Nuriaea is a genus of flowering plants in the sunflower family, Asteraceae. It includes two species of thistles, Nuriaea dender and Nuriaea engleriana, which are endemic to Ethiopia.[1]
| Nuriaea | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification 
| |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Tracheophytes |
| Clade: | Angiosperms |
| Clade: | Eudicots |
| Clade: | Asterids |
| Order: | Asterales |
| Family: | Asteraceae |
| Subtribe: | Carduinae |
| Genus: | Nuriaea Susanna, Calleja & Moreyra (2023) |
| Type species | |
| Nuriaea engleriana (O.Hoffm.) Susanna, Calleja & Moreyra[2]
| |
| Species[1] | |
| |
They are spiny perennial herbs, growing 3 to 4 meters tall and occasionally up to 5 meters.[2]
Both species are native to the Ethiopian Highlands, growing in Afromontane plant communities above 1,600 meters elevation.[2]
These species were formerly placed in genus Cirsium. They have a plumose pappus like species of Cirsium and Afrocirsium. They differ from these other genera in their large size, and in having large capitula (4–7 cm) which resemble those of Cynara and a long (>30 mm) and strong (>2 mm wide) thorn on their basal leaf lobes. A phylogenetic and morphological study by Moreyra et al. published in 2023 concluded that these two species constituted a separate genus in tribe Carduinae which is a sister to the Carduus-Cirsium group of genera. The authors named the genus Nuriaea after their colleague Núria Garcia-Jacas, one of the co-authors of the paper which established the genus who died on 28 April 2023 before it was published.[2]
References
edit- ^ a b Nuriaea Susanna, Calleja & Moreyra. Plants of the World Online. Retrieved 7 June 2024.
- ^ a b c d Moreyra, Lucía D., Núria Garcia-Jacas, Cristina Roquet, Jennifer R. Ackerfield, Turan Arabacı, Carme Blanco-Gavaldà, Christian Brochmann, Juan Antonio Calleja, Tuncay Dirmenci, Kazumi Fujikawa, and et al. 2023. African Mountain Thistles: Three New Genera in the Carduus-Cirsium Group. Plants 12, no. 17: 3083. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12173083