Mesembryanthemum
Ice plant ( Mesembryanthemum crystallinum )
Mesembryanthemum is a plant genus of the family of Mesembryanthemum plants ( Aizoaceae ).
Description
The species of the genus Mesembryanthemum are lying, prostrate or erect herbaceous plants with fibrous roots. They are mostly annuals and are sometimes very large. The internodes are herbaceous, turning round, angled or winged. Your flat, cylindrical to slightly trough-shaped leaves are nearly clipped or almost round. They sit decussate and are fused at the base shortly. In the formation of the inflorescence or during flowering they will alternate. Flat sheets contain no, cylindrical leaves, however, contain enlarged, central water-storing cells. The large to very flattened bladder cells are mesomorph.
Zymösen the inflorescence reaches a diameter of 10 to 60 millimeters. The five sepals are fused with the pale pink, yellow or white petals to a short tube. Sometimes, however, they are also free. The petals are filiform or narrowly lanceolate and rarely much reduced form. Filamentous staminodes may be present or absent. The nectaries are narrow shell-shaped or tubular.
The flaps wings of fünffächrigen capsule fruits are bent over the flaps up or down and paired grow together. The fruit capsules contain black, brown, yellow or whitish, D- shaped or triangular seeds from 0.5 to 1 mm in length.
Systematics and distribution
The genus Mesembryanthemum is in the southwest of Angola, in southwestern Australia, the Azores, the Canary Islands, the Cape Verde Islands, Iraq, Iran, the Mediterranean region, in Namibia, in North Africa, Palestine, on St. Helena, in the Turkey, distributed in California and the South African provinces of Eastern Cape, Free State, Northern Cape and Western Cape. The plants often grow on saline soils usually on " disturbed places" and along roadsides.
The genus Mesembryanthemum includes the following sub-genera and species:
- Subgenus Cryophtum Mesembryanthemum barklyi N.E.Br.
- Mesembryanthemum crystallinum L.
- Mesembryanthemum gariusanum Dinter
- Mesembryanthemum guerichianum Pax
- Mesembryanthemum pellitum Friedrich
- Subgenus Mesembryanthemum Mesembryanthemum aitonis Jacq.
- Mesembryanthemum excavatum ( L.Bolus ) L.Bolus
- Mesembryanthemum inachabense Engl
- Mesembryanthemum longistylum DC.
- Mesembryanthemum subtruncatum L.Bolus
- Mesembryanthemum L. nodiflorum
- Mesembryanthemum Stena drum ( L.Bolus ) L.Bolus
- Subgenus Opophytum Mesembryanthemum cryptanthum Hook. f
- Mesembryanthemum eurystigmatum Gerbaulet
- Mesembryanthemum fastigiatum Thunb.
- Mesembryanthemum hypertrophicum Dinter
Botanical history
The name Mesembryanthemum ( ice plant ) was coined in 1689 by Jacob Breyne in his work Prodromus fasciculi rariorum plantarum and used in 1732 by Johann Jacob Dillen. Linnaeus adopted it in 1753 in his work Species Plantarum. For the etymology of botanical name, there are two interpretations. Either he is derived from the Greek words " Mesembria " and for " anthemon " lunch for flower or of "mes " for middle and " embryo " for ovule.
For a long time the genus a collective genus for several hundred species. Nicholas Edward Brown recognized in the 1920s in the structure of the fruit a good morphological feature and began to divide into small genera the large genus.