Glaucium Mill.

Scientific Description

Family Papaveraceae.

Habit and leaf form. Herbs; with coloured juice (the juice yellow). Annual to perennial; plants with a basal concentration of leaves. Mesophytic. Leaves alternate; spiral; petiolate (in the rosette), or sessile (above); non-sheathing; simple. Leaf blades dissected; irregularly pinnatifid to much-divided (bipinnatisect); pinnately veined; cross-venulate. Leaves without stipules; without a persistent basal meristem. Leaf anatomy. Hydathodes present, or absent. Hairs present. Stem anatomy. Nodes unilacunar, or tri-lacunar. Secondary thickening absent, or developing from a conventional cambial ring.

Reproductive type, pollination. Fertile flowers hermaphrodite. Unisexual flowers absent. Plants hermaphrodite. Entomophilous.

Inflorescence and flower features. Flowers solitary, or aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; if aggregated, in cymes and in racemes. The terminal inflorescence unit cymose, or racemose. Inflorescences terminal. Flowers bracteate; medium-sized, or large; operculate (calyptrate), or not operculate; odourless; 2 merous; tetracyclic to pentacyclic to polycyclic. Floral receptacle developing an androphore, or developing a gynophore, or with neither androphore nor gynophore. Free hypanthium absent. Hypogynous disk absent. Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla; 6; 3 -whorled; isomerous. Calyx 2; 1 -whorled; polysepalous; imbricate; unequal but not bilabiate, or regular; not persistent (caducous). Corolla 4; 2 -whorled (2+2); polypetalous; imbricate and crumpled in bud; regular; yellow, or orange, or red; not spurred. Androecium 50–100 (i.e. ‘many’). Androecial sequence determinable, or not determinable. Androecial members maturing centripetally; free of the perianth; free of one another; 3–15 -whorled (? generally indefinite in 2- or 3-merous, regularly alternating whorls). Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 50–100 (i.e. ‘many’); polystemonous. Anthers basifixed; non-versatile; dehiscing via longitudinal slits; tetrasporangiate. Gynoecium 2 carpelled. The pistil 1 celled. Carpels isomerous with the perianth. Gynoecium syncarpous; synstylovarious to eu-syncarpous; superior. Ovary unilocular; 1 locular. Locules secondarily divided by ‘false septa’, or without ‘false septa’. Gynoecium transverse; non-stylate, or stylate (style short). Stigmas 1 (then bilobed), or 2 (depending on interpretation of stigmatic area); dorsal to the carpels, or commissural, or dorsal to the carpels and commissural; discoid; dry type; papillate; Group II type. Placentation parietal. Ovules in the single cavity 20–50 (i.e. ‘many’); horizontal, or ascending; with superior or lateral raphe; arillate, or non-arillate; anatropous, or campylotropous, or amphitropous.

Fruit and seed features. Fruit non-fleshy; dehiscent; a capsule (narrowly cylindrical to slightly tapering to both ends, straight, curved or coiled, with the seeds partly embedded in the spongy placenta). Capsules dehiscing by 2 basipetal or acropetal valves to varying degree. Seeds globose, ellipsoid or reniform; copiously endospermic. Endosperm oily. Seeds non-arillate. Embryo rudimentary at the time of seed release, or weakly differentiated. Cotyledons 2. Seedling. Germination phanerocotylar, or cryptocotylar.

Physiology, biochemistry. Aluminium accumulation not found. Photosynthetic pathway: C₃.

Geography, cytology, number of species. Adventive. Australian states and territories: Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, New South Wales, and Victoria.