Biology:Elytraria bromoides

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Short description: Species of plant

Wheatspike Scalystem
Elytraria bromoides
Scientific classification edit
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Lamiales
Family: Acanthaceae
Genus: Elytraria
Species:
E. bromoides
Binomial name
Elytraria bromoides
Oerst.
Synonyms[1]
  • Elytraria acuminata (Small) Cory
  • Tubflora acuminata (Small)
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Wheatspike Scalystem flower side view
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Wheatspike Scalystem flower front view

Wheatspike Scalystem is a species of perennial, herbaceous plant of the Americas. It belongs to the Acanthus Family, the Acanthaceae.[1]

Description

Wheatspike Scalystem is easily recognized by these distinctive and features:[2]

  • Leaves forming the rosette are widest above their centers, with bases gradually diminishing toward the rosette's center, and their tips are rounded to barely pointed. Margins have no indentations or teeth, else are weakly wavy to scalloped, and up to 15 cm long and 3.8 cm wide (~6 x 1½ inches).
  • The spike-like inflorescences' overlapping, spiraling bracts each have behind them a central, terminal flower which opens first, with two younger flowers developing below it; it's a "dichasial spike." The spike's peduncle can be up to 15 cm long (~6 inches), though usually it's about half that, and the scaly flowering part is shorter than the peduncle.
  • Flowers have white to pinkish or bluish corollas exhibiting distinct upper and lower lobes (they're "zygomorphic") and are up to 14 mm long (~½ inch). The upper lobe is itself two-lobed while the lower lobe is three-lobed, and all the smaller lobes are shallowly notched at their tips. There are only 2 stamens, above which a tongue-like, white stigma curves when the flower is open.
  • Fruits are capsules up to 7 mm long (~¼ inch), producing wrinkled seeds up to 1 mm long (~​ 1⁄32 inch).

Distribution

Wheatspike Scalystem occurs from the southernmost part of the US state of Texas[3] south through the eastern Mexican states, including the Yucatan Peninsula, into Guatemala.[4]

Habitat

In the US state of Texas Wheatspike Scalystem occurs in sandy soil.[5] In east-central Mexico's Eastern Sierra Madre foothills it occurs in dry scrub, tropical forests with deciduous or largely deciduous trees, and oak forest at elevations of 300-1400 m (~1000-4600 feet). Also in the Eastern Sierra Madres, it's found on lava lows at 400-900 meters in elevation (~1300-2950 feet).[6] Images on this page show plants on a seldom-used, usually shaded trail in thin soil atop limestone in a dry forest in north-central Yucatán, México, at an elevation of 39m (128ft).[7]

Ecology

In northeastern Mexico, at elevations from 210 to 1372 meters (~700-4500 feet), Wheat-spike Scalystem flowers throughout the year.[8] In the Mexican lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula, it flowers and fruits in June and July.[9]

A study in Mexico found that Wheat-spike Scalystem survives in rural settings, but not in sites designated as having low, moderate or high urbanisation.[10]

In traditional medicine

In Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Wheatspike Scalystem has been used against insect bites.[9] In Mexico's Veracruz state, it has served as a treatment or anemia.[11]

Taxonomy

Elytraria bromoides first was published by the Danish botanist Anders Sandøe Ørsted in 1854. The name Ørsted also is written as Örsted and Orsted. Accompanying his Latin description of the species he writes in Danish that Prof. Liebmann found it at Papantla on the Rio Nautla, at Hacienda de Santa Barbara, with fruit from March to May.[12]

Half a century later, in 1903, John Kunkel Small published the same taxon as a new species under the basionym Tubiflora acuminata.[13] In 1936, Small's taxon was transferred to the genus Elytraria. [14] Now both later names are regarded as synonyms of Elytraria bromoides.[1]

Etymology

The genus name Elytraria is based on the Greek ελύτρον, elytron, which means "sheath." This refers to the bracts which arise below the flowers, sheathing the rachis.[15]

