Tiaridium indicum (L.) Lehm.
-
Authority
Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.
-
Family
Boraginaceae
-
Scientific Name
-
Description
Species Description - Weeds are important elements of the vegetation of all inhabited regions, most of them unintentionally introduced from other parts of the World, through commerce, agriculture, or horticulture, through their seeds, although indigenous plants sometimes become troublesome in cultivated places. The different kinds are of all degrees of trouble to farmers and gardeners, some becoming, under conditions favorable to their growth, actual menaces to agriculture, while others do not thrive in sufficient numbers to be bothersome. A weed has been defined as "a plant out of place". The plant here illustrated is a native of the Old World tropics, first known to botanists from India; it has long been naturalized in tropical and subtropical America, and is now distributed from Florida and Texas to Paraguay, locally plentiful in waste or cultivated grounds. The genus Tiaridium (Greek, like a tiara, referring to the characteristic fruit) was established for this plant by the German botanist Lehmann in 1818, and is monotypic, consisting of one species only, differing from the Heliotropes in having the nutlets of which the fruit is composed, united in pairs, conic, and strongly ribbed; in Heliotropium the 4 nutlets separate.
-
Discussion
Cotorrera Indian Heliotrope Borage Family Heliotropium indicum Linnaeus, Species Plantarum 130. 1753. Tiaridium indicum Lehmann, Plantae e Familia Asperifoliarum 14. 1818.