''Haplocarpha rueppellii'' is a very low to low (1–8 cm high)
perennial plant
In horticulture, the term perennial (''wikt:per-#Prefix, per-'' + ''wikt:-ennial#Suffix, -ennial'', "through the year") is used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annual plant, annuals and biennial plant, biennials. It has thus been d ...
with a ground
rosette
Rosette is the French diminutive of ''rose''. It may refer to:
Flower shaped designs
* Rosette (award), a mark awarded by an organisation
* Rosette (design), a small flower design
*hence, various flower-shaped or rotational symmetric forms:
** R ...
of entire leaves and short-stemmed, yellow
flowerheads, that contain both ray and disc florets, and is assigned to the family
Asteraceae
Asteraceae () is a large family (biology), family of flowering plants that consists of over 32,000 known species in over 1,900 genera within the Order (biology), order Asterales. The number of species in Asteraceae is rivaled only by the Orchi ...
. The species is an
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...
of the highlands of Ethiopia and eastern Africa.
Description
''Haplocarpha rueppellii'' is a creeping perennial plant that can grow into dense mats.
[ cited on ]
Roots, stems and leaves
There are many thick, almost tuberous roots, emerging from a
rootstock
A rootstock is part of a plant, often an underground part, from which new above-ground growth can be produced. It could also be described as a stem with a well developed root system, to which a bud from another plant is grafted. It can refer to ...
of 1–2 cm in diameter creeping at the soil surface. The shiny, somewhat fleshy green leaves have a short leaf stalk that may have spiderweb-like hairs at their base. The leaf blade varies between almost round, ovate, or longish, diamond or inverted egg-shaped, 2–13 cm long, 1–7.5 cm wide, with the base gradually narrowing, rounded or hart-shaped, the margin entire to scalloped, with shallow irregular teeth, saw-shaped or almost lobed, the leaf tip pointy, blunt or rounded and the teeth may be ending in a soft spine. The upper leaf surface with few or may hairs or even hairy like a spiderweb, the lower leaf surface with densely felty beneath with spiderweb hairs.
Inflorescences
The stalk of the flowerhead is pinkish in color, somewhat flattened, with shallow wings, 1–11 cm long, widest at the clasping base, up to 8 mm wide. Usually every rosette carries several slender, felty, pinkish, leafless, erect
scapes of up to 13 cm, sometimes swollen beneath the single flower head. Each flowerhead is 1.5–5 cm in diameter. The
involucre
In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis or cone scale.
Bracts are usually different from foliage leaves in size, color, shape or texture. They also look ...
consists of two or three, sometimes four whorls of linear to narrowly ovate or inverted egg-shaped bracts, each 4–12 mm long and 1–3 mm wide, with papery margins, covered with many of few hairs. The common base of the florets (called
receptacle) is 3–4 mm across, has the shape of a shallow, slightly hollowed dome, which may or may not carry a scale at the foot of each floret.
Florets
Along the outside are eight to sixteen spreading yellow
ray florets
Asteraceae () is a large family of flowering plants that consists of over 32,000 known species in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. The number of species in Asteraceae is rivaled only by the Orchidaceae, and which is the larger fa ...
, which are ovate, elliptic or egg-shaped, although about one eighth is tube-shaped. Each ray floret is 1–2.5 cm long, 2–6 mm wide, entire or sometimes with mostly one to three teeth at the tip and mostly four or five veins, hairless or with scattered multicellular hairs on the lower surface. In the centre of the flowerhead are mostly between twenty and forty (sometimes as few as eleven) yellow and urn-shaped
disk florets, of 3.5–7 mm long, which divide into five triangular lobes, one third of the length of the floret, that spread or bend down, and do not have hair.
Fruits and seeds
The one-seeded indehiscent fruits are not embedded in the common base of the florets receptacle, is inverted cone-shaped or oblong, has three or four ribs, is at least 3 mm long, and half as wide, with a smooth surface or with tiny wrinkles and hairless. At the tip is one row of scales (the
pappus) of 0.5–1 mm long, that are free in the outer florets, but merged at their foot in disc florets. These scales are split into twelve to fifteen standing, awl-shaped lobes, with a long, narrow tip, divided in side-lobes and without hair.
Variability
The upper leaf surface of plants of ''Haplocarpha rueppellii'' growing on
Mount Elgon
Mount Elgon is an extinct shield volcano on the border of Uganda and Kenya, north of Kisumu and west of Kitale. The mountain's highest point, named "Wagagai", is located entirely within Uganda. are consistently densely covered in multicellular hairs. Elsewhere, hairiness varies between specimens in the same population. Scholars therefore are reluctant to assign the form from Mount Elgon to a variety different from the typical form.
