Desert shrub, succulent leaves, tiny purple flowers

Discussion in 'Plants: Identification' started by wcutler, Feb 9, 2013.

  1. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    This is in Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona. The shrub is around 2m tall or maybe less, succulent leaves 3cm long in whorls, tubular flowers not larger than 1cm across, with mostly four petals though several had five petals. Any of these measurement details could be inaccurate.
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2013
  2. Tyrlych

    Tyrlych Rising Contributor 10 Years

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    Lycium perhaps ?
     
  3. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    Thanks, Tyrlych. Solanaceae. Glad to see it might be something I really don't know. In the photo on this wikipedia page on Lycium andersonii, the photo looks just like it. In the photo on this Virginia Tech page on the same species, the photo doesn't look anything like it. But there are 20 species in North America, so maybe a different species.

    I'm particularly surprised by common names of boxthorn and desert-thorn, since I can see only two possible thorns in my photos and don't remember noticing thorns, which seemed to be prevalant on so many of the plants in this garden. Thorns could easily have been there and escaped my notice.
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2013
  4. saltcedar

    saltcedar Rising Contributor 10 Years

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    Lycium can be thorny or thornless even within a species.
     
  5. Sundrop

    Sundrop Well-Known Member

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    According to Wikipedia Lyciums have alternate, simple leaves and corollas of five petals.

    This says to me that the plant on your pictures is not a Lycium. It slightly resembles, may be, some species of Lycium, but the flowers look very different.
     
  6. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    Hi, Sundrop. Without judging the correctness of the ID, I think the description on that Wikipedia page does not seem all that accurate. For instance, here's a SW Biodiversity Consortium photo of Lycium californicum (which I don't think it is) that shows a not-alternate leaf arrangement, although the clusters do alternate on the branch, as they might be doing in my photos.

    The Jepson Herbarium description makes more sense of this, dealing with the leaf clusters and the number of lobes on the flowers:
    and
    Here's an illustration from Jepson's "A Flora of California" for Lycium torreyi (one of several links on this UCJEPS page).

    Here is a photo of Lycium fremontii, Freemont's Desert Thorn, from Calphotos (query: scientific name begins with lycium; there are several pages of photos, but I don't seem to be able to link to the result of the query). This one is actually looking pretty good on colour, length of the corolla and calyx tubes, prominence of the pistil in relation to the stamens, and showing four and five-lobed flowers.
     
  7. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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  8. Sundrop

    Sundrop Well-Known Member

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    The flowers of Lycium fremontii on the Wiki page have 5-6 petalls. Calphotos show also a couple of 4-petalled flowers among 5-petalled.
    So, it looks like the info "a corolla of five . . . petals" on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycium page is incorrect. It looks like there are exceptions, the question is how rare (or common, may be) they are?

    Interestingly, the plant on your photos has 4-petalled flowers, with only one 5-petalled.
     
  9. Andrey Zharkikh

    Andrey Zharkikh Well-Known Member 10 Years

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  10. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    Thanks for the comments, Sundrop and Andrey.

    So many of these references don't agree with each other. The Intermountain page gives L. fremontii leaves as 8–35 mm long; the Virginia Tech page for the same species says leaves 1/4 to 1/2 inch long, which does not translate to the same measurement. I was ready to rule out fremontii based on that measurement until I read the one at Intermountain again.

    Sundrop, I'm not sure we're going to find out how much variation there is within a single species, and L. fremontii has some varieties listed as well, but not described any place I have found. It does at least seem clear though that there is not a fixed number of lobes on the flowers.


    Andrey, I agree on the colour of L. shockleyi not being right, and also, the photos show it as a ground-hugging shrub. Were you saying there's a key on the Intermountain page? I found an interactive sort of key there but that page doesn't show shockleyi at all, so you must have been looking at a different page.
     
  11. Andrey Zharkikh

    Andrey Zharkikh Well-Known Member 10 Years

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    What I referred to was the Intermountain Flora book in the 8-volume series. However, it only includes Utah, Nevada and just the margins of the neighboring states. The areal of Lycium fremontii (Arizona and California) is not included.
     

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