Heliotropium


Heliotropium is a genus of flowering plants with around 325 species commonly known as heliotropes. They are highly toxic to dogs and cats, as well as to humans.

Description

Like other members of the Heliotropiaceae, plants in the genus Heliotropium have, tetracyclic flowers and actinomorphic corollas. They likewise share in their characteristic terminal styles and highly modified stigmatic heads. Species in the genus are typically herbs or subshrubs exclusively and are characterized by their dry fruits that divide into two or four mericarpids.

Taxonomy

Taxonomic revision supported through molecular phylogenetics led to the recognition of Euploca as genus separate from Heliotropium. In contrast, the genus Tournefortia was included in Heliotropium in a 2016 revision.
Within Heliotropium, there are four major clades:
  • Heliotropium sect. Heliothamnus
  • Old World Heliotropium clade
  • Heliotropium sect. Cochranea
  • Tournefortia clade, comprising Tournefortia sect. Tournefortia and all remaining New World Heliotropium species
Although traditionally included in the family Boraginaceae s.l., the genus is placed in the family Heliotropiaceae within the Boraginales order by the Boraginales Working Group.

Origins of diversification

Three of the four major clades within Heliotropium have their centers of diversity in South America. The origins of the remaining Old World Heliotropium clade can be traced back to a single colonization event from the New World. ITS1 data shows there is a single characteristic long deletion between positions 61 and 111 in the genome of the Old World species, which defines the Old World Heliotropium species and separates them from their New World counterparts. Researchers concluded this is a single autapomorphic character from a single deletion event in the past. This most reasonably explains how the whole group may have come to share this characteristic deletion when comparing the genomes of Old World and New World Heliotropium.
The most likely driver of Heliotropium diversification across the three New World clades is early Andean uplift. Researchers identified three independent diversification events in the phylogeny of Andean Heliotropium, whose timings correspond to late Miocene Andean uplift as well as the development of arid environments in South America during the Pliocene. These three diversification events each mark the separation of the Heliothamnus, Cochranea, and Tournefortia clades from the rest of Heliotropium.
Heliothamnus diversification is estimated to have taken place in the late Miocene. The age of Heliothamnus suggest that its diversification could have been triggered directly by the uplift of the Andes, something that would have promoted speciation in inner-Andean valleys and the Andean scrub. The majority of endemic Heliothamnus taxa in the region are restricted to these sorts of environments, further supporting this theory as the current leading theory explaining Heliothamnus diversification.
Before the main rise of the Andes, Cochranea and Tournefortia coinhabited the Andean region at the same time and significant speciation had not yet occurred. Once the Andes began to rise, Cochranea became isolated on the western side of the Andes while Tournefortia grew on the eastern side. This east-west division is still true of each group’s present distributions. The rise of the Andes affected the climate of the region and is believed to have contributed to the hyperaridity of the Atacama Desert, something that could have acted as an additional barrier to filter out other Heliotropium species into the range of Cochranea, thus promoting Cochranea speciation. Elevation differences would have also acted as barriers that helped promote speciation in Tournefortia species as many large groups within Tournefortia became well-adapted to high-elevation environments while other Heliotropium clades did not and thus could not coinhabit the same environments as Tournefortia.

Selected species

There are around 325 species in the genus.Heliotropium amplexicaule Vahl – clasping heliotrope, summer heliotrope, blue heliotropeHeliotropium anderssoniiHeliotropium angiospermumHeliotropium anomalum Hook. & Arn. – Polynesian heliotrope, Pacific heliotrope

Formerly included here

Chrozophora tinctoria Tournefortia gnaphalodes R.Br. ex Roem. & Schult.

Etymology

The name "heliotrope" derives from the old idea that the inflorescences of these plants turned their rows of flowers to the Sun. Ἥλιος is Greek for "Sun", τρέπειν means "to turn". The Middle English name "turnsole" has the same meaning.

Distribution and habitat

The species has an almost cosmopolitan distribution.

Ecology

Some danaine butterflies, such as male queen butterflies, visit these plants, being attracted to their pyrrolizidine alkaloids.
Caterpillars of the grass jewel, a gossamer-winged butterfly, feed on H. strigosum.

Toxicity

The plants are highly toxic to dogs and cats, as well as to humans.
Some species are weeds, and many are hepatotoxic if eaten due to abundant pyrrolizidine alkaloids. There have been cases of canine death due to over-ingestion of this toxic plant. Though it is not palatable and most animals will completely ignore it, there have been cases of horses, swine and cattle being poisoned due to contamination of hay.

Heliotrine and heliotridine

Seeds of the Heliotropium genus were discovered in the 1940s and 50s to be responsible for liver disease in populations that consumed them in large quantities, either inadvertently or deliberately. The seeds contained high concentrations of pyrrolizidine alkaloids, identified mainly as the of heliotrine, and one or two other compounds similar in character to lasiocarpine. More recently, in 1993 and 2017, there have been reported cases of poisoning in Tajikistan from wheat contaminated with H. lasiocarpum seeds.

Uses

Heliotropes are popular garden plants, most notably H. arborescens. Garden heliotrope is grown in Southern Europe as an ingredient for perfume. Heliotrope is the main ingredient in perfumes such as Byredo Heliotropia, Molinard Heliotrope, Etro Heliotrope, Fragonard Héliotrope Gingembre and others.
The sap of heliotrope flowers, namely of H. europaeum, was used as a food coloring in Middle Ages and Early Modern French cuisine.

In culture

A Classical myth, told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, imagines that the water nymph Clytie, in love with the sun god Helios, was scorned by him. Wasting away, she transformed into the heliotrope, whose flowers supposedly always face the Sun.
One of the most famous ragtime piano melodies is "Heliotrope Bouquet", composed in 1907 by Louis Chauvin and Scott Joplin.
The purplish facial rash of dermatomyositis is called "heliotrope rash" because it resembles E. arborescens.