Sauvagesia erecta L.

Global description

Sauvagesia erecta is an annual to perennial species, usually herbaceous but sometimes subligneous at the base. It is erect, with a simple or more or less branched stem, often reddish brown in colour. The leaves are simple alternate subsessile with a broad, fully laciniate stipule at the base. The blade is elliptic with a toothed margin. The flowers are solitary in the axils of the terminal leaves. They are long-stalked and drooping. The calyx consists of 5 free, narrowly elliptic sepals. The corolla consists of 5 broadly elliptic white to pink petals. External staminodes red, very numerous, 5 internal white and pink petaloid staminodes.

General habit

Sauvagesia erecta is generally a herbaceous plant with a single or more or less branched stem, erect or sometimes semi-creeping and radicating, which can become a small, low subshrub subwoody at the base. It is 5 to 60 cm high.

Underground system

The root is taproot.

Stem

The stem is cylindrical, solid, slightly fleshy, sometimes finely ribbed. It is hairless and generally reddish-brown in colour. It may be simple to more or less branched, erect or spreading and rooting easily at the nodes.

Leaf

The leaves are simple, alternate, subsessile or borne on a very short stalk (0.5 mm). At their base is a broad, persistent stipule, generally oval, 5-8 mm long and 4-6 mm wide, deeply laciniate into 15-20 filiform segments 2-5 mm long. The leaf blade is elliptic to oblong, 1-6 cm long and 0.3-1.5 cm wide, wedge-shaped at the base and apex. The margin is finely denticulated with long narrow teeth. It is slightly fleshy, dark green or reddish and glabrous on both sides. The main veins are pinnately arched and slightly prominent on the upper face.

Inflorescence

The flowers are usually solitary or sometimes grouped in 2 or 3 in the axils of the upper leaves.

Flower

The flowers are borne on a long peduncle of 8-20 mm. They are drooping. The calyx consists of 5 narrowly lanceolate or elliptic sepals with a narrowly apiculate apex, 4 to 6 mm long and 1 to 1.5 mm wide, pale green in colour, tinged with red towards the top. The corolla consists of 5 free, white to dark pink, broadly elliptic petals, 5 to 8 mm long and 3 to 5 mm wide, with a very narrow base and a sharp wedge-shaped apex. The stamens are arranged in 3 whorls. In the centre 5 stamens with a 0.5 mm filet and 2.5 mm oblong anther protected by a whorl of 5 oblong petaloid staminodes 2-3 mm long and 1.5 mm wide, pink at the base and white in the upper half, erect in a cone, and surrounded by a whorl of numerous dark red, filiform, kidney-shaped, unequal, 1-2 mm long, free staminodes. The ovary is subconical with a 4 mm long style.

Fruit

The fruit is an ovoid capsule, 3.5 to 7 mm long and 2 to 3 mm in diameter.

Seed

Seeds are ellipsoid, 0.7 mm long and 0.4 mm in diameter, with a finely alveolate, brown seed coat.

Origin

Sauvagesia erecta is a widespread plant in the pantropical regions of America (Central America, Caribbean, South America) and Africa (from West Africa to East Africa, as far as Madagascar, but it seems to be absent from the other islands of the Indian Ocean).

Worldwide distribution

Outside its native range, this species has been introduced to Hawaii.

https://www.gbif.org/fr/species/5421109