Pavetta

Genus of flowering plants in the coffee, madder and bedstraw family Rubiaceae

Pavetta
Pavetta capensis
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Gentianales
Family: Rubiaceae
Subfamily: Ixoroideae
Tribe: Pavetteae
Genus: Pavetta
L.
Type species
Pavetta indica
L.
Synonyms
  • Acmostima Raf.
  • Baconia DC.
  • Crinita Houtt.
  • Exechostylus K.Schum.
  • Pavate Adans.
  • Verulamia DC. ex Poir.

Pavetta is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. It comprises about 360 species of trees, evergreen shrubs and sub-shrubs. It is found in woodlands, grasslands and thickets in sub-tropical and tropical Africa and Asia. The plants are cultivated for their simple but variable leaves, usually opposite but also occur in triple whorls. The leaves are often membranous with dark bacterial nodules. Pavetta has small, white, tubular flowers, sometimes salviform or funnel-shaped with 4 spreading petal lobes. The flowers are carried on terminal corymbs or cymes.[1]

Gousiekte

Two Pavetta species, Pavetta harborii and Pavetta schummaniana, harbor endophytic Burkholderia bacteria in visible leaf nodules and are known to cause gousiekte, a cardiotoxicosis of ruminants characterised by heart failure four to eight weeks after ingestion of certain rubiaceous plants.[2]

Species

Selected species include:

Pictures

References

  1. ^ Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants, C. Brickell, 1996, London, Royal Horticultural Society, ISBN 0-7513-0436-0.
  2. ^ Verstraete B, Van Elst D, Steyn H, Van Wyk B, Lemaire B, Smets E, Dessein S (2011). "Endophytic bacteria in toxic South African plants: identification, phylogeny and possible involvement in gousiekte". PLOS ONE. 6 (4): e19265. Bibcode:2011PLoSO...619265V. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0019265. PMC 3082559. PMID 21541284.

External links

  • Media related to Pavetta at Wikimedia Commons
  • Data related to Pavetta at Wikispecies
  • World Checklist of Rubiaceae
Taxon identifiers
Pavetta