''Alternanthera nodiflora'' (common name common joyweed) is a species of flowering plant in the family Amaranthaceae. It is endemic to

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, growing in all mainland states. It is naturalised in Tasmania, over much of Africa, in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, and in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

Description

''Alternanthera nodiflora'' is an erect annual herb. The branches are almost without a covering but the nodes are covered with dense intertwined hairs, and there are two lines of hairs along the branches. The leaves, too, are almost without a covering and are linear, 2-8 cm long and have smooth margins. The inflorescences are globular, and often clustered. The fruit is less than half the length of the perianth. The style is very short.

Taxonomy and naming

It was first described by Robert Brown in 1810. The type specimen i
BM001015779
(collected on the east coast of Australia); Isotypes ar
E00279928
(collected at Broadsound)
P00622600
(all three collected by Brown). The name is accepted by the

Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH) is an association of the leaders of herbaria in Australia and New Zealand. It is governed by a constitution. It endorses the taxonomy and nomenclature of the Australian Plant Census, which is the so ...

, by

Plants of the World online Plants of the World Online (POWO) is an online database published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It was launched in March 2017 with the ultimate aim being "to enable users to access information on all the world's known seed-bearing plants by ...

, but is considered a synonym of '' Alternanthera sessilis'' by Catalogue of Life. The specific epithet, ''nodiflora'', derives from the Latin, ''nodus'',( "knot" or "node") and ''flos'', ''floris ("''flower") to give an adjective describing the plant as having flowers arranged in a knot-shaped inflorescence or flowering at the nodes.

Gallery

Alternanthera nodiflora plant1 (8372256548).jpg Alternanthera nodiflora flowers.jpg Alternanthera nodiflora fruit.jpg

References

External links

''Alternanthera nodiflora'' occurrence data from Australasian Virtual Herbarium
{{Taxonbar, from=Q22111965 Flora of Australia nudiflora Taxa named by Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773)