Summary ³

Lepuropetalon is a genus of flowering plants in the family Celastraceae as that family was defined by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group in 2009. Before the publication of the APG III system in 2009, Lepuropetalon had been placed with Parnassia in the family Parnassiaceae, now usually treated as a segregate of Celastraceae. Lepuropetalon has only one species, Lepuropetalon spathulatum. It is a winter annual that is most abundant in eastern Texas and we

Description ⁴

Lepuropetalon spathulatum is a diminutive winter annual. In favorable conditions, it forms a hemispherical tuft, up to 2 cm tall and wide, rarely larger. It often consists of no more than a single flower above a few tiny leaves, the whole plant being less than 5 mm high and 5mm across. The stems, leaves, and flowers are conspicuously dotted with epidermal sacs of tannin that tend to be arranged in lines. These are golden-brown or slightly reddish in color. The stems are rather thick and slightly angled. The leaves are alternate or subopposite in arrangement, sessile, long, and wide at the end like a spoon or spatula.

The flowers are solitary on the ends of stems, immediately above the leaves, and usually face upward. They are large compared to the rest of the plant, 2 to 3mm in diameter with male and female parts both present and functional. The calyx consists of five broad, often unequal sepals that are joined in the lower part to form a floral cup that encloses the lower half of the ovary and is thickened along its fissures to form five ribs. The sepals persist beyond the maturity of the fruit.

The petals are scale-like, white and barely visible, on the rim of the floral cup between the sepals, or sometimes absent. They die but remain, along with the sepals.

The five stamens are short and opposite the sepals. Initially, they are turned inward and dump their pollen on the ovary. Eventually, they are bent outward by the expansion of the ovary. The anthers are yellow, erect, and subglobular. The five staminodes are opposite the petals and dilated at the ends.

The gynoecium is unilocular and composed of three fused carpels. The ovules are numerous and attached near the margins of the carpels. The three stigmas are separate or initially joined at the base, but soon separating with growth of the ovary. The stigmas are commissural, meaning that the area that is receptive to pollen extends downward along the fissures where the carpels are joined.

The fruit is a capsule. The seeds are numerous and cylindrical, .15 to .2mm long, reddish when immature, and nearly black when ripe.

Sources and Credits

1. (c) Bob O'Kennon, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Bob O'Kennon
2. (c) Sam Kieschnick, some rights reserved (CC BY), uploaded by Sam Kieschnick
3. Adapted by Amber Leung from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepuropetalon_spathulatum
4. (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepuropetalon

More Info

• iNat taxon page
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• BOLD Systems BIN search
• eFloras.org
• Flora of North America (beta)
• Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
• HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants
• IPNI (with links to POWO, WFO, and BHL)
• NatureServe Explorer 2.0
• SEINet Symbiota portals
• Tropicos
• USDA PLANTS database
• World Flora Online

iNat Map