Taxonomy
In 1848
Carl Heinrich "Bipontinus" Schultz
Carl Heinrich Schultz (30 June 1805 – 17 December 1867) was a German physician and botanist, and a brother to botanist Friedrich Wilhelm Schultz (1804–1876).
He is referred to as Carl Heinrich "Bipontinus" Schultz, Carl Heinrich Schultz Bipon ...
described ''Schnittspahnia rueppellii'', which he assigned to the
Annonaceae
The Annonaceae are a Family (biology), family of flowering plants consisting of trees, shrubs, or rarely lianas commonly known as the custard apple family or soursop family. With 108 accepted genera and about 2400 known species, it is the largest ...
, based on a specimen that was collected by
Eduard Rüppell
Wilhelm Peter Eduard Simon Rüppell, also spelled Rueppell (20 November 1794 – 10 December 1884) was a German Natural history, naturalist and List of explorers, explorer, best known for his collections and descriptions of plants and animals from ...
and
Georg Wilhelm Schimper
Georg Heinrich Wilhelm Schimper in Amharic sources known as Sambar (2 August 1804 – October 1878) was a German botanist and naturalist who spent more than forty years in Ethiopia collecting specimens of plants, mainly in Semien, the Tekeze ...
, from high elevations in the
Semien Mountains
The Simien Mountains (Amharic: ስሜን ተራራ or Səmen; also spelled Semain, Simeon and Semien), in northern Ethiopia, north east of Gondar in Amhara region, are part of the Ethiopian Highlands. They are a World Heritage Site (since 1978) a ...
in Ethiopia, and now reside in the
Kew Herbarium
The Kew Herbarium (herbarium code: K) is one of the world's largest and most historically significant herbaria, housed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London, England. Established in the 1850s on the ground floor of Hunter House, it has gro ...
.
Georg Carl Wilhelm Vatke
Georg Carl Wilhelm Vatke (12 August 1849, in Berlin – 6 April 1889, in Berlin) was a German botanist, who collected spermatophytes during 1868–1876 in Austria, Germany, Madagascar and Angola. He was an assistant at the botanical gardens in Berl ...
realised this plant belonged to the
Asteraceae
Asteraceae () is a large family (biology), family of flowering plants that consists of over 32,000 known species in over 1,900 genera within the Order (biology), order Asterales. The number of species in Asteraceae is rivaled only by the Orchi ...
, and renamed it to ''Landtia rueppellii'' in 1875.
Karl August Otto Hoffmann
Karl August Otto Hoffmann (25 October 1853 in Beeskow – 11 September 1909) was a German botanist and a high school teacher in Berlin. Author of ''Sertum plantarum madagascariensium'', the genus ''Hoffmanniella'' in the family (biology), famil ...
thought the species should be assigned to the genus ''
Arctotis
''Arctotis'' is a genus of annual and perennial plants in the family Asteraceae.
''Arctotis'' is native to dry stony slopes in southern Africa. Some of the plants are alternatively placed in the genus ''Venidium''. The common name is "Afric ...
'', creating the
new combination
In Taxonomy (biology), biological taxonomy, a combinatio nova (abbreviated comb. nov. or n. comb.) refers to the formal renaming of an organism's scientific name when it is transferred to a different genus, reclassified within a different specie ...
''A. rueppellii'' in 1895. A plant collected by
Ernest Edward Galpin
Ernest Edward Galpin (1858–1941), was a botanist and banker born in the Cape Colony. He left some 16,000 sheets to the National Herbarium in Pretoria and was dubbed "the Prince of Collectors" by General Smuts. Galpin discovered half a dozen g ...
on
Mount Kinangop in the southern
Aberdare Range
The Aberdare Range (formerly the Sattima Range, Kikuyu: ''Nyandarua'') is a long mountain range of upland, north of Kenya's capital Nairobi with an average elevation of . It straddles the counties of Nyandarua, Nyeri, Murang'a, Kiambu and ...
of Kenya, and also kept at Kew, was regarded different enough by the very young
John Hutchinson, who named it ''Landtia lobulata'' in 1914.
Gustave Beauverd
Gustave Beauverd (1867–1942) was a Swiss botanist, specializing in Pteridophytes, Bryophytes, and Spermatophytes.
For a period of time he worked at the " Herbier Bossier", and is remembered for his investigations of the genus '' Melampyrum''. H ...
merged the genus ''Landtia'' with ''Haplocarpha'', and created the new combination ''H. rueppellii'' in 1915. Later, in 1930, Hutchinson and
Marion Beatrice Moss described a plant collected by
Arthur Disbrowe Cotton
Arthur Disbrowe Cotton, (15 January 1879 – 27 December 1962) was an English plant pathologist, mycologist, phycologist, and botanist.
