Harveya purpurea is an annual herb with large, showy flowers and scale-like leaves, parasitic on the roots of shrubs and trees, endemic to South Africa in the Eastern and Western Cape.[2][3] It occurs from the Cederberg to the Cape Peninsula, and along the coastal belt to Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, mainly among fynbos, on stony slopes and sandy flats.[4]

Harveya purpurea
Plate from Hooker’s Icones Plantarum
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Lamiales
Family: Orobanchaceae
Genus: Harveya
Species:
H. purpurea
Binomial name
Harveya purpurea
Synonyms
  • Aulaya grandiflora Benth.
  • Aulaya purpurea (L.f.) Benth.
  • Gerardia orobanchoides Lam.
  • Harveya laxiflora Hiern
  • Orobanche pratensis Eckl. & Zeyh. ex C.Presl
  • Orobanche uitenhagensis Eckl. ex Hook.
  • Orobanche purpurea L. f.

Harveya species are native to Africa, Madagascar, and Yemen. This species is holoparasitic, that is, entirely nonphotosynthetic, with a preference for members of the Campanulaceae such as Roella and Wahlenbergia. The disabling of the photosynthesis gene has happened independently several times in Scrophulariales.[5][6]

References

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  1. ^ http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/record/tro-29203638[full citation needed]
  2. ^ https://plants.jstor.org/compilation/harveya.purpurea?searchUri=[full citation needed]
  3. ^ http://redlist.sanbi.org/species.php?species=1072-17[full citation needed]
  4. ^ 'Parasitic flowering plants' - Henning Heide-Jørgensen
  5. ^ Wolfe, A. D; Depamphilis, C. W (1998). "The effect of relaxed functional constraints on the photosynthetic gene rbcL in photosynthetic and nonphotosynthetic parasitic plants". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 15 (10): 1243–58. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a025853. PMID 9787431.
  6. ^ Randle, C. P; Wolfe, A. D (2005). "The evolution and expression of RBCL in holoparasitic sister-genera Harveya and Hyobanche (Orobanchaceae)". American Journal of Botany. 92 (9): 1575–85. doi:10.3732/ajb.92.9.1575. PMID 21646175.
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