield -shaped form and with palmately arranged veins. They are hairy hairless or finely. The lower leaf surface is very bright and sometimes silver. Stipules are not formed. The flowers are dioecious distributed. They are green and inconspicuous, and arranged in stalked, axillary clusters or racemes. The single flowers have four to ten spirally arranged sepals and six to nine petals that are shorter than the sepals. The male flowers have 12 to 18, rarely up to 36 stamens, the female flowers six to twelve staminodes and two to four carpels with broad, almost seated scars. As fruit large, blue-black drupes are formed from 0.8 to 1 centimeter, which are in groups of two to three. The casts are 7-8 millimeters in size and flattened kidney - or cup-shaped.
Fruits of the Moon Dahurischen seed
Dissemination
Representatives of the moon seeds are found in temperate East Asia and the Atlantic North America and Mexico.
System
The Moon Seeds ( Menispermum ) are a genus in the family of the moon seed plants ( Menispermaceae ). You will be assigned in two ways:
- American Moonseed ( Menispermum canadense L.)
- Dahurischer Moonseed ( Menispermum dauricum DC. )
The two species can be distinguished by the arrangement of the petiole, at the American moon seeds of the petiole opens close to the leaf margin, removed when Dahurischen moonseed the page border, more centrally in the leaf blade. Several species have also been attributed to the genus of the Moon seed, is now reckoned to other genera, such as Cocculus or Tinospora.
The scientific name derives from the Greek Monospermum men for " moon " and sperma, "seed" from.
Use
The two types are rarely planted as ornamental shrubs to clothe arbors, fences or walls.