22. Thyrsanthella Pichon, Bull. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat., sér. 2. 20: 192. 1948.
[E]
[Greek thyrsos, thyrse or panicle, and anthos, flower, and Latin -ella, diminutive, alluding to inflorescence]
David E. Lemke
Vines, suffruticose; latex milky. Stems twining, unarmed, glabrous or sparsely eglandular-pubescent. Leaves deciduous, opposite, petiolate; stipular colleters interpetiolar and intrapetiolar; laminar colleters absent. Inflorescences axillary, thyrsiform, pedunculate. Flowers: calycine colleters present; corolla pale yellow, salverform, aestivation dextrorse; corolline corona absent; androecium and gynoecium not united into a gynostegium; stamens inserted near top of corolla tube; anthers connivent, adherent to stigma, connectives enlarged, 2-lobed, locules 4; pollen free, not massed into pollinia, translators absent; nectaries 5, distinct or connate. Fruits follicles, usually paired, erect or pendulous, brown, slender, terete, surface smooth, glabrous. Seeds linear, flattened, not winged, not beaked, comose, not arillate.
Species 1: c, e United States.
Pichon erected Thyrsanthella to accommodate a single species that has been treated traditionally as the sole native North American representative of Trachelospermum, a genus otherwise restricted to southeastern Asia. Recent molecular work (T. Livshultz et al. 2007) has supported the recognition of Thyrsanthella as distinct from Trachelospermum.
