Y. NASIR

Morina coulteriana Illustration Credit: M.Y. Saleem

Perennial herbs with spiny, exstipulate leaves. Flowers verticillate, each flower enclosed in an involucel. Involucel campanulate or tubular, limb with a prickly margin. Calyx persistent, limb 2-lobed. Corolla bilabiate, ringent, 5-lobed; the tube infundibuliform. Stamens 2 or 4, inserted at the throat. Gynoecium monocarpellary; ovary inferior, unilocular, with 1 pendulous ovule. Stigma capitate. Fruit an achene with a thick and rugose pericarp.

A monogeneric family distributed in S.E. Europe and Asia. Related to Dipsacaceae, from which it differs in the flowers in whorled axillary cymes, the green 2-lobed calyx, the bilabiate and ringent corolla, the terminal stigma and the rugose pericarp.

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to the United States Department of Agriculture for financing this research under P.L. 480 and to Messrs. B.L. Burtt, I.C. Hedge and Miss J. Lamond of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, for going through the manuscript and giving valuable suggestions.

Lower Taxon

• Morina Linn.