Anoda Cav.
Contenido
Descripción
Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs, erect or decumbent, hispid or stellate pubescent or -puberulent to glabrate. Leaves petiolate, the blades linear, lanceolate, ovate, cordate, hastately lobed or palmately divided, crenate or dentate to subentire, usually green, sometimes with an irregular purplish blotch along midvein, sometimes canescent beneath, lacking foliar nectaries; stipules generally inconspicuous and deciduous. Flowers solitary in the leaf axils or aggregated in open apical racemes or panicles; involucel absent; calyx sometimes accrescent in fruit, basally rounded, usually 5- or 10-nerved; petals spreading, yellow, white, lavender, or purplish; androecium shorter than to equaling the petals, usually yellowish, antheriferous at apex; styles 5-20, slender, exceeding the androecium (barely so in A. thurberi), the stigmas usually abruptly capitate, glabrous. Fruits oblate or disklike, schizocarpic, puberulent to hispid; mericarps 5-20, with or without spur or spine at dorsal angle, the lateral walls usually disintegrating at maturity; seeds solitary, glabrous or pubescent, sometimes enclosed in persistent reticulate endocarp. Base chromosome number: x = 15.A
Discusión taxonómica
The genus Anoda has its principal center and maximum diversity in Mexico. A few species occur in the southwestern United States, and one species (A. cristata), with weedy tendencies, is widespread and relatively common, occurring from the southern United States through Central America to many parts of South America. Anoda cristata occasionally occurs as a waif elsewhere, presumably by transport with agricultural planting seed.A