Genus of flowering plants in the borage family Boraginaceae
Greeneocharis is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae. There are two species, and it has a disjunct distribution in the western United States and northwestern Mexico in North America and western Argentina in southern South America. It is part of subtribe of "Amsinckiinae".
It was once thought to be a either a subgenus or synonym of "Cryptantha" Lehm. ex G. Don, before being segregated out due to molecular phylogenetic analysis.
Description.
It is an annual herb, with cushion-like, roots, which can have red-purple tinge. It has branches ascending to erect on a slender stem, generally strigose (having straight hairs all pointing in more or less the same direction). The leaves are sessile, arranged alternate and congested at the branch tips. They are linear, oblanceolate, or narrowly oblong (in shape) and hairy. The inflorescence is spike-like cymes. They have flower bracts. The flower consists of calyx lobes which are fused at base, and the tube is circumscissile in fruit (meaning it splits or opens along a circumference). The white, corolla limb is in diameter with appendages present. After it has flowered it produces a fruit (or seed capsule), which has a pedicel 0-0.5 mm in fruit. The fruit axis is similar to the nutlet length. It can have between 2-4 nutlets, which are generally similar (or dissimilar), smooth to roughened and without ridges. The margin is rounded and has an attachment scar abutted near apex, forked and gapped at the base. The style is extended to or just below nutlet tips.
Taxonomy.
The Latin specific epithet "Greeneocharis" is derived from California botanist Edward Lee Greene (1843–1915) and "charis" which means "beauty, delight".
It was first published Nat. Pflanzenfam., Register on page 460 in 1899.
Then in 1924, Ivan M. Johnston wrote that the genus of "Oreocarya" could be combined with "Cryptantha". Edwin Blake Payson in 1927 (A Monograph of the section "Oreocarya" of "Cryptantha", Ann. Mo. Bot. Gard. 14:211-358) agreed with Johnston and he had four sections in
"Cryptantha": "Eucryptantha" (= "Cryptantha"), "Geocarya", "Krynitzkia" (inclusive of "Eremocarya", "Greeneocharis", and "Johnstonella"), and "Oreocarya".
Larry Higgins (1971), another expert on the perennial taxa, published a revised monograph of "Oreocarya", and agreed with Johnston and Payson on the
inclusion of "Oreocarya" within "Cryptantha", but also elevating the four sections of Johnston (1927) and Payson (1927) to subgenera. Although they were sometimes still called synonyms of "Cryptantha".
In 2012, the phylogenetic relationship of members of the genus "Cryptantha" was carried out, based on dna sequencing analyses, it was then
proposed that the resurrection of the following genera; "Eremocarya", "Greeneocharis", "Johnstonella", and also "Oreocarya".
Species.
2 accepted species;
Distribution.
The genus is found in the United States (within the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming) and also in north western Mexico and southern and northwestern Argentina.
References.
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