Monographs Details:
Authority:

Kirkbride, Joseph H., Jr. 1976. A revision of the genus Declieuxia (Rubiaceae). Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 28 (4): 1-87.
Family:

Rubiaceae
Scientific Name:

Declieuxia
Description:

Genus Description - Perennial herbs, subshrubs, or shrubs, erect or spreading, stems terete, simple or diffuse-branched, many tissues with raphides. Stipules a ridge bearing 1, 3, or 6-7 appendages with a glandular apex, or reduced to a ridge, or rarely completely absent, the ridge sometimes with 1-6 glandules. Leaves opposite or in whorls of 3-7, some with 1-5 pairs of smaller leaves in the axils, sessile to petiolate, entire, highly diverse in size and form. Inflorescences compound dichasia, modified cymes or cymules, or a solitary flower, terminal and/or axillary, pedunculate or sessile, with 1 to many flowers, with 1 to many or no axes, the axes dichasial or modified scorpoid cymous, the peduncle with 2 or 3 bracts at apex. Flowers heterostylous or partially so, protandrous (D. tenuiflora), or undertermined (D. dusenii), subpedicellate or sessile, each dichasium subtended by 2 bracts or rarely ebracteate, the dichasial bracts of various sizes and forms; hypanthium compressed laterally, with 4 (or 2 in D. coerulea) calyx lobes varying in size and form, persistent on fruit; corolla white or blue, salverform to funnel-salverform, with the interior of the tube sericeous above and glabrous below with the hairs moniliform, the lobes 4, valvate, with the interior minutely papillate; stamens 4, alternate to corolla lobes, included or excluded, the filaments adnate to the inner face of the corolla tube and departing from it in the upper half of the tube when anthers included or near the apex when anthers exserted, glabrous or granulate, the anthers 4-thecate, narrowly oblong, glabrous introrse, opening by full-length slits, dorsifixed below the middle; disc filling the space between the base of the corolla and the base of the style, consisting of 2 glandular hemicyhndrical nectaries, 1 positioned over each locule, persistent on the fruit; style glabrous or granulate, the stigma bifid, minutely papillate, included or excluded; ovary inferior, bilocular, each locule containing 1 basally attached ascending anatropous ovule with the funiculus thin and straight or a basally attached cylindrical or club-shaped placenta (D. coerulea) with 1 or occasionally 2 amphitropus ovules. Fruit a schizocarp, drupaceous for a short interval or weakly so to completely dry, didymous, emarginate, the mericarps globose to compressed-lenticular when fleshy and compressed-lenticular when dry with the compression at right angles to the septum, indehiscent, the pyrenes and seeds compressed-lenticular, the embryo erect, straight, with the radicle inferior, embedded in endosperm.

Discussion:

Declieuxia Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth, Nov. Gen. et Sp. folio: 3: 275, t. 281, 1819; quarto: 3: 352, t. 281, 1820. Psyllocarpus Pohl ex de Candolle, in synonymy, Prodr. 4: 479, 1830, non Psyllocarpus Martius ex Martius &: Zuccarini, Flora 7(1), Beil. (4): 130, betw 25 Apr and 7 Jul, 1824, and Nov. Gen. et Sp. PI. 1:44, 1 Dec 1824. Congdonia Miiller Argoviensis, Flora 59(28): 437, 1876. Declieuxia Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth ser Platyphylla K. Schumann, Natiirl. Pflanzenfam. 4(4): 118, 1891. Declieuxia Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth ser Stenophylla K. Schumann, Natiirl. Pflanzenfam. 4(4): 118, 1891. Type: Declieuxia chiococcoides Humboldt, Bonpland, &: Kunth, Nov. Gen. et Sp. folio: 3:276, t.281,1819; quarto: 3:354, t.281,1820 (=D.fruticosa (Willdenow ex Roemer & Schultes) O. Kuntze, Revisio Generum Plantarum 1: 279, 1891).