川蔓藻科 CHUAN MAN ZAO KE
Guo Youhao(郭友好)[1], Robert R. Haynes[2], C. Barre Hellquist[3]
Plants perennial or annual, in saline, brackish, or extremely hard water, totally submerged. Rhizomes slender, usually branched. Stems terete, elongated or not. Leaves sessile, alternate, narrowly linear, entire or minutely denticulate toward apex; stpules adnate to leaf base and sheathing stems; sheaths shortly auriculate, ligule absent. Inflorescences of few flowered spike, pedunculate; spikes enclosed by involucral leaves at first; peduncles short at first but elongated in fruit. Flowers hermaphroditic, small, ebracteate, perianth absent; stamens 2; anthers sessile, extrorse, opening by longitudinal slits; carpels 4 or more, free, 1-ovuled, sessile in flower but usually becoming slender stipitate in fruit; stigma sessile, peltate or umbonate. Fruit drupaceous, asymmetrical, indehiscent. Seeds without endosperm.
One genus with 3–10 species: salt marshes throughout temperate and tropical regions; one species in China.
川蔓藻属 chuan man zao shu
Description and distribution as for the family.
川蔓藻 chuan man zao
Ruppia maritima subsp. rostellata Koch; R. rostellata Koch ex Reichenbach.
Stems elongated, densely branched. Leaves 2–10 cm × ca. 0.5 mm with conspicuous midvein, apex acuminate or acute; sheaths 2–10 × ca. 0.4 mm. Spikes 2-flowered, 2–4 cm; peduncles filiform, shortly accrescent after anthesis. Anthers elliptic. Carpels 4–6. Fruitlets obliquely ovoid, ca. 2(–3) × 1.5 mm, beak ca. 0.2 mm, with a stalk 0.5–1.7 cm. Fl. and fr. Apr–Jun. 2n=20, 40.
Brackish water. Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Qinghai, Shandong, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Zhejiang [Widely distributed in brackish waters of the temperate and subtropical regions of the world; Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America].
[1] Herbarium or Wuhan University, Department of Biology, Wuchang, Hubei, People’s Republic of China
[2] Herbarium, Biological Sciences, Biodiversity and Systematics Department, University of Alabama, Box 870345, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0345, U.S.A.
[3] Department of Biology, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams, Massachusetts 01247-4100, U.S.A.