Greeneocharis
Greeneocharis is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae. There are two species, and it has a disjunct distribution in the western United States and northwestern Mexico in North America and western Argentina in southern South America. It is part of subtribe of Amsinckiinae.
It was once thought to be a either a subgenus or synonym of Cryptantha, before being segregated out due to molecular phylogenetic analysis.
Description
It is an annual herb, with cushion-like, roots, which can have red-purple tinge. It has branches ascending to erect on a slender stem, generally strigose. The leaves are sessile, arranged alternate and congested at the branch tips. They are linear, oblanceolate, or narrowly oblong and hairy. The inflorescence is spike-like cymes. They have flower bracts. The flower consists of calyx lobes which are fused at base, and the tube is circumscissile in fruit. The white, corolla limb is in diameter with appendages present. After it has flowered it produces a fruit, which has a pedicel 0-0.5 mm in fruit. The fruit axis is similar to the nutlet length. It can have between 2-4 nutlets, which are generally similar, smooth to roughened and without ridges. The margin is rounded and has an attachment scar abutted near apex, forked and gapped at the base. The style is extended to or just below nutlet tips.Taxonomy
The Latin specific epithet Greeneocharis is derived from California botanist Edward Lee Greene and charis which means "beauty, delight".It was first published Nat. Pflanzenfam., Register on page 460 in 1899.
Then in 1924, Ivan M. Johnston wrote that the genus of Oreocarya could be combined with Cryptantha. Edwin Blake Payson in 1927 agreed with Johnston and he had four sections in
Cryptantha: Eucryptantha, Geocarya, Krynitzkia, and Oreocarya.
Larry Higgins, another expert on the perennial taxa, published a revised monograph of Oreocarya, and agreed with Johnston and Payson on the
inclusion of Oreocarya within Cryptantha, but also elevating the four sections of Johnston and Payson to subgenera. Although they were sometimes still called synonyms of Cryptantha.
In 2012, the phylogenetic relationship of members of the genus Cryptantha was carried out, based on dna sequencing analyses, it was then
proposed that the resurrection of the following genera; Eremocarya, Greeneocharis, Johnstonella, and also Oreocarya.
Species
2 accepted species;Greeneocharis circumscissa- * Greeneocharis circumscissa var. circumscissa
- * Greeneocharis circumscissa var. hispida
- * Greeneocharis circumscissa var. rosulata
- ''Greeneocharis similis''