Flora of North America species comparison

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Stanleya

Prince's plume, stanleya
Habit Annuals, perennials, shrubs, or subshrubs; (base usually woody); not scapose; glabrous or pubescent.
Stems

usually erect, rarely ascending, unbranched or branched.
Leaves

cauline and, sometimes, basal;

petiolate or sessile;

basal rosulate, petiolate, blade margins entire, lyrately lobed or 1- or 2-pinnatifid;

cauline blade (base sometimes auriculate or amplexicaul), margins entire or dentate to pinnatifid.
Racemes

considerably elongated in fruit.
Flowers

sepals spreading to reflexed, oblong-linear or linear, lateral pair not saccate basally;

petals usually yellow or whitish, rarely white or yellow-orange, obovate, orbicular, oblong, linear, filiform, or oblanceolate, claw distinctly differentiated from blade (claw glabrous or papillose);

stamens (exserted), equal;

filaments not dilated basally, (often papillose basally);

anthers linear, (strongly spirally coiled after dehiscence);

lateral nectar glands annular, median present or absent, confluent with lateral ones.
Fruiting pedicels

horizontal, divaricate, or divaricate-ascending, slender.
Fruits

long-stipitate, linear, often torulose, terete or latiseptate;

valves each with prominent midvein, glabrous;

replum rounded;

septum complete;

ovules 22–70 per ovary;

style obsolete or distinct (to 1.7 mm);

stigma capitate, entire.
Seeds

uniseriate, plump, not winged, usually oblong, rarely ovoid;

seed coat (obscurely reticulate), slightly mucilaginous when wetted;

cotyledons accumbent to incumbent.
x

= 14.

Stanleya
Distribution
from USDA
w United States; c United States
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Species 7 (7 in the flora).

Both R. C. Rollins (1993) and N. H. Holmgren (2005b) reported n = 12 and 2n = 24 for various species of Stanleya. However, those counts, all reported previously by Rollins (1939c), are erroneous; no species of the genus has numbers deviating from n = 14 or 28.

All species of Stanleya are well-defined, and interspecific hybridization has not yet been reported. One species, S. pinnata, is a hyperaccumulator of selenium and is a good indicator for the presence of this element in soils. Poisoning of livestock results from their feeding on large quantities of plants of this species.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Key
1. Cauline leaves sessile, blade bases auriculate to sagittate
→ 2
1. Cauline leaves petiolate, blade bases not auriculate or sagittate
→ 3
2. Annuals or biennials (without caudex); racemes dense; sepals 6-12 mm; petals linear to filiform, 0.5-1.5 mm wide, margins crisped; fruiting pedicels 10-20(-26) mm.
S. confertiflora
2. Perennials (with caudex); racemes loose; sepals 12-18 mm; petals narrowly oblanceolate, 1-3 mm wide, margins usually erose, rarely subentire and crisped; fruiting pedicels 4-9(-12) mm.
S. viridiflora
3. Basal leaf blades: surfaces densely tomentose; fruiting pedicels 11-22 mm; petals with glabrous claws; fruits flattened.
S. tomentosa
3. Basal leaf blades: surfaces usually glabrous, rarely sparsely pubescent; fruiting pedicels 3-11(-15) mm; petals with pubescent claws (except S. elata); fruits terete or subterete
→ 4
4. Cauline leaf blades: margins usually entire, rarely dentate proximally
→ 5
4. Cauline leaf blades: margins often pinnatisect, pinnatifid, 2-pinnatifid, lyrate-pinnatifid, or runcinate
→ 6
5. Petals linear, 0.3-1 mm wide, claws glabrous; ovules 46-70 per ovary; filaments 5-13 mm; Arizona, California, s, w Nevada.
S. elata
5. Petals oblanceolate to oblong, 2-3 mm wide, claws pubescent; ovules 10-38 per ovary; filaments 11-28 mm; Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, sw Texas, Utah, Wyoming.
S. pinnata
6. Biennials; petals orbicular to broadly obovate, (2.5-)3-6 mm wide; fruits suberect to ascending, slightly curved inward.
S. albescens
6. Perennials; petals oblanceolate or oblong, 0.8-3 mm wide; fruits usually spreading or divaricate, rarely ascending, sometimes curved downward
→ 7
7. Cauline leaf blades: margins sometimes 2-pinnatifid; sepals 6.5-10 mm; petals 5-12 mm; filaments glabrous basally; gynophores 4-11 mm; fruits torulose, tortuous.
S. bipinnata
7. Cauline leaf blades: margins not 2-pinnatifid; sepals 9-16 mm; petals 10-20 mm; filaments pilose basally; gynophores 7-28 mm; fruits smooth, not tortuous.
S. pinnata
Source FNA vol. 7, p. 695. Author: Ihsan A. Al-Shehbaz.
Parent taxa Brassicaceae > tribe Thelypodieae
Subordinate taxa
S. albescens, S. bipinnata, S. confertiflora, S. elata, S. pinnata, S. tomentosa, S. viridiflora
Name authority Nuttall: Gen. N. Amer. Pl. 2: 71. (1818)
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



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