The species name bromoides is a New Latin construction in which the suffix -oides, based on the Greek oeidēs, means "resembling."[16] In plant taxonomy bromoides means "similar to brome grass, the genus Bromus," to which the inflorescences of Elytraria species with their overlapping scales could be, with imagination, considered vaguely similar.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Elytraria bromoides Oerst.". United Kingdom: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:320643-2. 
  2. ↑ Daniel, Thomas F.; Acosta Castellanos, Savador (November 2003). "Acanthaceae" (in Spanish). Flora del Bajío y de Regiones Adyacentes (Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, México: Instituto de Ecología, A.C. (INECOL)) 117: 46–48. http://inecolbajio.inecol.mx/floradelbajio/documentos/fasciculos/ordinarios/Compositae%20157(1).pdf. Retrieved March 31, 2026. 
  3. ↑ "Floristic Synthesis of NA © 2014 BONAP". https://bonap.net/MapGallery/County/Elytraria%20bromoides.png. 
  4. ↑ "Elytraria bromoides Oerst.". Catalogue of Life. February 2, 2026. https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/taxon/6F66B. 
  5. ↑ Weakley, A.S. and Southeastern Flora Team (2026). "Elytraria bromoides Oersted.". Chapel Hill, NC, USA: University of North Carolina Herbarium, North Carolina Botanical Garden. https://fsus.ncbg.unc.edu/main.php?pg=show-taxon-detail.php&lsid=urn:lsid:ncbg.unc.edu:taxon:{781E156A-CFF9-4147-848C-A0B98A1B45D7. 
  6. ↑ Castillo-Campos, Gonzalo; Dávila-Aranda, Patricia; Zavala-Hurtado, Alejandro (June 2007). "La selva baja caduciflia en una corriente de lava volcánica en el centro de Veracruz: lista florística de la flora vascular" (in Spanish). Boletín de la Sociedad Botánica de México (Distrito Federal, México: Sociedad Botánica de México) 80: 77–104. ISSN 0366-2128. https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/577/57780008.pdf. Retrieved April 1, 2026. 
  7. ↑ "Wheat-spike Scalystem (Elytraria bromoides) Research Grade". iNaturalist. April 10, 2016. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/223741679. 
  8. ↑ Daniel, T.; Mora-Olivo, Arturo (December 30, 2022). "Elytraria (Acanthaceae: Nelsonioideae) in Tamaulipas, Mexico". Phytoneuron 2022 (66): 1–5. ISSN 2153-733X. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367377759. Retrieved March 31, 2026. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Taxón: Elytraria bromoides Oerst." (in Spanish). Mérida, Yucatán, México: Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán, A.C.. https://www.cicy.mx/sitios/flora%20digital/ficha_virtual.php?especie=748. 
  10. ↑ Meléndez-Jaramillo, Edmar; Sánchez-Castillo, Laura; de Jesús Segura Martínez, María Teresa; Sánchez-Reyes, Uriel Jeshua (December 21, 2023). "Vegetation changes along an urbanisation and atmospheric pollution gradient in Mexico". Nature Conservation (Pensoft Publishers) 54: 179–202. doi:10.3897/natureconservation.54.110257. https://natureconservation.pensoft.net/article/110257/. Retrieved March 31, 2026. 
  11. ↑ Cano Asseleih, Leticia M. (2024) (in Spanish). Flora medicinal de Veracruz : inventario etnobotánico. Xalapa, Vracruz, México: Universidad Veracruzana. doi:10.25009/uv.3015.1823. ISBN 978-607-8969-70-8. https://simehbucket.s3.amazonaws.com/miscfiles/978-607-8969-70-8-flora-medicinal_vcw3s2f5.pdf. 
  12. ↑ Örsted, A.S. (1854). "Mexicos og Centralamerikas Acanthaceer" (in Danish and Latin). Videnskabelige meddelelser fra den Naturhistoriske forening i Kjöbenhavn. 8-12. Denmark: Den Naturhistoriske Forening i Kjøbenhavn. pp. 115. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/35632760. 
  13. ↑ Small, John Kunkel; Rydberg, Per Axel (1903). Flora of the southeastern United States; being descriptions of the seed-plants, ferns and fern-allies growing naturally in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and the Indian territory and in Oklahoma and Texas east of the one-hundredth meridian. the author. pp. 1082. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/377969. 
  14. ↑ Cory, V.L. (November 1936). Fernald, Merritt Lyndon. ed. "New Names and New Combinations for Texas Plants". Rhodora (Lancaster, PA, USA: New England Botanical Club, Inc.) 38 (455): 407. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/14508#page/472/mode/1up. Retrieved April 1, 2026. 
  15. ↑ Leonard, E.C. (October 15, 1934). "The American spcies of Elytraria". Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences (Washington, DC, USA: Washington Academy of Sciences) 24 (10): 443–447. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24529501. Retrieved April 1, 2026. 
  16. ↑ "-oid 2 of 2 adjective suffix". Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/-oid. 



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