font settings and languages

Font Size: Large | Normal | Small
Font Face: Verdana | Geneva | Georgia
Languages:

Gossypium turneri

Interesting Facts

[ Back to top ]
 

Description

[ Back to top ]

Family Malvaceae

Herbs, shrubs , or less often trees ; indumentum usually with peltate scales or stellate hairs . Leaves alternate, stipulate , petiolate ; leaf blade usually palmately veined, entire or various lobed . Flowers solitary, less often in small cymes or clusters , axillary or subterminal , often aggregated into terminal racemes or panicles, usually conspicuous , actinomorphic , usually bisexual (unisexual in Kydia) . Epicalyx often present, forming an involucre around calyx, 3- to many lobed. Sepals 5, valvate , free or connate . Petals 5, free, contorted, or imbricate, basally adnate to base of filament tube . Stamens usually very many, filaments connate into tube; anthers 1-celled. Pollen spiny . Ovary superior, with 2-25 carpels, often separating from one another and from axis; ovules 1 to many per locule; style as many or 2 Ã as many as pistils, apex branched or capitate. Fruit a loculicidal capsule or a schizocarp, separating into individual mericarps, rarely berrylike when mature (Malvaviscus) ; carpels sometimes with an endoglossum (a crosswise projection from back wall of carpel to make it almost completely septate . Seeds often reniform , glabrous or hairy , sometimes conspicuously so.

About 100 genera and ca. 1000 species: tropical and temperate regions of N and S Hemisphere; 19 genera (four introduced ) and 81 species (24 endemic, 16 introduced) in China.

Molecular studies have shown that the members of the Bombacaceae, Malvaceae, Sterculiaceae, and Tiliaceae form a very well-defined monophyletic group that is divided into ten also rather well-defined clades, only two of which correspond to the traditional families Bombacaceae and Malvaceae. Some of the remaining groups are included entirely within either of the remaining families but others cut across the traditional divide between the Sterculiaceae and Tiliaceae. A majority of authors , most notably Bayer and Kubitzki (Fam. Gen. Vasc. Pl. 5: 225-311. 2003), has favored including everything within a greatly enlarged Malvaceae, and treating the individual clades as subfamilies. The alternative view is that the individual clades should be treated as a series of ten families: Bombacaceae (Bombacoideae), Brownlowiaceae (Brownlowioideae), Byttneriaceae (Byttnerioideae), Durionaceae (Durionoideae), Helicteraceae (Helicteroideae), Malvaceae (Malvoideae), Pentapetaceae (Dombeyoideae), Sparrmanniaceae (Grewioideae), Sterculiaceae (Sterculioideae), and Tiliaceae (Tilioideae) (Cheek in Heywood et al. , Fl. Pl. Fam. World. 201-202. 2007) . For the present treatment, we prefer to retain the familiar, traditional four families, so as to maintain continuity with the treatments in FRPS, and to await a consensus on the two alternative strategies for dealing with the very widely accepted clades.

The traditional Malvaceae coincides exactly with one of the major clades. The only possible problem is the relationship with the Bombacaceae, which also has primarily 1-loculed anthers, and some authorities have suggested that the Bombacaceae should be included within the Malvaceae.

Members of the Malvaceae are important as fiber crops (particularly cotton, Gossypium) . Young leaves of many species can be used as vegetables, and species of Abelmoschus and Hibiscus are grown as minor food crops. Many species have attractive flowers and an ever-increasing selection is grown as ornamentals . Several have been cultivated for a very long time, particularly species of Hibiscus, and some of these are not known in the wild.[1]

Genus Gossypium

Herbs annual or perennial , sometimes shrubs ; all parts irregularly dotted with dark oil glands . Leaf blades usually palmately 3-9-lobed, rarely entire. Flowers solitary, subterminal . Pedicel not articulated, usually with glands below insertion of epicalyx lobes . Epicalyx lobes 3(-7), foliaceous , glandular , free or connate at base , entire or toothed to deeply laciniate . Calyx cup-shaped, nearly truncate to 5-lobed. Corolla white or yellow, sometimes with purple center, large; petals 5, apex rounded . Staminal column with many anthers along entire length, apex truncate. Ovary 3-5-loculed; ovules 2 to many per locule; style short, rod-shaped, stigma clavate , 5-grooved. Capsule globose or ellipsoid , loculicidally dehiscent . Seeds globose, densely white long woolly , mixed with short hairs or without short hairs.

About 20 species: tropical and subtropical regions; four species (all introduced ) in China.[2]

Taxonomy

[ Back to top ]

Notes

Publishing author : Fryxell Publication : Madroño 25: 155 (-156) 1978

Place of publication: Madroño 25:155, t. 1. 1978

Name verified on 10-Aug-1999 by ARS Systematic Botanists. Last updated: 05-Nov-2001

Similar Species

[ Back to top ]

Members of the genus Gossypium

ZipcodeZoo has pages for 23 species, subspecies, varieties, forms, and cultivars in this genus:

G. arboreum (China Cotton) · G. australe (Australian Native Cotton) · G. barbadense (Cotton) · G. barbadense var. breve (American-Egyptian Cotton) · G. barbadense var. deltaicum (American-Egyptian Cotton) · G. barbadense var. nubarense (American-Egyptian Cotton) · G. barbadense var. peruvianum (Peru Tree Cotton) · G. barbadense var. strictiflorum (American-Egyptian Cotton) · G. capitis-viridis (Cape Verde Cotton) · G. darwinii (Darwins Cotton) · G. herbaceum (Cotton) · G. herbaceum 'Erlene's Green' (Cotton) · G. hirsutum (American Cotton) · G. hirsutum f. rubrocoloratum (American Upland Cotton) · G. hirsutum L. var. hirsutum OFF. (Upland Cotton) · G. hirsutum var. harlandianum (American Upland Cotton) · G. hirsutum var. hirsutum (Upland Cotton) · G. hirsutum var. marie-galante (Marie Galante Cotton) · G. hirsutum var. praticolum (American Upland Cotton) · G. hirsutum 'Betica' (Upland Cotton 'betica') · G. sturtianum (Sturt's Desert Rose) · G. thurberi (Thurber's Cotton) · G. tomentosum (Hawai'i Cotton)

More Info

[ Back to top ]

Further Reading

[ Back to top ]

Notes

[ Back to top ]

Contributors

Data Sources

Accessed through GBIF Data Portal November 20, 2007:

Identifiers

Footnotes

  1. Ya Tang, Michael G. Gilbert & Laurence J. Dorr "Malvaceae". in Flora of China Vol. 12 Page 240, 264,299, 302. Published by Science Press (Beijing) and Missouri Botanical Garden Press. Online at EFloras.org. [back]
  2. "Gossypium". in Flora of China Vol. 12 Page 264, 296. Published by Science Press (Beijing) and Missouri Botanical Garden Press. Online at EFloras.org. [back]
Last Revised: 2012-04-18