Ourisia breviflora
Ourisia breviflora is a species of flowering plant in the family Plantaginaceae that is endemic to mountainous habitats of the Andes of southern Chile and Argentina. George Bentham described O. breviflora in 1864. Plants of this species are rosettes with has crenate, hairy leaves, and the hairs on the plant are not glandular. Inflorescences are short racemes with 1 to 5 flowers. Flowers are usually solitary in each inflorescence node, corollas are bilabiate and pink to lilac, and calyx lobes are all equally divided to the base of the calyx. Two allopatric subspecies are recognised that can be distinguished based on leaf hairs, corolla striations, and floral bract size.
Taxonomy
Ourisia breviflora is in the plant family Plantaginaceae. British botanist George Bentham described O. breviflora in Augustin Pyramus de Candolle's 1846 publication, Prodromus.The type material was collected in the Chilean Magallanes Region in southern Tierra del Fuego by English naturalist Charles Darwin in 1833 during the second voyage of the HMS Beagle. The lectotype was designated by American botanist Duncan MacNair Porter and is housed at the Herbarium at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and an isolectotype at Cambridge University Herbarium.
Two allopatric subspecies of O. breviflora are recognised, with O. breviflora subsp. uniflora distributed in the northern parts of the species' range, whereas O. breviflora subsp. breviflora is found further south .
The two subspecies can be distinguished by hairs on the upper surface of the leaves, the presence of coloured lines on the corolla, and size of floral bracts. Specifically, O. breviflora subsp. breviflora has long, sparsely to densely distributed hairs on the upper surface of the leaves, corollas that have dark purple striations, and floral bracts more than 5 mm long. By contrast, O. breviflora subsp. uniflora has usually glabrous leaves, no dark purple veins on the corollas, and floral bracts up to 5 mm long.
Description
Ourisia breviflora plants are perennial, erect, rosette herbs. The short stems are 0.7–4.0 mm wide, and glabrous or hairy with short or long, non-glandular hairs. Leaves are opposite or tightly clustered in a subrosette, petiolate, 2.4–14.2 mm long by 2.0–13.2 mm wide. Leaf petioles are 1.6–45.5 mm long and sparsely to densely hairy with short or long non-glandular hairs. Leaf blades are ovate, broadly ovate, or very broadly ovate, widest below the middle, with a rounded apex, cordate, truncate or cuneate base, and crenate edges. Both surfaces of the leaves are glabrous or sparsely to densely hairy and the lower surface is also punctate. Inflorescences are erect, with hairy racemes up to 12 cm long, and with 1–2 flowering nodes and up to 5 total flowers per raceme. Each flowering node has 1–2 flowers and 2 bracts that are ovate, broadly ovate or very broadly ovate. The bracts are similar to the leaves, 3.0–15.0 mm long and 1.1–13.9 mm wide and petiolate or sessile. The flowers are borne on a pedicel that is up to 32.9 mm long and densely hairy with non-glandular hairs sometimes also mixed with glandular hairs. The calyx is 3.8–7.9 mm long, regular, with all 5 lobes equally divided to the base of the calyx, usually glabrous but sometimes hairy with non-glandular or glandular hairs on the outside of the calyx. The corolla is 8.0–14.2 mm long, bilabiate, straight or curved, tubular-funnelform, white or pale lilac, mauve or pink, sometimes with dark purple veins or striations, glabrous or hairy with tiny, sessile glandular hairs on the outside, and glabrous inside. The corolla lobes are 1.9–5.3 mm long, not spreading or spreading, obovate or obcordate and deeply emarginate. There are 4 stamens which are didynamous, with both the two long stamens and the two short stamens included or reaching the coreolla tube opening. The style is 2.3–6.1 mm long, included, with an emarginate or capitate stigma. The ovary is 1.8–2.5 mm long. Fruits are capsules with loculicidal dehiscence, and fruiting pedicels are 11.7–53.9 mm long. There are about 80 seeds in each capsule, and seeds are 0.5–0.9 mm long and 0.3–0.6 mm wide, elliptic, with a regular two-layered, reticulate seed coat with thick, smooth, shallow, primary reticula.Ourisia breviflora flowers and fruits from November to March.
The chromosome number of Ourisia breviflora is unknown.