Tennantia Explained

Tennantia is a monotypic genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Rubiaceae.[1] It only contains one known species, Tennantia sennii

Description

It is a shrub, 1- tall, with whitish stems that are puberulous when young. The leaf-blades are elliptic to narrowly obovate in shape. They are 1- long and 0.5- wide. With rounded and sometimes minutely apiculate at the apex, glabrous or puberulous; stipules are 1- long. Calyx with limb-tube about 1.2mm long, with lobes about 0.8mm long. The corolla is white or tinged pink; with the perianth tube 1.5- long; the lobes are about 5mm long. The fruit (or seed capsule) is black, 5- in diameter and glabrous. The seeds are about 4mm long.[2]

Its native range is from Somalia to Kenya and Tanzania in eastern Tropical Africa.

The genus name of Tennantia is in honour of James Robert Tennant (b. 1928), a British botanist working at Kew Gardens.[3] The Latin specific epithet of sennii honors Lorenzo Senni (1879 - 1954), an Italian botanist who collected the type specimen. Both the genus and the species were first described and published in Kew Bull. Vol.36 on page 511 in 1981.[1]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Tennantia Verdc. Plants of the World Online Kew Science . Plants of the World Online . 17 March 2021 . en.
  2. Web site: Tennantia sennii in Global Plants on JSTOR . plants.jstor.org . 23 December 2021.
  3. Book: Burkhardt, Lotte . Verzeichnis eponymischer Pflanzennamen – Erweiterte Edition . Index of Eponymic Plant Names – Extended Edition . Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum, Freie Universität Berlin . 2018 . 978-3-946292-26-5 . pdf . German . Berlin . 10.3372/epolist2018 . 187926901 . 1 January 2021.