长管糙叶丰花草 chang guan cao ye feng hua cao

Borreria articularis (Linnaeus f.) F. N. Williams; Spermacoce flexuosa Loureiro.

Herbs, perennial, or subshrubs, prostrate to weakly ascending, perhaps to 50 cm tall; stems subterete to quadrate, glabrescent on sides, angles sharp to winged with wings to 0.1 mm wide, ciliolate to ciliate. Leaves sessile or subsessile; blade drying papery to leathery, oblong-elliptic, obovate, or spatulate, 8-15(-25) × 3-10 mm, both surfaces scaberulous-hispidulous and sometimes also hirtellous or hirsute, base cuneate to obtuse, margins scaberulous and often revolute, apex obtuse or rounded; secondary veins 2 or 3 pairs or not visible; stipules densely puberulent, sheath 1-2 mm, with 5-7 bristles 0.5-2(-6) mm. Inflorescences axillary, 5-8 mm in diam., with 1-6 flowers per axil; bracts linear or infrequently stipuliform, 1-5 mm. Calyx puberulent to hirtellous or scaberulous; hypanthium portion ellipsoid, 0.8-1 mm; lobes 4, linear to narrowly triangular, 1-1.5 mm, ciliolate or ciliate. Corolla perhaps pink to white, very slenderly funnelform to salverform, glabrous outside; tube (6.5-)9-10 mm, glabrous in throat; lobes triangular, 1-2 mm. Capsules ellipsoid to subglobose, sometimes slightly flattened perpendicular to septum, 2.2-2.5 × 1.5-2.5 mm, puberulent to hirtellous, pilosulous, and/or hispidulous, papery to cartilaginous, septicidal from apex with valves usually remaining connected at base, then both valves loculicidal through septum; seeds brown, oblong to elliptic-oblong in outline, 2-2.5 mm, obtuse at both ends, shiny, surface minutely granular or dimpled. Fl. and fr. May-Oct.

On open sandy lands at lower elevations. Fujian, Guangdong (Nanhai Zhudao), Taiwan (introduced and naturalized) [India, Indonesia, Japan (Ryukyu Islands), Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam; Africa, Australia].

The seeds of this species (as circumscribed here) were illustrated by Chaw and Sivarajan (Bot. Bull. Acad. Sin., n.s., 30: 19, f. 17-18. 1989).

This name is here used differently than in many previous floras in this region; the commonly collected plants treated by Chaw and Peng (J. Taiwan Mus. 40(1): 71-83. 1987) and W. C. Ko (in FRPS 71(2): 206-207. 1999) as Spermacoce articularis are here treated as S. hispida, which is the older name. Overall, there is confusion and/or disagreement about the application of these two names as well as the number of specimens that should be separated among these plants, which have been studied only based on regional floristic work rather than a systematic review of this species group across its entire range. Deb and Dutta (J. Econ. Taxon. Bot. 5(5): 1046-1048. 1984) synonymized S. hispida and S. articularis and recognized a single species, for which they described the corolla tube as ".3-1.7 mm. ..... shorter than the corolla lobes" while illustrating correspondingly a corolla with the tube 4-6 mm and several times longer than the corolla lobes. Sivarajan and Nair (Taxon 35: 363-369. 1986), followed by Ridsdale (in Dassanayake, Revis. Handb. Fl. Ceylon 12: 332-341. 1998) and Mill (Fl. Bhutan 2(2): 817-820. 1999), recognized two species in this group; however, a number of individual Chinese plants have some characters of each of these so their distinctions are problematic in our region. Two distinct groups of plants are separable in our region using the characters listed in the key to species above, and the protologues of these two names each correspond to one of these groups; the treatment here generally follows the annotations of Fosberg (in herb.).