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Euclea crispa Thunb. Gürke [family EBENACEAE]

Date Updated: 26 July 2007

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (K)
Collection
Flora Zambesiaca
Resource Type
Reference Sources
Entry From
FZ, Vol 7, Part 1, page 248, (1983) Author: F. White
Names
Euclea crispa Thunb. Gürke [family EBENACEAE], in Engl. & Prantl, Pflanzenfam. 4 (1): 158 (1891). — de Winter in F.S.A. 26: 90 (1963). — Wild in Kirkia, 7, Suppl.: 42 (1970). — Palmer & Pitman, Trees of Southern Afr.3: 1775 cum. tab. & photogr. (1972). — Wild, Biegel & Mavi, Rhod. Bot. Diet., ed. 2: 162 (1972). — Drummond in Kirkia, 10: 266 (1975). — White in Gardens’ Bull. Singapore, 29: 68, t. 1 (1976); in Bull. Jard. Bot. Nat. Belg. 50: 396 (1980). — K. Coates Palgrave, Trees of Southern Afr. : 736 (1977). TAB. 67, fig. A–C. Type from South Africa. Celastrus crispus Thunb. [family EBENACEAE], in Hoffm., Phyt. Blatt. 1: 23 (1803). Type as above.
Information
Shrub or small bushy tree up to 8 m. high, or a rhizomatous suffrutex or virgate shrub 0·3–3 m. high. Young shoots densely puberulous to glabrous, except for peltate, usually rusty, scales. Leaves alternate or subopposite; petiole up to 0·2 cm. long; lamina very variable, mostly obovate to oblanceolate or linear, margin often crenulate, usually revolute, or markedly undulate (subsp. ovata); lower surface always with peltate, usually rusty, scales, at least when young, nearly always (except in subsp. linearis sens. strict) also sparsely to densely puberulous with spreading crispate hairs, or tomentose (subsp. ovata when young), often glabrescent; venation prominent and reticulate, especially on upper surface, very rarely impressed above. Inflorescence, solitary, axillary, unbranched, up to 3 cm. long, always with peltate scales, and (except in subsp. linearis sens. strict) sparsely to densely puberulous. Male flowers c. 0·25 cm. long. Calyx patelliform, with very short, broadly deltate teeth. Corolla lobed to beyond the middle, glabrous except for the sparsely strigulose mid–petaline lines. Stamens 10–18, mostly in pairs; anthers strigulose. Pistillode minute, setulose, with or without well–developed stylodes. Female flowers with c. 8 filiform, setulose staminodes or staminodes absent. Ovary densely strigose. Fruit c. 0·6 cm. diameter, sparsely strigose, glabrescent. Chromosome number: 2n = 30.
Range
From Angola and Zambia south to the Cape Province, South Africa
Altitude range
From 1220–2830 m. in our area, but descending almost to sea–level in South Africa. 2830 1220
Notes
E. crispa has an extremely scattered distribution north of the Zambezi, but is much more abundant further south. It occurs in a wide range of vegetation types and in no fewer than 5 of the phytogeographic regions recognized by White (Boissiera, 24, p. 659–666, 1976), and hence is an ecological and choroiogical transgressor. In leaf–shape it is one of the most variable of all African trees. Within this one species there is almost as much variation in leaf–shape as in the whole of the genus Salx.Compared with E. natalensis and E. racemosa, relatively little of this variation appears to be sufficiently well–correlated with ecology and geography to justify taxonomic recognition, and only two extreme variants are given subspecific rank, Subsp. ovata, which occupies parts of the arid interior of South Africa, and extends only a short way into the Flora Zambesiaca area in south–east Botswana, behaves as a normal subspecies. Subspecies linearis, however, which has a disjunct distribution, occurs in three widely separated areas which are somewhat different in their ecology. The possibility of a polytopic origin from E. crispa subsp. crispa or a common ancestor cannot entirely be discounted, but requires further investigation.
Euclea crispa Thunb. Gürke [family EBENACEAE]
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