A.D. Cotton was born in London and educated at King's College School and the Royal College of Science ...
on
Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro () is a dormant volcano in Tanzania. It is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain above sea level in the world, at above sea level and above its plateau base. It is also the highest volcano i ...
, since stored at Kew, naming it ''Landtia kilimanjarica''. All of these names are now regarded
synonymous
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...
.
Phylogeny
Comparison of DNA of species assigned to the subtribe Arctotidinae has cast doubt on the
monophyly
In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria:
# the grouping contains its own most recent comm ...
of the genus ''Haplocarpha''. The type species, ''H. lanata'', seems most related to ''H. lyrata'' and ''Arctoteca calundula''. ''H. rueppellii'' and ''H. nervosa'' on the other hand appear to be the first branch to split from the remaining species in the subtribe. If this finding is robust, reinstatement of ''Landtia'' has been suggested, meaning our species would have to be called ''Landtia rueppellii''.
Distribution
In Kenya ''H. rueppellii'' can for instance be found at
Mount Elgon
Mount Elgon is an extinct shield volcano on the border of Uganda and Kenya, north of Kisumu and west of Kitale. The mountain's highest point, named "Wagagai", is located entirely within Uganda. , in
Mau Forest
Mau Forest is a forest complex in the East African Rift, Rift Valley of Kenya. It is the largest indigenous montane forest in East Africa. The Mau Forest complex has an area of .
The forest area has some of the highest rainfall rates in Kenya. Ma ...
, on
Mount Kenya
Mount Kenya (Meru people, Meru: ''Kĩrĩmaara,'' Kikuyu people, Kikuyu: ''Kĩrĩnyaga'', Kamba language, Kamba: ''Ki nyaa'', Embu language, Embu: ''Kĩ nyaga'') is an extinct volcano in Kenya and the Highest mountain peaks of Africa, second-highe ...
. In Tanzania it can be found at the Kilimanjaro complex, such as on the Shira Plateau. In Ethiopia it has been registered in the
Bale Mountains
The Bale Mountains (also known as the Urgoma Mountains) are mountain ranges in the Oromia Region of southeast Ethiopia, south of the Awash River, part of the Ethiopian Highlands. They include Mount Tullu Demtu, Tullu Demtu, the fourth-highest mou ...
. The plant also may occur elsewhere in highlands in Ethiopia, eastern Africa and possibly South Africa.
Habitat and ecology
In Dodola Forest, at the north flank of the Bale Mountains, Ethiopia, ''H. rueppellii'' occurs in several different
plant communities
A plant community is a collection or Association (ecology), association of plant species within a designated geographical unit, which forms a relatively uniform patch, distinguishable from neighboring patches of different vegetation types. The comp ...
, obviously with different other species. In the ''
Hagenia abyssinica
''Hagenia'' is a monotypic genus of flowering plant with the sole species ''Hagenia abyssinica'', native to the high-elevation Afromontane regions of central and eastern Africa. It also has a disjunct distribution in the high mountains of East A ...
''-''
Hypericum revolutum
''Hypericum revolutum'' is a shrub or small tree in the genus ''Hypericum'' native to Arabia and Africa. It is evergreen, with leaves opposite, closely spaced and crowded at the ends of branches, c. 20 × 5 mm, green to slightly glaucous, se ...
''-community it occurs with ''
Alchemilla abyssinica
''Alchemilla'' is a genus of herbaceous perennial plants in the family Rosaceae, with the common name lady's mantle applied generically as well as specifically to '' Alchemilla mollis'' when referred to as a garden plant. The plant used as a her ...
'', ''
A. fischerii'', ''
Asparagus africanus
''Asparagus africanus'', also known as African asparagus, bush asparagus, wild asparagus, climbing asparagus fern, ornamental asparagus and sparrow grass, is an African species of plant that is found in a variety of habitats. It has multiple medi ...
'', ''
Crepis rueppellii'', ''
Cynoglossum caeruleum'', ''
Euphorbia schimperii'', ''
Hydrocotyle mannii'', ''
Kalanchoe petitiana
''Kalanchoe'' ( ), (also called "kalanchöe" or "kalanchoë"), is a genus of about 125 species of tropical, succulent plants in the stonecrop family Crassulaceae, mainly native to Madagascar and tropical Africa. A ''Kalanchoe'' species was one o ...
'' and ''
Satureja paradoxa'' in the
herbaceous layer
In ecology, stratification refers to the vertical layering of a habitat; the arrangement of vegetation in layers. It classifies the layers (sing. ''stratum'', pl. ''strata'') of vegetation largely according to the different heights to which their p ...
. This species grows at an altitude of 2250–4650 m.
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q15557889
Arctotideae
Plants described in 1848
Flora of East Tropical Africa
Afromontane flora