''Graderia'' is a genus of

plant Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ...

s in the family

Orobanchaceae Orobanchaceae, the broomrapes, is a family (biology), family of mostly parasitic plants of the order (biology), order Lamiales, with about 90 genus, genera and more than 2000 species. Many of these genera (e.g., ''Pedicularis'', ''Rhinanthus'', ...

, which is native to

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

and

Socotra Socotra, locally known as Saqatri, is a Yemeni island in the Indian Ocean. Situated between the Guardafui Channel and the Arabian Sea, it lies near major shipping routes. Socotra is the largest of the six islands in the Socotra archipelago as ...

. It belongs to the tribe Buchnereae. It is a

hemiparasitic A parasitic plant is a plant that derives some or all of its nutritional requirements from another living plant. They make up about 1% of angiosperms and are found in almost every biome. All parasitic plants develop a specialized organ called the ...

taxon.

Etymology

''Graderia'' is a taxonomic anagram derived from the name of the confamilial genus '' Gerardia''. The latter name is a taxonomic patronym honoring the English botanist

John Gerard John Gerard (also John Gerarde, 1545–1612) was an English herbalist with a large garden in Holborn, now part of London. His 1,484-page illustrated ''Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes'', first published in 1597, became a popular garde ...

Description

Sometimes a suffrutex with stems growing from a woody rhizome. Leaves may be opposite or alternate. The solitary flowers appear in the axils, and have a five-lobed calyx and corolla. The flower is tubular with four stamens, in pairs of unequal length. Each stamen has two divergent, oblong and curved

theca In biology, a theca (: thecae) is a sheath or a covering. Botany In botany, the theca is related to plant's flower anatomy. The theca of an angiosperm consists of a pair of microsporangia that are adjacent to each other and share a common ar ...

e. The two-locular ovary has numerous ovules, and produces numerous seeds in a fruit capsule.

Systematics

The genus includes some 4 species. * '' Graderia fruticosa''

Balf.f. Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour, KBE, FRS, FRSE (31 March 1853 – 30 November 1922) was a Scottish botanist. He was Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Glasgow from 1879 to 1885, Sherardian Professor of Botany at the University of Oxfor ...

is endemic to Socotra. * '' Graderia linearifolia'' Codd * '' Graderia scabra'' Benth. * '' Graderia subintegra'' Mast.

References

Orobanchaceae Orobanchaceae genera Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Orobanchaceae-stub