Resia (plant)


Resia is a genus of plants in the family Gesneriaceae. They are also in the Beslerieae tribe.
They are native to Colombia and Venezuela in South America. They were also found in Ecuador in 2015.

Description

It is close in form to Napeanthus, but the flowers, leaves, stamens and seed capsules are different.
It is a perennial sub-shrub with fibrous roots and short to elongate, sometimes branched woody stems. The leaves are subsessile or shortly petiolate, which is congested in a terminal crown. The flowers are cymose, axillary, pedunculate and ebracteate. They are zygomorphic with a calyx of 5 distinct sepals which are inconspicuously nerved in flower. They are thickened and conspicuously 5-7 nerved when in fruit. The corolla is tubular with bilbabiate limb of 5 spreading lobes. The upper 2 lobes are acute and shorter than the 3 rounded lower lobes. It has 4 stamens, with the filaments adnate to the corolla tube to the middle, then free, glabrous and geniculate, with anthers coherent in a square by their tips, cells of each anther confluent and dehiscing longitudinally. It has 1 staminode. The disk is prominent and annular. The ovary is superior and laterally compressed. It is densely pilose, ovoid, with branched placentas ovuliferous on both surfaces. The style is elongated and the stigma is briefly bilobed stomatomorphic. The fruit is a laterally compressed loculicidal capsule which is shorter than the calyx with 2 apiculate pilose valves and minute brown granular-striate seeds.

Known species

It contains the following species, according to Plants of the World Online;
The type species is Resia nimbicola.

Taxonomy

The genus name of Resia is in honour of Richard Evans Schultes, an American biologist. He may be considered the father of modern ethnobotany. It was first described and published in Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University Vol.20 on page 87 in 1962.
The genus is recognized by the United States Department of Agriculture and the Agricultural Research Service, but they do not list any known species.